Last day of 2002 — time to look to the future. Speculating on the future on a moments notice is not easy. How about this — Will the Internet change the nature of scientific publications? A recent journal article in Brain and Cognition (2002, 50, 335-337) asks this question and comes to the conclusion that the transition to Internet-based scholarly resources is still problematic. The authors examined “top tier” journals in science and medicine (e.g., JAMA, Science, Nature) since 1993 and attempted to access any web resource used as a reference. They concluded that the half-life of online resources was 4.5 years (i.e., less that 50% of the references were still available 4.5 years later). The authors argue that this situation represents a significant barrier to the use of the net for serious scholarship and urges more serious consideration of an archive of some type.
So on that note – Happy New Year.
