Jstor Plant Science

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:48:37 PST
Aaron wrote,
"The newer digital-age journals have no publishing costs (except for 
color), usually free access to all, and also have quicker turn around times."

Not true, if they are legitimate, edited and peer-reviewed journals. 
In that case, the publisher (which may be the society that sponsors 
the journal) has to pay an academic editor, a copyeditor, and 
possibly the reviewers, and probably also a compositor who prepares 
the pdf that appears online. I worked on linguistics journals 
published by Cambridge for many years, and there is a lot of work 
between what the authors submit and what eventually appears.

The peer review process is crucial to botanical research articles, 
and particularly to the publication of new taxa. Otherwise you will 
have a lot of dubious names being published, and endless confusion. 
Many of us are aware of botanists who have published new species in 
what are essentially their captive personal journals, edited by the 
sole contributor. That procedure may have been useful in the 18th 
century, but it's not today.

Jane McGary




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