Science Publishers and Information overload

One of the longest post I ever tried to read!

Amongst bad and good things, the author tells how a scientist today tries to keep up with novelties.

“One would think that in today’s information age, scientists can easily keep up with new discoveries. However, these discoveries are buried in 24,000 journals most of which cannot be accessed by the individual scientist, because his/her institution does not subscribe to them“.

In order to keep current, here below what he has to do:

• Read Tables of contents of fifteen or so favorite journals
• Go through PubMed alerts
• Read mailing-lists digest
• Look at some important web sites, social networks, news wires, etc.
• Listen science podcasts
• etc.

He estimates “that this takes about 12-14h per week just to keep on top of things“.

The rest of the post is mainly complains against STM publishers, peer-reviewed system, etc. who are partly responsible for the information overload.

Who should be in charge of how Scientists organize their workflow?

http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment.php?comment.news.608