I'd like to know your opinion on http://arxiv.org/ which since 1991 has become a very important scientific reference in some fields of Physics and Mathematics. Cheers, Jaime
In these disciplines the acceptance of electronic distribution has ever been very high. ArXiv has sprung into existence because physicists gladly accepted this way of getting their papers spread around. It serves as an preprint server since 1991 (!). The Open Archives Initiative with its Protocol have undoubtedly shaped the way scientists communicate with each other. So I am think this is a very successful effort.
But there are things to remember: Lots of this literature is preprints published in a commercial journal afterwards. This is essential, but as we have Microsoft on operating systems, we see publisher monopolies in academics, think about recent mergers happening around the giant Reed-Elsevier. Unless there are ways of evaluating scientific research (the peer-review process) effectively *without* being forced to pay horrendous journals prices--peer reviewing is done by the publishers--the use of the net will be limited to a small portion of high energy physicists. Some faculties in the humanities dont even think about electronic publishing, though.
ArXiv is a good thing, but I think there need to be more efforts in setting up more publishing platforms that are not focused on maximising their shareholder value. PLOS is going to do exactly that. The fact that more academic institutions are setting up their institutional archives is good news.
For those of you interested in these things:
The most important forum about these issues is the September 1998 American Scientist Forum (http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/archives/september98-forum.html)
There have been some SW-related discussions too, as well as very interesting discussions on peer-review, copyright and open-access.
Regards, Daniel