Informers versus Persuaders.

[Cainad (dec.)]

http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/gg/people/berndt/writing/mahrer-05.pdf

A satire illustrating the convoluted nature of passive style.

fuuuuuuuck...

[Requia ☣]

I think, once you get out there, it will be up to you and yours to change the paradigm.  Peer-reviewed journals are a tough nut to crack, but it certainly seems that there is the beginning of a groundswell.

They need to ditch the old journals anyway (financial issues, also the general locking away of knowledge due to said), easier to get the active voice used on the ground floor of the newer ones.

[Kai]

I think, once you get out there, it will be up to you and yours to change the paradigm.  Peer-reviewed journals are a tough nut to crack, but it certainly seems that there is the beginning of a groundswell.

They need to ditch the old journals anyway (financial issues, also the general locking away of knowledge due to said), easier to get the active voice used on the ground floor of the newer ones.

Old journals? I guess you mean the old style of journals, IE Annals of of the new York Entomological Society, and switch to the new style, IE Zootaxa or  the direction Science is going.

[Requia ☣]

No, I mean more the journals that have a habit of charging high fees for articles, and share nothing with the authors.  or even charge the authors for distribution.

Once this made sense, even if the fees were too high, the service was needed, and libraries were the best access to information anyone had anyway, so the cost could be diffused among a moderate number of people.  But now printing is optional, and it actively inhibits the spread of information, since nobody outside academia, or for certain things, the profession in question, or the rich, has access to anything.

Or maybe you're referring to the same thing.

[Requia ☣]

Incidentally, if anyone here is at a uni with access to IEEE nuclear science journal, I'd love a copy of this, but cannot afford to drop 30 dollars on it.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel1/23/3253/00106728.pdf?temp=x

[Jasper]

I wonder what it would take to start an academic publishing company where I make enough to keep doing it, but pass the profits along to the writers for the most part...

[Requia ☣]

Mostly i think you'd need a printing press and some big names to give you legitimacy

[Cain]

An academic Lulu style operation would be interesting.  There'd need to be certain caveats to its use, of course...but so long as those basic requirements were met...

[Kai]

Theres PLoS ONE http://www.plosone.org/home.action

Or Zootaxa  http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/

The problem with scientific journals being peer reviewed is that in order to be considered peer reviewed a copy of a journal must be housed at at least 5 different institutions of learning, in print. It does not count as peer review unless this is the case.

I think peer review is important. I also think that online journals are the way of the future. PLoS ONE and Zootaxa have gotten around this by publishing all or some of their articles online, having a mostly online journal, but at the same time having the option of print copies of said journal articles, which then covers the 5 institution rule. If there is no strigiancy for peer review, articles that are poor science end up getting published. I can present an example where this has happened.