Lutra 55(2)_Camphuysen_Editorial_2012

Is there a future for (printed) scientific journals?

Google this question today and you will get 281 million results returned in 0.22 seconds. That is today’s result; tomorrow there may be millions of hits more to consult. Not so long ago, nobody would have understood the phrase to “Google a question”. How long ago was that? The future of scientific literature (in print or overall) has been questioned time and again, but in recent decades it has become an ongoing debate. A document published in the 1960s discussed issues in this context such as “too much and not good enough”, and “too little and too late” (Brown et al. 1967). If we were to discuss the tsunami of publications currently available on the internet, issues like ‘too much’ and ‘not good enough’ would certainly still be on the agenda. However, we are no longer too late’, we rather report, respond, publish, or react too quickly, often even without proper thought. We twitter. This is an odd opening for an editorial of a scientific journal. However, as editors of Lutra, we often wonder why.....