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RE: Transparency
I honestly do not understand why scientific journals, especially ones funded by professional organizations (like IEEE, SAE, and APS), and others like AAAS (the journal Science) do not provide their content for free online. I know they have to pay the editorial board and the people who review the articles and such, but wait a minute...the whole point of these journals is to facilitate peer review in the first place.
The short answer is they wouldn't be able to publish at all if they did not charge a subscription. For example, if you look at pg 11 of the APS 2005 Annual Report (8.7 mb pdf), you'll see the operating revenue and expenses broken out by activity. You'll note that while publishing is profitable, there would be no way for the other revenue streams to compensate for the loss of subscription fees. In fact, the subscription revenue helps support most of the other activities, with the notable exception of the scientific meetings. But, the APS is a non-profit organization, and they keep costs relatively low, as evidenced by PROLA (currently containing all of the articles from 1893-2003) which costs only $115 / year to subscribe to. Imagine, complete access back to 1893 for a pittance. There are for-profit scientific publishers out there whose subscription rates are absolutely outrageous (I won't name names), but they're out there to make a buck.
but I think there should be a place for EVERYTHING to be seen--like OmniNerd. The latest quack "free energy" paper, or ones that look like they were written in crayon by a 2nd grader would be scored appropriately by members of the organization with feedback to the author and observations to other readers.
If you ever spend time in a physics department, you'll see some pretty interesting (in the pejorative sense) papers. My first year in grad school, several of my friends and I were subjected to a guy trying to prove that force equals energy. (He didn't appreciate it when I pointed out that his mathematics were faulty due to treating division as if it were associative, when it is not. If it were then (1/2)/4 = 1/(2/4).) There was also spring theory, as an alternative to string theory. (I won't go into details, too much work, not enough sleep.)
As far as the public style of peer review goes, Nature already tried that, and the results were pretty abysmal. They pulled it "because few authors participated and many of the online comments were nothing more than nice work," despite the consistently high number of page views per week (~5600).
If you want to access a good mix of scientific articles, look at the pre-print archive. The archive contains a tremendous amount of material in various states of polish, so it isn't as nice to work with as the journals, but it is free. They've also implemented a limited review system for articles which seems in line with what you were suggesting.
Government funded organizations have no excuse here either...oops, which includes virtually all major universities, the NAS (National Academy of Sciences), etc
To a large extent, I agree with you. As far as university research goes, the gov't views it as publicly accessible if it is submitted to a peer reviewed journal. This does not help out the poor schleb who can't afford to shell out $20 - $50 dollars for a copy of an article, though. In some respects, that is why the pre-print archive developed.
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Transparency
I honestly do not understand why scientific journals, especially ones funded by professional organizations (like IEEE, SAE, and APS), and others like AAAS (the journal Science) do not provide their content for free online. I know they have to pay the editorial board and the people who review the articles and such, but wait a minute...the whole point of these journals is to facilitate peer review in the first place.
I agree the editorial review board raises the bar and seperate the "wheat from the chaff" so scientists only spend their time on the best papers, but I think there should be a place for EVERYTHING to be seen--like OmniNerd. The latest quack "free energy" paper, or ones that look like they were written in crayon by a 2nd grader would be scored appropriately by members of the organization with feedback to the author and observations to other readers. Say a paper came in that was brilliant, but unpolished--lots of grammar and spelling errors, but on sound technical grounds. That would never make it in Nature, but this could be a diamond in the rough that other scientists could help polish up and mentor the poor guy/girl who wrote it.
So if members are paying their fees to be members and get the subscription, which pays for the editorial board and overhead, as well as the physical printing process, why can't they open their journals to the public in an electronic format? Government funded organizations have no excuse here either...oops, which includes virtually all major universities, the NAS (National Academy of Sciences), etc. I'm trying to read the NAS publication Rising Above the Gathering Storm, about the decline in US science and technology leadership and education right now. (By the way, you can download it or read it online, but it's kind of a pain). They cite dwindling technical literacy in the US as a major concern. I admit that I doubt people will jump online and download the whole IEEE Spectrum catalog if they openned it up, but at least it would be there.
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