Communications of the ACM
An Open Access Partnership
Searching for scholarly literature became far easier with search engines like Google or Google Scholar. And while it is far easier now to find targeted information, the quality of the results is less assured.
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Anonymous
The reason more authors, reviewers, and editorial boards are not quitting their respective roles with established journals is not because they feel like they're getting a great deal and tremendous value from their relationships with the journals. Authors, reviewers, and editorial boards stay primarily because tenure and promotion decisions are completely intertwined with traditional modes of publication. As soon as tenure and promotion policies catch up with the modern technical realities of disseminating scholarly work, the en masse exodus you are looking for will occur.
Don't confuse faculty being over the barrel on issues of tenure and promotion with satisfaction with the current state of scholarly publishing. They stay because they have no choice if they want to advance in their careers. For now.
David Wiley, PhD
Brigham Young University
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