An analysis of the present system of scientific publishing: what's wrong and where to go from here.

The internet has produced an unprecedented opportunity to provide free and unhindered access to the wealth of scientific information, the volume of which continues to grow at a furious pace. The current balkanised system of individual journals limits possibilities for powerful search tools and for an integrated repository of the whole body of scientific literature. This paper reviews the current publishing environment, commenting on its strong and weak points (for example peer review, which is both a strength and a weakness). It attempts to find a viable solution to the current issues that plague STM (scientific, technical, and medical) publishing in the introduction of a centralised repository of scientific literature. Related issues such as the question of long term archiving and the justified fears of STM publishers of becoming obsolete are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]