NEWS

Are STM Publishers Still Needed in the Digital Age?

Karger Publishers, a family-run medical and scientific publishing company, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, has dedicated part of the latest edition of its Karger Gazette to reflecting on this thought-provoking question. In a timely and insightful article, Kent R. Anderson, publisher of Science magazine and founder of the blog The Scholarly Kitchen, discusses the role of medical publishers in the Information Age, putting forth vital arguments that testify not only to their raison d'être but also to their growing importance for science and academia.

Karger Publishers has released its special 125-year anniversary edition of the Karger Gazette as part of the celebrations of its long history as an independent, family-run company based in Switzerland. This latest issue features a timely and well-founded article on the role of the medical publisher in the Information Age by Kent R. Anderson, publisher of Science magazine and past President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. By highlighting some of the less obvious but increasingly relevant roles of medical publishers, Anderson testifies to their growing importance for science and academia in today's world, in which there is more information than ever, time seems to be scarcer, and trusting in what you read is essential.

Science and Research in the 21st Century
Interviews with three world-renowned scientists working in Basel, the seat of Karger’s headquarters, are presented in this Gazette: Susan Gasser, Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute, Michael Hall, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Basel, and Marcel Tanner, Director of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute talk about their careers in biomedical research, important discoveries in their fields, and what advice they would give to aspiring scientists.

To give a historical perspective, in the online edition of the Karger Gazette there is an additional article by Giovanni Fava, Editor-in-Chief of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, in which he sketches the changes and developments in psychiatry since Karger’s founding in 1890 and how these have been reflected by the company’s publications.

The Karger Gazette is available free of charge and can be read online or ordered as a print copy at www.karger.com/gazette.