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Newspapers are going to hell in a handbasket” after 20 quarters of declining ad revenue in the U.S., agree both Dean Starkman, a media critic who defends the best of traditional newspapers, and Clay Shirky, a guru of the digital age who looks forward to a future beyond newspapers. Otherwise, they disagree about most things, and as I read their fierce debate (Starkman, in the Columbia Journalism Review; Shirky, on his blog) I wonder what it might mean for the future of scientific journals.
Unlike newspapers, scientific journals are not facing the economic collapse that forces change. It’s hard to get financial data on individual journals, but Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals, has seen broadly stable revenues (€2,236 million in 2006, €2,370 ...
