Re: Theropod Postcranial Isolation

[Mike Taylor <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>]

> Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 08:17:19 -0600
> From: "Jerry D. Harris" <jharris@dixie.edu>
> 
>     What I do not agree with you on is the (probably unintentional)
> blaming on the researchers and authors of papers for not using
> figures.  Don't blame us -- most of us would really LOVE to include
> more figures (as well as color figures, etc.).  Blame instead the
> publishers that impose page limits and other restrictions for the
> sake of cost.

This is a problem, for sure.  The obvious solution is electronic
publishing, but that suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem that
no-one is keen to commit their monographs to, say, _Palaeontologica
Electronica_ until that journal is highly respected.  And the journal
will never be highly respected until people start publishing their
monographs there.

We can hope that Gomani's Malawian sauropod monograph
        http://palaeo-electronica.org/2005_1/gomani27/gomani27.pdf
will go some way towards breaking that cycle.  It's pretty lavishly
illustrated, anyway.

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Not raw -- cooked" -- Monty Python's Flying Circus.