[IRTalk] Group of biologists is bypassing journals and uploading their work straight to the Internet

[Ina Smith]

Since the first scientific journal was created 351 years ago, the process for disseminating scientific information has remained fundamentally the same - results are written up, peer-reviewed, and eventually published. And while this process helps to ensure high-quality articles, it's also incredibly slow, with the average biology paper taking on average six months - and sometimes even years - to see the light of day.

Now a growing group of life scientists are working to change that, by committing the somewhat-rebellious act of uploading their papers directly to a open-access pre-print site, called bioRxiv<http://biorxiv.org/>, before submitting them to the mainstream journals, as Amy Harmon reports for <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/science/asap-bio-biologists-published-to-the-internet.html> The New York Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/science/asap-bio-biologists-published-to-the-internet.html>. That means their work is now available for anyone to read and comment on for free.

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-group-of-biologists-are-bypassing-journals-and-uploading-their-work-straight-to-the-internet

Ina Smith
SciELO Planning Manager
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

LIASA Exco Convener ICT Development (2014-2016)
LIASA HELIG Chair (2014-2016)

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Email: ina at assaf.org.za<mailto:ina at assaf.org.za>

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