If it is true that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come, it is also true that nothing can stop the departure of an idea whose time has gone. We offer an assortment of interesting essays in this issue that examine both good and bad ideas in the firm expectation that intelligent analysis will help the good to flourish and the bad to fizzle out.
To begin with the good, can there be a professor—past, present, or future—who would not like to see a reduction in the number of academic papers published in his field? In “The Glut of Academic Publishing: A Call for a New Culture,” Stanley W. Trimble, Wayne W. Grody, Bill McKelvey, and Mohamed Gad-el-Hak describe the grim facts—how “too much material of too little substance” is being pumped into print (in their case in
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