There is a transcription of a very interesting speach by Paul
Ginsparg, creator of the LANL archive of physics preprints at
http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/pg14Oct94.html.
He says what I've been thinking for a while: that there is really no
more need for publishing companies to have any role at all in
scientific journals. Their presence is just a hold-over from the
paper age. Also there is no good reason for the form of electronic
articles to be constrained by their historic origins in print. One
can imagine articles that evolve as the authors make more progress, or
articles that jump to 3D structure models at the click of a button,
etc.
I whish people in the biology community would take a look at
Ginsparg's work and ideas and think about moving in this direction.
Don Bashford
The Scripps Research Institute
bashford at scripps.edu
