PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Publish or Perish

As I sit curled up in front of the fire with the current print issue of Plant Physiology, I am thinking about publishing not from the point of view of the individual investigator, but from the point of view of a publisher.

There are many issues facing ASPB as the publishing world moves more and more toward electronic delivery of its journals. As a scholarly, not-for-profit publisher, the Society is joining together with other like-minded organizations such as the Genetics Society of America and Cold Spring Harbor Press in a new initiative to reaffirm our commitment to innovative and independent publishing practices and to wide dissemination of the information contained in our journals. Originally drafted by the American Physiological Society, The Endocrine Society, and the New England Journal of Medicine, the “DC Principles” has been signed by ASPB and more than 45 other not-for-profit publishers representing 109 journals. The document is scheduled for release in March.

Most of the signatories have been working for several years with Stanford University’s HighWire Press to transform traditional print journals into vibrant, online journals. These publishers have invested millions of dollars in online technology and at the same time have led the charge to make the information in their journals freely available to those who cannot pay for it. Through these not-for-profit publishers, the scientific community and the public have easy online access to nearly 700,000 free full-text articles and the abstracts of over 14 million articles in more than 4,500 Medline journals.

ASPB has been publishing online since 1998, and the full text of The Plant Cell, back to volume 1 (1989), is freely available as searchable PDFs in the journal’s archive at www.plantcell.org (as well as the National Library of Medicine’s PubMedCentral). Plant Physiology is online back to 1993 (www.plantphysiol.org) and will soon be digitized back to volume 1 (1926). Its archive will also be free to anyone with Internet access.
The key to our ongoing success as publishers, of course, will be to continue to publish the best papers in plant biology and to keep our journals at the cutting edge with respect not only to content, but also to content delivery.

Although electronic conferences are now possible, such a gathering of electrons cannot replace the excitement of being able to hear, see, and discuss the best plant science has to offer at our annual meeting. I hope to see many of you at Plant Biology 2004, being held this year from July 24 through July 28 at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort & Convention Center, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Your abstract is due by March 1 if you would like to have it considered for an oral presentation. The Program Committee will convene the weekend of March 5 to sort through the abstracts received and set up the minisymposia.

Mary Lou Guerinot
guerinot@dartmouth.edu