In general, I find publishers quite annoying. How can somebody freely express their ideas, if publishers impose so many rules regarding the number of words, number of pages, style, content, etc….? The rigid structure only inhibits creativity. Also, a lot of politics is involved in order to publish with many of the publishers.
As I have been saying on previous blogs, creativity loves flexibility. We certainly do not see flexibility in our current peer-reviewed publications. However, the good news is that we are seeing an explosion of new forums for publishing such blogs, social media etc. I applaud this change. The next step is to allow a filter to be in place for scientific literature so that we can read quality publications. New ventures such as one I recently joined, called Vengeo, look very promising.
Adolfo Cotter, MD
Sep 03/2010