Any commercial interests that may be related to scientific publications concern the commercialization of products and processes, rather than the sale of periodicals or research reports. From the individual researcher's point of view, the main goal of publishing is to achieve recognition within the scientific community, in addition to idealistic objectives such as increasing the overall body of knowledge and making research results available to colleagues for critical assessment. Thus, the interests of the user and those of the author are often identical. Scientists are concern ed with obtaining the easiest possible access to the work of fellow researchers and the maximum dissemination of their own works. To a large extent, scientific publishing is a closed system.
Researchers write for other researchers.
The overwhelming majority of the articles in scientific journals are published by the staff of research and educational institutions, as part of their ordinary obligations to their employer. Scientific periodicals are purchased by the institutions employing the authors of the papers in these s ame periodicals. Research and educational institutions are both producers and purchasers of the same published material, and through their subscriptions, for which they pay more than individuals, pay publishers to act as an intermediary in a system for the exchange of scientific information. Scientific publishing is a publicly funded system for the dissemination of scientific information, in which publishers play the role of intermediary, and authors normally have no royalty interests. Quality assurance is carried out by referees who come from our own institutions that are both producers and purchasers of the published material.