GUEST EDITORIAL
Science has no hounds, and satellites can reflect its words with the speed of light. But journals of science and technology plod along in time-honored ruts of jealous provincialism. The author of original work writes for the widest possible recognition among his peers around the world. But to reach them he uses a system of printed journals which has changed hut little in a century. Successive time lags of manuscript preparation, review by referees, revision, scheduling, printing, journal mailing, and reprint distribution can waste a year from the moment of the last measurement to its full disclosure. An individual investigator is much dependent upon scientific and technical societies or independent publishers for good dissemination of his message to his peers. Yet he is also a victim of that media’s own bureaucracy and circulation limits. He may reach beyond his domestic publication service and offer one of his series of investigations directly to an overseas journal in the hope of accelerating attention to his work; he does this for fuller recognition despite eventual notices to the whole world via abstract services covering all puhlication loci. Journalists serve science and technology so well that their great value to society is beyond calculation. Now we are beset by inflated costs of paper, printing, and postage, as well as competition hy newer and sometimes splinter journals and slowdowns in mail delivery. Copy-machine proliferation tends t o mock copyright protection. The new U S A . copyright law aims for better protection of artists, composers, novelists, et al., and may also affect scientists and their journalists for better or worse. Journalists seek to keep revenue ahead of costs by selling advertising, with consequent implications by circulation audits to impose provincial limits, while also turning off academicians who fear their science might he sullied. Academicians suffer insult upon injury when the US. Postal Service threatens to classify basic science journals as advertising because of their page charge to authors. This may influence those academicians toward the publication format of ACS’ Analytical Chemistry which needs no page charges because of bountiful advertising along with news, notices, and reviews in “A-pages” fore and aft of a refereed center section, which may yield the lowest net cost per refereed page. Why, then, belabor the journal publishing system which has served so well? It is later than we think! It is time for some major reassessments of our journal systems and broad replanning through the remainder of this twentieth century. In the chemical world, only ACS‘ Chemical Abstract Service has evolved a major, worldwide coverage and service, with important cooperating sites in England and West Germany (while recognizing some important hut narrower services in international surveillance of patents). Massive monies from Ind. Eng. Chem., Prod. Res. Dev , Vol. 16. No. 1. 1977
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the National Science Foundation in the 1960’s and early 1970’s paid for much R&D to bring Chemical Abstracts now to a high level of automation, from dictating the abstract itself through computerized typesetting and page make-up, to a diversity of special selections and services seeking new markets. In general news and journalism, the classic Reuters, Associated Press, and other “wire services”are now augmented by regional and international editions of Readers Digest, T i m e , and the Wall Street Journal (which latter announced in April 1976, its Asian edition in English from Hong Kong). Each location can select editorial content to fit advertising and reader constraints there, faster and a t lower cost. Microfiche, along with computerizations and transmission of facsimiles via wire, glass fibers, or satellites, are becoming commonplace. Allegations of reader resistance may fade with familiarity and with reductions of price of hardware. A synopsis edition along with an archival edition is a bold, new “dual basic journal experiment” of ACS’ Journal of the American Chemical Society ( J ACS ). Scopes of journals evolve with winds of progress and whims of editorial boards. Scopes range from broad or vague, as with J A C S , to narrow or special, as with entrepreneurial journals on a popular topic such as fire hazard. The splinter journals tend to detract from the general journals but imply strongly the need for better identification of peer groups, narrow or broad, whom the author wants to address. Symposia collections of related papers, appearing in a general journal, or in a separate binding for expensive availability] are among the kinds of compromises toward peer group identity. The cost-benefit ratios to ordinary member-subscribers are even more puzzling when the problem is international. Where then in this matrix of publication interests can we now make one quantum jump of progress? By starting a dialogue overseas concerning two priorities: (a) early exchange of final page proofs of completely accepted articles for nearly simultaneous publications by cooperating countries in their respective compatible journals with mutual grants of copyrights; (b) forward planning by the editorial boards toward further progress along any of the vectors of the publications matrix, covered or not in this editorial. One can involve Product RID (which evolved from historic Industrial and Engineering Chemistry) and the British Polymer Journal and its companion Journal of Applied Chemistry and Biotechnology. The latter already has in its 23-man Editorial Board nine members who represent Argentina, Australia, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, U.S.A., West Germany, and others. Writer and reader reactions to this proposal should be far more persuasive than reactionary by either editorial boards or paid staff editors and managers who might fear loss of net income or prestige. So, writers and readers: arise and be heard!
J. C. WEAVER
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Ind. Eng. Chem., Prod. Res. Dev., Vol. 16, No. 1, 1977
