Re: Is The Feel of Paper Immortal?

From: Jim Till <till_at_UHNRES.UTORONTO.CA>
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 10:19:19 -0500

A clarification: the prediction referred to by Stevan was
made by Richard Smith, the editor of the BMJ (and, I
believe, the chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group?)
not by me. I'll attach an excerpt of the entire paragraph,
so that the context for his prediction may become more
apparent.

My crystal ball is no clearer than that of anyone else,
but perhaps, because the BMJ is *already* freely available,
it's already ahead of many other journals, and it must
consider a somewhat different future - one that hasn't
arrived yet for those other (not-yet-freely-available)
journals? For some of those other journals, such a future
may never arrive - they may die before it does!

Jim Till
University of Toronto

A more complete excerpt:
(see: http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7328/5 )

[rs]> Other changes in the journal are based on the idea of
[rs]> using paper and electronic media to maximum advantage.
[rs]> bmj.com is "the" BMJ in that it contains everything
[rs]> published in the paper version plus much more. It
[rs]> also now has many more readers than the paper BMJ.
[rs]> We print about 110,000 copies of the weekly BMJ, and
[rs]> more than 90,000 circulate in Britain. bmj.com has
[rs]> around 150,000 visitors a week and nearly 400,000 in
[rs]> a month, most of them from outside Britain. The web
[rs]> has advantages of speed, reach, interactivity, and
[rs]> infinite space, but paper has the advantages of
[rs]> readability, portability, and attractiveness. The
[rs]> future is not "paper or electronic" but "paper and
[rs]> electronic."

On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, Stevan Harnad wrote:

> On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, Jim Till wrote:
>
> > http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7328/5
> >
> > [rs]> The web has advantages of speed, reach, interactivity,
> > [rs]> and infinite space, but paper has the advantages of
> > [rs]> readability, portability, and attractiveness. The
> > [rs]> future is not "paper or electronic" but "paper and
> > [rs]> electronic."
>
> Just a slight correction:
>
> The PRESENT is "paper and electronic."

[remainder snipped]
Received on Sun Jan 06 2002 - 17:06:28 GMT

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