The coming revolution in STM #scholpub

Use the link to access the compete blog post from Peter Murray-Rust, opening as follows: “I have prophesied that there will be a revolution in STM #scholpub and now I can put some flesh on the bones. If we look at current #scholpub – as the Finch report did – and ask how do we change it, we end up with a mess. The report is a mess and almost all small steps will end up with at least as much mess or even more. The universities have failed to give any sort of moral, organization or technical lead. Their repositories are failures – most have at best a few per cent of their output and academics either ignore them or regard them as a distraction or impediment. No-one uses them to discover scientific information because they are disorganised, have no useful search tools , and do not interoperate. So STM publishing is probably the most inefficient information market on the planet. Compare it with Amazon, Google, Car insurance, Supermarket products, financial information and more. Voluntary information resources are better than what the commercial publishers can provide. Compare Wikipedia or Figshare with SpringerImages. Tell me if you disagree. So let’s get away from the details and see why there must be a catastrophic fracture...”