On-line working and open access publishing.

If there is a theme to this year's editorial it is dealing with change as the technological, commercial and political climate in which we operate continues to evolve rapidly. This time last year, I was optimistic about replacing our existing, largely e-mail based, procedures for manuscript submission and evaluation with the latest version of a well-known web-based system. This anticipated change to our working practice was expected to bring advantages to authors, referees and to the Journal itself, not least because of its potential to shorten the time taken for evaluation work and for accepted papers to be published. But, for very good reasons, a year on finds us still using our old system; a situation that will probably remain with us for some time yet. The decision to delay implementation was taken after we found that the system fell short of the high standards for ease of use and intuitive navigation that we were hoping for; shortcomings we were reluctant to impose on our authors, referees, editors or office staff. At present, the Journal is working with the originators to develop a more user-friendly interface that will be appreciated by all the users when, finally, we make the transition to on-line working. Another potential change that would hold greater long-term significance for Annals of Botany, and many other science journals, is 'open access' publishing. While not everyone agrees on what should or should not be included in open access publishing, an overarching feature is that there should be universal access to all scientific knowledge. This ideal accords with Article 1 of the UN World Summit on the Information Society that states 'We, the representatives of the peoples of the World, assembled in Geneva. .. .. .. declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' Few would willingly stand against these high-minded sentiments on principle but, when decoded, they mean that access to scientific journals and papers on the web should be payment-free to the reader or to his/her employer. They also mean that the considerable costs …