This document discusses academic publishing and proposes an alternative called "Scientific Polyfoils" which would visualize the network of scholarly articles and their relationships. It argues that academic publishers currently have a monopoly like organized crime and charge excessive prices. Technological and social changes could disrupt this model. The proposed Polyfoils would make an individual article's influences and influences within its field visible, activating the social network of scholars and empowering them against publishers. Diagrams show how Polyfoils would allow readers to see layers of related scholarly works connected to the article.

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Scientific Publication PolyfoilsA
siren call for Creative
Arbitrage profits from exploiting the gap between a product that's both
over- and under-valued. Academic publisher's earn ~40% profit. An 8%
ROI is adequate for most publishers. Arbitrage is all that's in between.
But Schmitt's examples are off. Streaming media precipitated music's
collapse, but companies first lost control of content. They outsourced CD
manufacturing. CD factory workers were, unromantically, the origin of
most new music uploads.
Changing a business model takes technology AND social activity.
Destruction!

3. Whereas CDs, movies, and newspapers suffer online predation,
academic publishers are themselves predatory. They charge
monopoly prices. Natural monopolies occur when new compet-itors
face high initial fixed costs, which bars entry. Journal publishing,
especially electronic, has little cost barrier.
But there's another type of monopoly, organized crime's. When a
gang provides "protection," they set monopoly prices too. Their
method: threaten survival. Academic publishers offer scholars
career protection. It's publish or perish. Scholars contribute free
articles and free quality control (peer review) to exist.
File sharing threatens scholars, too, reducing differentiation.
An exception proves the rule. Physicists publish online, limiting
academic press involvement. Their associations manage peer
review. They achieve independence because their field has unique
status. Government consortiums invest $10 Billion to test a single
cosmological hypothesis. If this is what autonomy demands, there's
little hope for most fields.
But technology AND social activity
change business models.
A Strange Predator

4. Most analyses of organized crime focus on law enforcement. But it
occurs in distinct social ecologies, where disorganized com-
munities lack capacity to act, or the power to. A solution: enhance
social networks, the basis of social capital, then empower
communities to activate them. Ditto scholars vs. publishers.
Academic scholars enter fields through trials - tests and courses,
then publication - on paths set by key concepts, past and current
people, research and documents. Fields vary in terms of path
saliency. But all have documents with key concepts, scholarship,
and research. These represent the field's networked
ecosystem.
Scholars build on what others write. Articles converse with a web of
scientific neighbors, whose article webs overlap. A bibliography can
pay tribute to foundation texts an article shadows.
Scientific Polyfoils visualize an article's community. A reader can
choose to "see through" an article, to an immediate network
of related content. A geometric array lets closer articles appear first.
They can also be "seen through" to look at deeper related layers.
Unlike bridges, article networks are defined by scholar and field. A
social network made visible is activated by scholars.
Vive la Polyfoil!** Oui, c'est féminin

5. 1. cP Article Object
2. Opening
3. Reading view is inside
4. Rotation is 'inside out'
5. General view: sections run in
parallel, vertically
6. Selecting the first layer in
article ecosystem
Using cP Science Polyfoils

6. Further into Science Polyfoils
A scientific field's ecosystem levels
interpenetrate.
Alternating white on
black, black on white,
then white on black,
each level or layer gets
distinguished.
A user can pull layers
through. Each layer's
scaf-folding is a different
color. Clicking on one
highlights that layer and
brings it in view, and
other layer's alphas or
contrast reduce.
With movements of
finger or mouse, the
user magnifies it.

7. Organizing Scholarship with Polyfoils
This is a
schematic
view of a real
article embed-
ded in its
science field
ecosystem.
It is drawn
from the
article's
bibliography,
notes, and
NCBI editor
references on
the site where
originally
posted.
A tree will grow, threading scholars together across a
science field. The grasp of academic publishers will
shatter as scholarship trees mature.

8. Brian Coyle