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Printing for history

Pictures of spreads from New Scientist magazine

Martin Rees expresses a reluctance to "go to the wall to defend print journals" (23 November, p 27). For him, the electronic preprint archives, among other things, render science more "democratic", since new ideas aren't quickly squelched by all those tired old editors of the mainstream print journals.

But what would be lost if print journals disappeared is any sense of historical progression in science. E-prints might capture an audience for a time, but without a presence in the real archive - print journals - theirs would be but a fleeting popularity, always vulnerable to the next scientific fad to come along. To make matters worse, e-print archives may not be secure. When stored on hard drives they are prone to physical decay, and guidelines for their ownership and maintenance are unclear.

By contrast, print journals archives have stood the test of time in academic libraries the world over. ...

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