When I first found out about the web, early 90's, and it was "obvious" that the role of the web was to expand scientific publishing. I expected that everybody would publish latex files (raw source, not PDFs) in computationally accessible formats, with raw data in easily parseable, semantic forms.
That didn't really happen as expected. In my own chosen field (biology) it happened much more slowly than I hoped- physics (with arxiv) was far better. However, just getting PDFs on biorxiv is only a small part of the long game. I did not appreciate the huge importance placed on publishing in high-profile journals has on one's career trajectory and how large a role that would play in slowing the transition to free publication and post-publication review.
The long game is to enable the vast existing resources, and the new resources, to be parsed semantically by artificial intelligence algorithms. We've already passed the point where individuals can understand the full literature in their chosen field and so eventually we will need AI just to make progress.
That didn't really happen as expected. In my own chosen field (biology) it happened much more slowly than I hoped- physics (with arxiv) was far better. However, just getting PDFs on biorxiv is only a small part of the long game. I did not appreciate the huge importance placed on publishing in high-profile journals has on one's career trajectory and how large a role that would play in slowing the transition to free publication and post-publication review.
The long game is to enable the vast existing resources, and the new resources, to be parsed semantically by artificial intelligence algorithms. We've already passed the point where individuals can understand the full literature in their chosen field and so eventually we will need AI just to make progress.