Paradigm change in scientific communication

The current pattern of scholarly publishing goes through times of dramatic changes. The model of open archives is presently being developed in several central countries. The aim of this initiative is to facilitate the efficient dissemination of scholarly information, building global virtual archives of scientific literature, with free and irrestricted access through Web servers. The roots of this remarkable improvement lie so much on technological developments in computer science and telecommunications, as well as on the need to change the traditional scientific communication model. The delay in transferring research results and the ever increasing cost of scholarly journals is perceived as an obstacle in the effective dissemination of scientific results, and, therefore, to the progress of science. Three initiatives are sketched, being implemented at present in the USA, who have pioneered this new model from the first e-print archive in Los Alamos National Laboratory, in 1991.Publicad