Publishing science - Past, present and the future

Despite the great importance of publications for individual careers as well as for the prestige of research centres and universities, there seems to be little discussion of this in agricultural scientific journals - as opposed to some other disciplines in which lively debates are held on the pros and cons of the present 'publish or perish' culture. This is somewhat surprising, as scientific careers are increasingly dependent on what one has written and where it is published. Things used to be different, and I will briefly sketch some historical developments and current trends and then consider the future of scientific publishing. The information is slightly skewed towards publishing in soil science, as this is my own discipline, but similar developments have undoubtedly occurred in others