What’s black and white and ‘read’ all over?” “A blushing zebra!” we’d always shout as kids, even when we knew the right answer: “a newspaper.”
But in the years since I first heard this punning riddle, the rise of the Internet has put a new face on the dissemination of information, challenging both researchers and publishers to find the best way to communicate scientific findings swiftly, cheaply, and effectively. No longer is there a black-and-white way of publishing scientific papers, especially those intended to be read all over.
Novel publishing platforms are being developed and launched at dizzying rates. As we go to press, and within less than a week of each other, both BioMed Central and F1000 announced the launch of new open-access (OA) journals. (The two companies are the brainchildren of Vitek Tracz, former owner of The Scientist.) One of the pioneers of open-access publishing, BioMed Central (now ...
