By providing a highly visible alternative to what they view as an outmoded system of distributing information, the founders hope science itself will be transformed. The two journals are the first of what they envision as a vast electronic library in which no one has to pay dues or seek permission to read, copy or use the collective product of the world’s academic research.
Wonderful news! I am optimistic. I can see that one day this will be the only way knowledge is published, because the older forms will simply go bust, as they should, as did town criers. May the better way prevail.
This is one way of making information on the Net more credible in the Apollonian sense. But note, the Mercurial aspect will not diminish. These peer reviewed items will appear in the search engine along side all the other perspectives, in the pluralistic way the Net has always presented information. The peer acclaimed work will appear along side the despised, the irreverent, the poetic and the pornographic. Does the reader become the arbitrator of truth, or is truth becoming more of a by-product of surfing & skimming?