The internet and unrefereed scholarly publishing

The publishing delay in scholarly peer-reviewed journals

“…For articles in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences the total time increased from 5.9 to 15.2 months between 1970 and 1997 and while the acceptance to publication lag increased somewhat (4.4 to 6.6 months) the increase was mainly attributable to the increase in the time required by the review process (1.5 to 8.5 months). Kling and Swygart-Hobaugh (2002) compared the evolution of publication delays for three natural science and three social science journals between 1970/1980 and 2000, in an attempt to see if the email communication widely in use in 2000 had reduced average delays. They found that the delays in chemistry and physics journals had decreased from 6.5 months to 5.8 (and even more so for a minority of articles published electronically before paper publication) but that the delays in the economics, management and psychology journals had increased from 9.0 to 23.8 months.…”

Assessing the Value of Open Access Information Systems: Making a Case for Community-Based Sustainability Models

“…Several studies of arXiv explore how the disciplinary characteristics of high-energy physics influenced the successful appropriation of arXiv within the scholarly community (Merz, 2006;Fry, 2006;Gunnarsdóttir, 2005;Bohlin, 2004;Kling, 2004;Cronin, 2003;Kling & McKim, 2000). For instance, reliance on pre-prints among physicists is a cultural practice that precedes the development of arXiv-efforts to collect unpublished research reports in high-energy physics began in 1962 (Merz, 2006;Bohlin, 2004;Kling, 2004).…”

“…For instance, reliance on pre-prints among physicists is a cultural practice that precedes the development of arXiv-efforts to collect unpublished research reports in high-energy physics began in 1962 (Merz, 2006;Bohlin, 2004;Kling, 2004). Existing scholarly publishing patterns and intellectual property policies often reveal the readiness of a discipline to share published or unpublished papers online.…”

What’s the Deal with the Web/Blogs/the Next Big Technology: A Key Role for Information Science in e-Social Science Research?

“…The former has a more information centred approach, concerned with mathematical modelling of the data. Caldas [32], in contrast, addresses a more social sciences type question focussing on the impact of technology upon scholarly communication, a recurrent theme in information science (e.g., [33]). Outside of information science, social scientists have analysed newsgroups from various disciplinary perspectives: as an example of computer mediated communication in communication science by researchers seeking to investigate social aspects of its use (e.g., [34]), also an information science theme [35].…”