Priority for discoveries: challenges of electronic publication to research norms, practices and values

The paper examines how the shift to an infrastructure of electronic publication, communication and collaboration may affect norms, conventions, institutions, and practices governing research in science and engineering. Using the attribution of priority for results as a case in point, it argues that research in science and engineering, and society at large, would be best served by a test of any new norms, conventions, institutions, and practices that would evaluate how well they serve and promote the values, ends and purpose that gave rise to their traditional counterparts in the first place.