Around the ScholComm Web: Science Journals Have Passed Their Expiration Date, A Decade of Google Scholar and more

On Science Journals...Yes the internet has made the distribution of research results MUCH easier and quicker and science journals charge way too much for this service. But anybody who has used Google is increasingly aware of the importance of a some degree of gate-keeping. The peer review system has many problems but it is SOMETHING. And the difficulty of the "author pays" model (even for those of us who believe that IS where we're headed) is that it removes what little incentive there is for the publisher to act as a gatekeeper. Because the distribution of citations for papers approaches the hyperbolic, the metrics and reputations of journals are mostly set by their ability to capture a few superstar papers, not how well they screen out the poorly thought out or executed research.