What, exactly, is the point of Elsevier?

Duncan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:26:07 -0400

I've been waiting for this special issue on semantic biomedical mashups for a while now. The latest scheduled production date is September 2008, which makes it exactly one whole year from Call for papers to publication. Damn thats quick, faster than a speeding glacier! Those hot hot research results must be popping of the printing press at an alarming rate!

Which makes me wonder, what, exactly is the point of Elsevier? Why does it take them so long to publish? Some, in the Open-Access publishing community have suggested this kind of publishing is a slow and expensive way to assign copyright to information that should be in the public domain, while lining shareholders pockets. As a young scientist, I'm completey baffled as to why it should take this long to shuffle a few emails and Word documents around the internet in order to publish.

Anyway, enough of the griping. Every now and then, a pre-print pops up in the Journal of Biomedical informatics feed from PubMed. So while you're waiting for Elsevier, you can read one of the first papers in the special issue below.

Carole Goble and Robert Stevens (year unknown) State of the nation in data integration for bioinformatics, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, officially published sometime before the heat-death of the Universe (but don't hold your breath). DOI:10.1016/j.jbi.2008.01.008, pubmed.gov/18358788

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Semantic Biomedical Mashups finally published

What, exactly, is the point of Elsevier?