Why do we need academic journals in the first place? — Tech News and Analysis

“It may not get as much attention as the disruption that is occurring in newspapers, e-books or other parts of the mainstream media industry, but there is a revolution of sorts going on in the academic publishing business. It hasrecently exploded into public view with the boycott of Elsevier — one of the largest publishers of academic journals — over legislation that would block researchers from sharing their work. And for some, it has raised a broader question about academic publishing: namely, in an era of democratized distribution of information, why do we need expensive paywalled journals in the first place?... The open-access movement... is part of a broader effort to encourage what some call “open science,” or the sharing of knowledge as a way of promoting collaboration. The Research Works Act would make this much more difficult... Quantum physicist and open-science advocate Michael Nielsen recently published a book called Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, which describes how research in mathematics, astronomy and other disciplines has been accelerated by the open sharing of research through blogs and other forums. Some of those forums include the Public Library of Science or PLoS, the open-research archive called arXiv.org, and services such as Mendeley — a kind of social network for academics — as well as ResearchGate, which my colleague Bobbie Johnson has written about... Why not get rid of academic journals altogether?... As Bonham and others have noted, the biggest obstacle to this happening — and to the spread of open access or open science as a whole — isn’t the control that publishers like Elsevier have over the professional publishing process. The biggest obstacle is the role that these journals play in academia itself, and how important publishing in a specific journal can be when it comes to promotions, granting of tenure, research grants..."