F1000Research Managing Director Rebecca Lawrence will answer questions from Redditors about new publishing models. Are journals disappearing? Discuss, and ask Rebecca anything!

Direct link:http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2jvpsj/science_ama_series_im_rebecca_lawrence_managing/

Journals provide an outdated way for publishers to justify their role by enabling them to more easily compete for papers. In the digital world, science should be rapidly and openly shared, and the broader research community should openly discuss and debate the merits of the work (through thorough and invited – but open – peer review, as well as commenting). As most researchers search PubMed/Google Scholar etc to discover new published findings, the artificial boundaries created by journals should be meaningless, except to the publisher. They are propagated by (and in themselves, propagate) the Impact Factor, and provide inappropriate and misleading metadata that is projected onto the published article, which is then used to judge a researcher’s overall output, and ultimately their career.

The growth of article-level metrics, preprint servers, megajournals, and peer review services that are independent of journals, have all been important steps away from the journal. However, to fully extricate ourselves from the problems that journals bring, we need to be bold and change the way we publish. Please share your thoughts about the future of scientific publishing, and Rebecca will be happy to share what F1000Research is doing to prepare for a world without journals.

Keep an eye on Reddit Science for this one. You will be able to start asking questions a few hours before the AMA starts.