A Preprint Experiment: Four Pillars and a Foundation for the Future of Scholarly Publishing

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So, we got together, had two working group meetings to discuss the future of scholarly publishing in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and the Earth and Ocean Sciences. What were were thinking that entire time?

We’ve just submitted a piece that brings together our broad ideas (some of which have been seen before), but, simultaneous to publication, we’ve also decided to put up a preprint. Why? Simply put, immediate access is one of our four pillars of the future of scholarly publication. Once you feel something is ready for public consumption, put it out there! We’ve been delighted to watch the evolution of PeerJ Preprints, so we’ve placed our piece there.

Byrnes et al. (2013) The four pillars of scholarly publishing: The future and a foundation. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e11 http://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.11

This immediate access to the piece goes hand in hand with another of our four pillars. Open Review. We want to know what you think. And now. We hope you give us feedback over at the preprint. Or, if you want to give us more detailed annotated comment, we’ve put it in a comment-open Google doc. Highlight something you disagree with. Argue with us. We welcome it! We’d ask that you put your name with the comment. We want a discussion, as discussion will improve this manuscript and help us shape our argument rather than just one-way commenting. This will also allow *you* to get full recognition for your comments, and we will include this in future acknowledgements.

So, enjoy the piece – our commentary is not a straight experiment-analysis-discussion piece, but rather part of a broader ecosystem of scholarly products that we feel are important to get out there. We look forward to hearing what you think of the piece!

Give us your thoughts on Scholarly Publishing in EEB!

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In order to help the OpenPub project move forward, we would like to try and crowdfund some of its development. After all, we want our preprint server with discussion experiment to be part of the community! We’ll be whipping up a proposal with all sorts of cool rewards that help you be part of the process of changing the face of scholarly communication.

But first, we need your help. You see, we want *YOU* to be part of our crowdfunding proposal.

How? Simple.

Record yourself answering these two questions:

0) Who are you? What’s your name, position, and institution?

1) When you submit a paper today, how do you feel about the review & publication process?

2) So, I’m part of a group making a preprint server for Ecology, evolution, and the earth and ocean sciences. It’s not just for preprints, but actually will include tools to review and comment on other people’s work in an interactive dialogue. Do you think this would be useful? Why?

And then feel free to say anything else you’d like about the future of scholarly publication.

Once you’ve recorded this to a file, email us with either the video file or a link to the video file.

We’ll post the best responses here, and edit relevant pieces together into our crowdfunding video to show the whole community the need for what we’re doing!

IEE special issue on the future of publishing in EEB now online

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The Ideas in Ecology and Evolution special issue examining the future of publishing is now online. Here is the link to a collection of the pdfs: http://futurecopublishing.wordpress.com or you can get them at the journal website.

It is our intention to keep this a regular section of the journal so please consider popping your ideas on how to improve the current scientific dissemination pipeline for our disciplines.

Wicked-Witch