Editor's viewpoint
REVOLUTION IN SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATION
Human knowledge and scientific information have been stored in print-on-paper media for at least 500 years. Paper will be used indefinitely, however, its importance as the conventional print medium has already decreased. The explanation is quite simple: paper production costs, as well as environmental impact caused by paper production are high.
The presentation of scientific information has been improved, and nowadays well established. A scientific journal contains reviews, original papers, preliminary reports, theses, case reports, letters to the Editor, etc. Publishers of conventional print journals are used to the traditional format of an Original Paper that usually contains: title, authors' names and affiliations, abstracts, introduction, material and methods, results, discussion and references.
Today, electronic publishing has been increasingly offered as a compelling and inexpensive alternative to print medium. Thus, scientific information can be disseminated in diskettes, CD-ROMs or on the World Wide Web. Upon accessing the Web, scientists can readily search through masses of documents to find what they want, at any time, from any part of the globe. The on-line publishing has already changed the traditional idea of a journal periodicity, since on-line information can be placed and removed any time.
Storage of information in libraries has also been changed. Today's information is virtual and does not require large facilities to store the originals of a publication. Conversely, the on-line publishing poses a problem, that is, in the future, hardware that can read the present scientific articles retrieved either in hard disk or in CD-ROM will be missing.
Thus, I believe that scientists will feel the need of storing information not only through virtual medium, but also through conventional print-on-paper medium. Therefore, each scientific journal will have to elect one or more libraries to retain the originals of published papers for posterity.
In this sense, The Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins has already made its choice of 10 libraries in which the print-on-paper originals, as well as the electronic originals will be kept. The Libraries of São Paulo State University in Botucatu, Bireme in São Paulo, Excerpta Medica (EMBASE) in the Netherlands and Chemical Abstracts Service in the United States are some of these elected sites.
Also, electronic journals will change the researcher's behavior in regard to dealing with information. From now on, researchers will have to learn how to read information on the microcomputer screen. This innovation, which will not be easily acceptable by the present generation, will certainly be very well accepted by future generations.
Therefore, the abstracts should be well written, objective, and concise. From the abstracts, the members of the scientific community will learn whether they wish to read the full text of the article or not. The introduction should be shortened, while the objectives of the paper should have their special space. The material and methods should be quite concise and mentioned through the bibliographic references. In contrast, the results would be more important, since they would be the main interface between the user and the author. The results should contain self-explanatory color figures, tables, graphs, etc. From the results, the author should be able to draw his conclusions, as well as to evaluate the statistical methodology used. The discussion of the paper should no longer be so important. Conversely, the conclusions would be emphasized. The conclusions should be concise and objective. Therefore, I believe that the future electronic journal will be composed of the following parts: objectives, shortened material and methods, longer results, conclusions and references. This new format will allow the user to draw his conclusions in a shorter time. In addition, regarding the Internet, the user would interact with the author to share information, make comments and give suggestions about the subject of the article being read.
This new attitude will take a few years for scientists to totally adapt. However, the publishers of The Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins have already been working to be hooked up electronically to rest of the world.
In conclusion, I think it is worth emphasizing that as scientific papers will include texts, animated color graphics, voice, sound and music, collaboration and communication among scientists will be dynamic, objective and realistic.
Benedito Barraviera
Editor-in-Chief
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
11 Jan 1999 -
Date of issue
1996
