Will traditional scientific journals follow newspapers into oblivion, asks former BMJ editor

Richard Smith is a former editor of the BMJ and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. He is well-known for provocative editorials. Here is an excerpt from one, published recently in The Scientist:

"Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals, has seen broadly stable revenues (€2,236 million in 2006, €2,370 million in 2010) but growing profits (€683 million in 2006, €847 million in 2010).

Scientific journals remain very profitable. Few industries manage a profit margin of 35.7% (that for Elsevier in 2010), but then few industries are given their raw material—in this case, scientific studies—not only for free, but also in a form that needs minimal processing."

It is nice to see that the current and a former editor of the two most famous British medical journals, The Lancet and BMJ, are now on Twitter:





References:

Reading Into the Future | The Scientist, 2012.
The scientific journal throuh the centuries - a little bit of history from Health Librarian (HL) Wiki http://buff.ly/WZqP2S

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