Popularization or Population of Science and the Future

Abstract

Science is experiencing a different model for a wider dissemination with the widely accessibility of internet today at the information age and high connectivity. This technological development has changed the daily life of peoples globally and has been mainly appraised with positive effects, but very little, if any, negative ones are being discussed, specifically on fundamental matters. In this article I would like to present the emerging negativities and potential detrimental effects on science and its advances to be made. Popularization and population are two words chosen and used here to describe the way in which dissemination of available and accessible scientific information is being made. The new Open Access model of publication and its apparent dominance in the academic publishing market by commercial companies for publication of scientific papers are passing the threshold point and eroding the quality of science in my view. Scientific societies as the most important groups to the establishment of academic standards and to keep new science discoveries to be checked are increasingly forced to cope with the commercial publication practices in terms of speeding up the reviewing and publishing more and quickly, competing for the publishing market and profit to be made, and most importantly, compromising the academic standards. When profit is the major driving force for the publishers, including scientific societies, quality of science in academic papers is yielded to the financial interest and profit, and the purposes of publishing are not for science and its development as the goal. The role of scientific publication in our society must be checked by relevant administration of the governments and national academies together with the scientific societies so that the quality of academic publication of scientific results in science can be maintained at high confident level to serve the society in a positive manner into the future. Commercial publication is another avenue to allow more scientific results to be published in additional to journals by societies, but the relationship between them must be a quality-based judgement and decision, not a pure business competition for success to rule this market.