Ask The Chefs: What Was The Most Important Development In Scholarly Communications In The Last 40 Years? - The Scholarly Kitchen

"As you have heard previously, this year marks the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s (SSP) 40th anniversary. If you haven’t already done so, it’s not to late to register for the SSP annual meeting and celebrate with us! For this month’s “Ask the Chefs,” we thought it would be interesting to discuss how far scholarly communications has come in 40 years, during SSP’s existence. What’s changed? What were the developments that impacted scholarly communications the most? To start the conversation, we asked the Chefs: What was the most important development in scholarly communications in the last 40 years?

Lisa Hinchliffe: The Internet generally and more specifically the World Wide Web. Serving as a platform for transformative change in all aspects of scholarly communications, nothing has been untouched and many things have been disrupted. From reading to publishing, moving scholarly communications from the analog platform to the digital created so many affordances for change.

Phill Jones: I’m not sure, but I think it’s either the internet, or maybe the internet...."