SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION MUST FLOURISH!

JUST IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION……. How would we learn about medical advances? How would we learn about threats to the environment, such as global warming? How would we learn about discoveries in deep space or in high energy physics? How would we be able to make rational economic and political decisions? The whole emphasis these days is on evidence-based policy-making – where else would we get that evidence from?

CONSIDER….. Tea spoons…… …or the study that showed that cities which had local radio stations that regularly broadcast blues music had a higher suicide rate than those that did not

HERE ARE JUST A FEW MORE OF THE KEY PAPERS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED….. T.J. Pennings, College Mathematics Journal, 2003, 34, Do dogs know calculus? P. Davies, L. Lee, A. Fox and E. Fox, Archives of Diseases in Childhood, 2004, 89, Could nursery rhymes cause violent behaviour? C.M. Fisher, Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 1999, 26, Phantom erection after amputation of penis G. Schmidt and U. Clement, Archives of Sexual behaviour, 1990, 19, Does peace prevent homosexuality?

MORE….. S. Shim and J. Maggs, Psychology and Marketing, 2005, 22, A cognitive and behavioural hierarchical decision-making model of college students alcohol consumption, which showed that if a student goes to a bar intending to drink, then this is correlated with high alcohol consumption T. Hofer, H. Przymbel and S. Verleger, Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, 2004, 18, New evidence for the theory of the stork showed that birth rates outside hospitals was correlated with the size of the local stork population W. Strahle, M. Duffy and R.L. Day, Journal of consumer satisfaction, dissatisfaction and complaining behaviour, 1989, 2 The effect of lifestyle, sex roles and demographics on the complaining behaviour of New Zealand women

WHY DO YOU NEED TO KEEP SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION IN? Without it, excellent research such as that described will never be noticed Politicians will do what they want without having an informed debate about their policies Academics will have no excuse to attend conferences in Hawaii, the Caribbean or even Milton Keynes EDINA would lose most of its client base because without scholarly communication, there is no need for academic institutions

I REST MY CASE!