It is difficult to judge whether readers were meant to take seriously Jeffrey B. Moran’s article “The Journal Glut: Scientific Publications Out Of Control” (The Scientist, July 10, 1989, page 11). On the assumption that he was not being facetious in at least the first half of his article, I offer the following reaction.
The “proliferation of scholarly journals” is unfortunately a knee-jerk cliche used by those who fail to give serious thought to the problem. Journals, by their nature, are chronicles of their times. In the 40 years since Biochemica and Biophysica Acta (BBA) [which Moran used to illustrate the “out-of-control” proliferation of science publications] consisted of one volume, there has been an information explosion, especially in science and engineering. No serious reader of The Scientist will deny that scientific discovery during the latter half of this century has been extraordinary in the history of mankind and...
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