VPIEJ-L Discussion Archives
July 1994
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 1994 08:41:11 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
From: lrg96@acs.org (Lorrin Garson)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 94 15:49:33 EDT
Stevan,
Re below, by all means post to a wide list of interested parties. I'd
sincerely love to discover someone/somehow to reduce journal production
costs so that a majority of our expenses were printing/paper-distribution.
Regards, Lorrin
Publications Division, American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C.
E-mail: lrg96@acs.org Phone: (202) 872-4541 FAX (202) 872-4389
> From: lrg96@acs.org (Lorrin Garson)
> Date: Mon, 27 Jun 94 19:51:40 EDT
>
> Regarding the phrase "(which I estimate to be less than 25% of paper-page
> costs, contrary to the 75% figure that appears in most current publishers'
> estimates)" from your proposal below, do you mean that printing costs are 75%
> of the total publishing costs? If so, I can assure you this is certainly
> incorrect in scientific/technical publishing. Our experience at the American
> Chemical Society is that printing and paper costs are about 15% of total
> manufacturing costs and the "first copy", or prepress costs are about 85% of
> the total. Could you clarify what you mean? I'd be very interested on what
> basis you make your financial estimates.
>
> Lorrin R. Garson
Dear Lorrin,
Yes, in fact, the data you have often presented were among the ones I
had in mind when I challenged the 75% figure (though many other
publishers have come up with figures similar to yours 70-85%).
I challenge it on two bases, and they are these:
(1) The calculation according to which the "per-page" savings would be
only 25%, leaving 75% still to be paid for is based on how much
electronic processing will save in PAPER publication. The entire
superstructure is set up to hurtle headlong toward print on paper, so
if you recalculate that budget and leave out the print-run and a few
other things, you find you're left with 75% of the original expenses.
Solution? Exorcise everything having to do with going into paper, from
the bottom up. Budget an electronic-ONLY journal, and the per-page cost
will come out much, much lower (if anything, my 25% is an
OVER-estimate).
To put it another way: Your way of doing the figures is rather like
challenging the advantages of automobiles by calculating how much
they would save on horse-feed.
(2) But, if that is not enough, I also speak from experience: I edit
both a paper and an electronic journal. Although the two are not
entirely comparable, and the paper one undeniably still has a much
larger submission rate and annual page count, the true costs of the
electronic one are an order of magnitude lower even making allowances for
this. And this is not because anyone is working for free, or because
the Net is giving the journal a free ride (it gives -- as I delight in
showing audiences in (numerical) figures -- an incomparably bigger free
ride to porno-graphics, flaming, and trivial pursuit, and THAT is much
riper for being put onto a trade model than esoteric scholarly
publication, the flea on the tail of the dog, which I believe we would
all benefit from granting a free ride on the airwaves in perpetuum).
If we charged PSYCOLOQUY's readership (now estimated at 40,000) their
share of the true costs, they would have to pay 25 cents per year (down
from 50% a couple of years ago, as the readership grew and costs
actually shrank; and thanks in part also to centralized subscriber-list
handling at EARN, much of it automatized, as well as to developments
such as gopher and world-wide-web, which are rapidly replacing the
subscriber model by the browser model altogether in electronic publication).
PSYCOLOQUY is subsidized by the APA, which is also a large psychology
paper publisher. I don't know what proportion of the APA's or ACS's
publications are esoteric: I am NOT speaking about publications on
which the author expects to make money from the sale of his text. But
for that no-market portion of the literature, re-do your figures with
the endpoint being a URL file in WWW for all those published articles.
Reckon only the true costs of implementing peer review, processing
manuscripts (electronically), editing, copy-editing, proof-reading,
etc., and then finally electronic archiving and maintenance. I predict
that you will be surprised by the outcome; but this cannot be reckoned
by striking a few items from the ledger based on how you do things
presently.
Best wishes, Stevan
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad
Editor, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, PSYCOLOQUY
Cognitive Science Laboratory
Princeton University
221 Nassau Street
Princeton NJ 08544-2093
> Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 16:28:49 +0100
> From: "Paul F. Burton" <paul@dis.strath.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
>
> A note to thank you for the notice of your "subversive proposal", but why
> be subversive about it? I've suggested at two conferences this year that
> universities should take back the electronic publication of work done by
> their staff (most of it research carried out with public funds), though I
> have not been as direct as your proposal :-). My personal view is that
> commercial publishers are running scared of electronic publishing, which is
> why they seem to be involved in so many projects.
>
> It seems to me that this is an idea whose time has just arrived. Do you
> think that the Follett Report proposals could include a feasibility study
> of this? I'd be interested in discussing the idea further with you, if you
> have time.
>
> BTW, I seem to have two addresses for you (Southampton and Princeton) so
> I'm sending this to both, as I'd value your comments.
Dear Paul,
It is indeed a subversive proposal, and here's why: Many of us already
share the DESIRE for electronic publication in place of paper; the
question is, How to get there from here? Life is short. The subversion
is in not trying to do it directly, by taking on the all-powerful paper
flotilla head-on. Forget about electronic publishing. Leave the
"publishing" to them. Simply archive your PREprints (on which you have
not ceded copyright to anyone) in a public ftp archive. Let EVERYONE
(or a critical mass) do that. And then nature will take its course.
(Everyone will, quite naturally, swap the reprint for the preprint at
the moment of acceptance for publication, and before paper publishers
can mobilize to do anything about it, the battle will be lost, and they
will be faced with an ultimatum: either re-tool NOW, so that you
recover your real costs and a fair return by some means other than
interposing a price-tag between [esoteric, no-market] papers and their
intended readership, or others will step in and do it instead of you.)
This IS subversive. Direct appeals (whether to authors or to
publishers) to "publish electronically" are not subversive; they have
simply proven hopelessly slow. And at this rate (esoteric) paper
publishers will be able to successfully prolong the status quo for well
into the forseeable future -- to the eternal disadvantage of learned
inquiry itself, which is the one that has been suffering most from this
absurd Faustian bargain for the centuries that paper was the esoteric
author's only existing expedient for PUBLICation at all.
Paper publishers, by the way, are, quite understandably, looking for
much less radical solutions. These compromises are mostly in the
category of "hybrid" publication (paper and electronic), and they share
the fatal flaw of (esoteric -- remember, I am speaking only of
esoteric, non-trade, no-market) paper publication: requiring a price for
admission to a show that has virtually no audience, yet is essential
to us all!
I have no animus against paper publishers. It's natural for them to do
whatever they can to preserve the status quo, or something close to
it. But necessity is the mother of invention, and my subversive
proposal would awaken their creative survival skills. And if they wish
to survive (in esoteric publication -- I cannot repeat this often
enough: what I am proposing is NOT applicable to literature that
actually has a market, one in which the author really has hopes of
selling his words, and a market is interested in buying them, for there
there is no Faustian pact; it is in the interests of BOTH parties,
author and publisher, to charge admission at the door -- if, as I say,
publishers wish to survive in ESOTERIC publication, they will have to
change from a trade to a subsidy model for recovering the substantially
lower true costs of electronic-ONLY publication).
My claim that the true per-page cost of electronic publication will be
25% of current per-page paper costs rather than the 75% that has been quoted
over and over, has been challenged (by Lorrin Garson of the American
Chemical Society) and I have attempted to support my estimate above.
We can discuss this any time (we ARE doing so right now). I'm at
Princeton till end of August, then at Southampton. Both email addresses
will continue to reach me.
Stevan Harnad
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 09:19:28 EDT
Reply-To: Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ere.umontreal.ca>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ere.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
In-Reply-To: <9407010951.AA07685@clarity.Princeton.EDU> from "Stevan Harnad"
at Jul 1, 94 05:51:45 am
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> (1) The calculation according to which the "per-page" savings would be
> only 25%, leaving 75% still to be paid for is based on how much
> electronic processing will save in PAPER publication. The entire
> superstructure is set up to hurtle headlong toward print on paper, so
> if you recalculate that budget and leave out the print-run and a few
> other things, you find you're left with 75% of the original expenses.
> Solution? Exorcise everything having to do with going into paper, from
> the bottom up. Budget an electronic-ONLY journal, and the per-page cost
> will come out much, much lower (if anything, my 25% is an
> OVER-estimate).
While I fully agree with Stevan Harnad's intention, I must differ a little
on the question of how to get there.
Stevan is quite right in saying that the entire superstructure
is set up to hurtle headlong toward print on paper. He suggests
we should 'exorcise" everything having to do with going into paper.
In inciting us to do this thought experiment, Stevan achieves an
important result which is to give us a way to free ourselves from
frames of reference that have been present for so long that they
have become completely naturalized. To see beyond those and to
think "autrement", in a different manner is truly the fundamental
stake.
This said, this is not the only stake. Another problem is to find the
way to reach the vision through the contingent, material, historical,
social, concrete (the choice of the right adjective is anyone's choice)
situation in which we are located now.
Right now, the research system works in an extremely complex manner where
pecking orders, legitimacy, memory building through proper archiving
and bibliographic efforts and even communication :-) takes place.
This is the given and we must start from there while, simultaneously
conjuring up the right vision for the future. In short we must simultaneously
have the right vision of the present and the right vision of the future to
have a chance to chart the right course between now and the future.
The word "right" occurs three times in this sentence and it points to
the fundamental difficulty of the task. In fact it is daunting, but
it should not discourage us.
Personally, my answer to the first right is: look at the best literature on
the history and sociology of research to see how it has been built and
how it works. here the fundamental references are the works from the
Merton school, including Diana Crane's study of invisible colleges and
its quantified extensions through Derek Price's works and the ISI
people (Henry Small's work on clusters is important here, for example).
More recently, social constructivists, ethnomethodologists and other
approaches (such as Bourdieu's workk) have enriched our vision of the
present and allow us to understand that the research system is an
immensely complex juggernaut that will not be modified easily.
As for the second "right", I believe this is where Stevan's ability to
articulate a future for academic publishing of research comes into
its own. He has a great ability to see beyond our normal horizons
and we should heed his voice as he recounts what he has seen. But then
comes the third, most important question: how to get there?
Good old Hegel has taugh us that the new could come out of the old
only if it incorporated enough of the old itself to allow its very
emergence. In other words, moving to the future will require incorporating
some of th eold, and in the case of e-publishing, this means incorporating
some role for paper.
I know that by saying this, I will provoke my impatient friends who
would like to move on directly to the future. But let me remind them
that human beings hopefully will remain part of the future equation,
for, if this is not the case, we will end up in utopia, not in reality.
Utopia has its functions, but they have to be delineated carefully
whe it comes to implementing policies or strategies.
Human beings will have to read for a long time and the act of reading
is not uniform. One of the pitfalls of print is precisely that it has
taught us to treat all information as if it was read in a uniform manner
by providing us with a "maximalist" solution. Definition of print on paper
is generally excellent so that information can be studied, mulled over,
commented upon and so on. However, we do not always want to engage into
reading in this fashion. Browsing, getting a feel for, looking for
specific tidbits of information are some of the many ways in which
we may wish to engage ourselves with regard to information.
With the advent of digitized information and its default materialization
as screen display, we have become aware that the default presentation
was not always the best for all we wanted to do, particularly studying.
As a result, we transfer the digitized information to paper to do this.
On the other hand, to search for information, for easy quoting, and a for
large number of tasks, we keep the infotion in its digital form and
we materialize it in an ephemereal, non-material fashion (if materializing
in a non-material manner makes any sense at all :-). But one basic fact
remains: for the moment, the research system cannot avoid using paper
on some occasions and denying this deprives electronic publishing of
a very basic foundation that will allow it to take off in a fruitful
manner.
As a result, and to go back to the initial question, it is probably better
to calculate the cost as indicated above by Lorrin Garson. In effect, let
us take the worst possible case and see what we can do with it.
The question I would like to raise with regard to academic publishing is the
following. Let us look at the macro picture, independently of countries
and the like. let us look at the whole world system of research publication
and let us define two categories of financing to see how thay fit.
On the one hand, let us call "public money" all sources of financing that
come out of governmental, institutional sources, including foundations
and even private donations. Let us call "private money", money coming out
of the pocket of individuals who actually buy learned journals. I do mean
individuals exclusively.
In the production of learned journals, even without calculating of producing
the research results themselves, public money is always involved, either
implicitly or explicitly. Journals receive support from a variety of sources,
be they those of a university, a department, a faculty, a professional
association, a governmental agency, a foundation, a gift converted into
endowment, etc. Faculty members that take care of journals may receive
help in kind (secretarial, telephone use, whatever) and my have their teaching
load reduced (thus forcing the hiring of another professor or teaching
assistant). Etc. etc... All this is well known and it would be interesting
to have statistical figures about this situation.
But public money is also involved at the other end of the cycle. Libraries
that buy journals, do it with institutional funds that eith come from
the private revenues of a private university, for example, or the grants
givent by a government to a public university (supplemented by the tuition
fees of students).
What would be interesting to look at is the the part of this hidden public
money in the revenues of learned journals. This becomes all the more
interesting that libraries generally pay a much higher subscription rate
than individuals, so that, even though they may a minority in the number
of subscribers, they may still represent an important fraction of the
revenues for a learned journal. If journal editors were kind enough
to supply me with some figures in this regard, i would be delighted to
summarize the results for the net.
Now, going back to the economics of printed journals: what has to be
taken into consideration is everything beyond copy editing, including
postage to mail the issues out, of course (this is an important source
of expense for journals, and it shows in the fact that subscription
rates vary with country of destination).
If the cost of everything beyond copy editing is greater than the revenues
from individuals, this means that moving to electronic publishing would
allow putting all the published results of the research system at the
disposal of the whole world FREELY.
Why don't we do it?
For a number of reasons that are the very points on which we must
work to map out a viable strategy aiming at changing the situation.
1. The treatment of learned journals as commodities is deeply embedded
within institutions and mentalities to the point that granting agencies
use sale figures as legitimate criteria to evaluate whether they support
a given journal or not.
2. The economic analysis I have provided, based as it is on a concept
of public money that is not usually present in accounting practices,
makes sense only if producers of journals and archivers of journals
work hand in hand. In other words, this economic analysis makes sense
if and only if publishers (whatever their nstitutional nature) and
librarians work hand in hand, which is not the case at present.
Yet ARL and AAUP do have a common meeting each year, thus showing
that they have overlapping concerns. The advent of digitized information
will hasten this convergence, as it does in other quarters of activity.
3. Journal editors and publishers are often loath to relinquish detailed,
standardized budgetary figures as these might lead to uncomfortable
comparisons having to do with the local efficiency of a given operation.
However, granting agencies do have figures on large enough a scale
to provide for some statistical support or rebuttal of what is advanced here.
So I call upon them to do this work which, incidentally, can be done
without releasing particular names of journals.
This analysis, if correct, would show that e-publishing may well be already
viable, even with the worst-case scenario of savings limited to 25% of
production and distribution costs. Even finding that this argument is
not correct would be interesting in itself, even though it would force
me to go back to the drawing board. :-) But such is life...
Do send the figures you know or the bibliographic references that would
provide interesting figures in this regard and I will summarize and
synthesize for the whole list.
> To put it another way: Your way of doing the figures is rather like
> challenging the advantages of automobiles by calculating how much
> they would save on horse-feed.
The analogy is amusing, but not quite accurate as, I have pointed out
above, we cannot yet dispense with paper. Electornic publishing is,
in part, delegating printing (where needed) to the reader.
>
> (2) But, if that is not enough, I also speak from experience: I edit
> both a paper and an electronic journal. Although the two are not
> entirely comparable, and the paper one undeniably still has a much
> larger submission rate and annual page count, the true costs of the
> electronic one are an order of magnitude lower even making allowances for
> this. And this is not because anyone is working for free, or because
> the Net is giving the journal a free ride (it gives -- as I delight in
> showing audiences in (numerical) figures -- an incomparably bigger free
> ride to porno-graphics, flaming, and trivial pursuit, and THAT is much
> riper for being put onto a trade model than esoteric scholarly
> publication, the flea on the tail of the dog, which I believe we would
> all benefit from granting a free ride on the airwaves in perpetuum).
>
Stevan raises another issue here, one that has to do with the future
economic structure of the net. The Minitel model may be useful here.
Let porn circulate at high cost through services that will bill their
users accordingly. Let the research results that are published circulate
freely. This is important for another reason: for the first time in the
history of humanity, poor countries would have as good an access to
academic publications as rich countries and they could also promote
their own work on a wider scale, thus helping make their own publishing
centers climb up the pecking order scale in relationship with the
intrinsic intellectual value of the authors they print, rather than
according to their economic clout. This is after all part of the secret of the
prestigious journals of the large private publishing houses in Holland and
elsewhere. Have a good marketing arm, buy up a prestigious editorial
board in one way or another, show yourself as being extremely selective
in your authors and you can't miss. Except that, nowadays, libraries
know how much they pay for subscriptions to those journals...
> PSYCOLOQUY is subsidized by the APA, which is also a large psychology
> paper publisher. I don't know what proportion of the APA's or ACS's
> publications are esoteric: I am NOT speaking about publications on
> which the author expects to make money from the sale of his text. But
> for that no-market portion of the literature, re-do your figures with
> the endpoint being a URL file in WWW for all those published articles.
> Reckon only the true costs of implementing peer review, processing
> manuscripts (electronically), editing, copy-editing, proof-reading,
> etc., and then finally electronic archiving and maintenance. I predict
> that you will be surprised by the outcome; but this cannot be reckoned
> by striking a few items from the ledger based on how you do things
> presently.
This is something where we also need hard figures. Any volunteer?
Stevan's question is crucial.
>
> > From: "Paul F. Burton" <paul@dis.strath.ac.uk>
> > Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
> >
> > A note to thank you for the notice of your "subversive proposal", but why
> > be subversive about it? I've suggested at two conferences this year that
> > universities should take back the electronic publication of work done by
> > their staff (most of it research carried out with public funds), though I
> > have not been as direct as your proposal :-). My personal view is that
> > commercial publishers are running scared of electronic publishing, which is
> > why they seem to be involved in so many projects.
I agree with Paul Burton's basic proposal that research centers (including
universities, of course) should take back the elctronic publication
of work done (but not only by their staff, as this does not enhance
legitimacy, quite the contrary). In fact, this is where libraries of
the future have work to do. They could say: before we archive research results,
we will have them peer-reviewed. Archiving, of course, means placing a pointer
to a file somewhere. The library does not have to store the file locally,
even though it may choose to do so for reasons having to do with bandwidth.
Placing a legitimized (and legitimizing) pointer to a file and having it
retrievable through a variety of search engines (such as a library-supervised
WAIS system) is tantamount to placing an official seal of approval of some
piece of research and this is what being published has also meant for quite
some time now. I am with you, Paul, but extend the modal a little bit.
> >
> > It seems to me that this is an idea whose time has just arrived. Do you
> > think that the Follett Report proposals could include a feasibility study
> > of this? I'd be interested in discussing the idea further with you, if you
> > have time.
What are the Follett Report proposals? Please clue me in on that one.
> It is indeed a subversive proposal, and here's why: Many of us already
> share the DESIRE for electronic publication in place of paper; the
> question is, How to get there from here? Life is short. The subversion
> is in not trying to do it directly, by taking on the all-powerful paper
> flotilla head-on. Forget about electronic publishing. Leave the
> "publishing" to them. Simply archive your PREprints (on which you have
> not ceded copyright to anyone) in a public ftp archive. Let EVERYONE
> (or a critical mass) do that. And then nature will take its course.
This is where I disagree somewhat. Preprints already circulate a lot
among the people that count. In other words, Stevan Harnad, to take you
as an example, sends preprints to all the colleagues that count.
Putting the same preprint in some ftp site would not help reach that
many more people, first because you know your own invisible college
pretty well, second, because archie is not sufficient to retrieve these
publications efficiently. Unless someone sets up a universal preprint system
with full WAIS capability or soemthing equivalent, these pre-prints
will remain scattered as bits of dust and will never coalesce to create
a viable informational mass. But I am quite willing to let myself convince
on that one.
> (Everyone will, quite naturally, swap the reprint for the preprint at
> the moment of acceptance for publication, and before paper publishers
> can mobilize to do anything about it, the battle will be lost, and they
> will be faced with an ultimatum: either re-tool NOW, so that you
> recover your real costs and a fair return by some means other than
> interposing a price-tag between [esoteric, no-market] papers and their
> intended readership, or others will step in and do it instead of you.)
If you are right, the re-tooling option is not even viable unless paper
publishers find a way to add value to the preprints that has not already
been added by already organized search engines.
>
> This IS subversive. Direct appeals (whether to authors or to
> publishers) to "publish electronically" are not subversive; they have
> simply proven hopelessly slow. And at this rate (esoteric) paper
> publishers will be able to successfully prolong the status quo for well
> into the forseeable future -- to the eternal disadvantage of learned
> inquiry itself, which is the one that has been suffering most from this
> absurd Faustian bargain for the centuries that paper was the esoteric
> author's only existing expedient for PUBLICation at all.
I am not as pessimistic as you on that score. Things are moving slowly
at present, to be sure, but in a kind of cloud gathering mode that will
soon unleash a real thunderstorm. Some threshold effect is at work here
and there are ways to make the threshold come faster than you seem to
think. Our best allies there are academics from the Third World.
>
> Paper publishers, by the way, are, quite understandably, looking for
> much less radical solutions. These compromises are mostly in the
> category of "hybrid" publication (paper and electronic), and they share
> the fatal flaw of (esoteric -- remember, I am speaking only of
> esoteric, non-trade, no-market) paper publication: requiring a price for
> admission to a show that has virtually no audience, yet is essential
> to us all!
You are right on that score
>
> I have no animus against paper publishers. It's natural for them to do
> whatever they can to preserve the status quo, or something close to
> it. But necessity is the mother of invention, and my subversive
> proposal would awaken their creative survival skills. And if they wish
> to survive (in esoteric publication -- I cannot repeat this often
> enough: what I am proposing is NOT applicable to literature that
> actually has a market, one in which the author really has hopes of
> selling his words, and a market is interested in buying them, for there
> there is no Faustian pact; it is in the interests of BOTH parties,
> author and publisher, to charge admission at the door -- if, as I say,
> publishers wish to survive in ESOTERIC publication, they will have to
> change from a trade to a subsidy model for recovering the substantially
> lower true costs of electronic-ONLY publication).
Correct again.
Best,
Jean-Claude Guedon
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean-Claude Guedon Tel. 514-343-6208
Professeur titulaire Fax: 514-343-2211
Departement de litterature comparee Surfaces
Universite de Montreal Tel. 514-343-5683
C.P. 6128, Succursale "A" Fax. 514-343-5684
Montreal, Qc H3C 3J7 ftp ftp.umontreal.ca
Canada guedon@ere.umontreal.ca
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 09:20:42 EDT
Reply-To: Ken Laws <laws@ai.sri.com>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Ken Laws <laws@ai.sri.com>
Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
In-Reply-To: <9407010951.AA07685@clarity.Princeton.EDU>
I'll second Stevan Harnad's economic estimate, and his
general philosophy. I publish a weekly 32KB newsletter. The
electronic circulation is irrelevant in terms of cost. I also
send out hardcopy, for which I charge postage and an extra $.25
per week for printing and handling. (I have _one_ hardcopy
subscriber, but would want to print out a copy for my own use
in any case. It takes me about half an hour to do the formatting,
as I haven't purchased a good layout program yet.)
Total costs, including advertising and supplies, have been
about $2,000 per year + network access costs (free, in my case)
+ an occasional purchase of computer hardware or software
+ whatever my time is worth. I've included the cost of
news sources (i.e., subscriptions and professional memberships)
in that $2,000; obviously one could pay much more -- even
millions, for a weekly such as Newsweek. Harnad's proposal
concerned esoteric publishing, which usually uses free material.
The peer review -- which I omit -- is also free, except for the
correspondence and "shepherding" expenses.
If you don't go after a large readership, there's no advertising
expense. If you don't edit authors' papers, there's very little
editing expense. If you use LISTSERV or MajorDomo, there's no
clerical expense. That's why most net services are free.
Unfortunately, the next level of quality requires at least
one paid professional. Money must be collected somehow, so either
sponsors must be courted or customers must be billed. Net commerce
isn't well developed yet, so billing and payment are major hassles.
Clerical help with the billing can add to the cost, so sponsorship
is usually the better option.
I've been advocating self-publication for several years now.
Stevan has always insisted on the need for peer review, whereas
I see it as optional. Peer review certainly adds an exciting
dynamic to his e-journals, and may help in satisfying sponsors.
Vanity publishing has entirely different benefits. I expect
that both will do well. What will not survive is redundant
publishing of slightly varying conference papers, journal articles,
and collected works with delays of 1-3 years. Publish or perish
has pushed academic publishing to the point of collapse, with
library budgets no longer able to archive everything that any
scientist wants to record for posterity. That function will now
fall to FTP publishing as Stevan suggests, or possibly to
CD ROM publishing of tech report archives. Hardcopy publication
will become more reader-driven (reader pulled?) instead of
author/sponsor-driven, and only the highest-quality collections
will appear in print. For those, editing and publishing costs
will remain high.
-- Ken Laws
Computists' Communique
Dr. Kenneth I. Laws; (415) 493-7390; laws@ai.sri.com.
Ask about my weekly AI/IS/CS online news service.
-------
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 09:23:42 EDT
Reply-To: timbl@www0.cern.ch
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Subject: Re: Further subversive matters
sh: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@princeton.edu>
lse: "Lloyd S. Etheredge" <letedge@access.digex.net>
Subject: Re: Possible Strategy re shift to electronic publishing
To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
sh> There is no single person or organization "in charge" of the current
sh> flotilla of paper journals. One can of course talk to individual
sh> authors, publishers, or societies, but the reason there is not much
sh> headway to be made there is that they wouldn't really know what to do.
sh> At the agency level, the best strategy is to encourage funders to
sh> encourage electronic "PREpublication," and to cover the expense in the
sh> research grant.
In my experience of trying to promote a change, those "in charge"
are liable to be the least susceptable to persuasion. Change spreads
from the grass roots -- to get from one state of society to
another you have to make a path each step of which is taken by a
different person somewhere, and each step of which is downhill.
In the case of high energy physics, for example, scientists resorted
to the net because they needed the speed of publication. There was no mandate
from above. A way that you could expedite such a move in
other disciplines would be for example to set up a free preprint repository
which would accept papers in whatever form it is easiest for the author
to provide, for example in postscript by email, and make them
easisly findable by providing good indexing. Put a cheerful front page
to the archive: put some graphics in at the top to encourage readers.
Let the thing run with a few gigabytes of disk space, and see whether
society responds. You will have to jump start it probably with an
injection of existing archives of papers, or pointers to them:
otherwise, you will never get a critical product of readership and
information base.
sh> At the individual scholar level, as I said, by far the best strategy is
sh> public ftp/http archives for all preprints. This could be supplemented by
sh> encouraging learned societies to bundle and mirror their members'
sh> archives in a central repository (even just links and pointers to the
sh> home archives would do);
Yes -- though of course the societies may see this as being in
competition to their own journals. The interests of their members
should be pointed out.
sh> the idea is to have high-profile global access
sh> TO all scientists' and scholars' work FOR all scientists/scholars.
sh> Scholars' societies, universities and other learned and scientific
sh> organizations can scale up the individual ftp/http archive visibility
sh> (already a huge step forward) by providing centralized subject-coded
sh> indices, etc.
I see this as one excelent role for the academies of science -- to
provide indexes of the works of their members, and of their memebers.
sh> This should have low-end versions (ftp, archie, gopher)
sh> and high-end as well (www, mosaic, hytelnet), to include the full range
sh> of Internet users.
Given lynx, the www client for the vt100, one hardly has
to be a "high-end" user to use www. WWW was designed to cover the range.
(Terms: archie is an indx of ftp sites, and so is not appropriate
to this set of retrieval systems. "www" is a line-mode interface
to the WWW, and mosaic is one of the graphic user interfaces to WWW.
Hytelnet is a database of telnet sites, and so is not appropriate to
this set.)
>lse> A quick & practical solution might be to suggest a change in federal
>lse> policy. The Clinton Administration could welcome the opportunity to
take a
>lse> leading role in developing the benefits of the Information Age in this
>lse> area - and change the outmoded policies it inherited.
>lse>
>lse> E.g., What would you think about requiring that all publications based
on
>lse> research underwritten by public funds should, within one year of any
>lse> initial publication in printed form, be made publicly available in (a
>lse> standard) electronic form?
Possible -- though federal policy change is not alwaysthe quickest and
easiest solution.
...
sh> In brief: Paper means substantial expense. Substantial expense means
sh> copyright protection. Copyright protection means fees. Fees mean
sh> "protection" of the scholars work from nonpaying eyeballs. THAT is
sh> precisely what the scholar does NOT want. Hence the conflict of interest
sh> in the Faustian alliance. Solution: Break out of the paper mold
sh> entirely, not by brute force, but by the gentle force of the push of
sh> scholarly inquiry itself. With the preprint (and eventually the reprint)
sh> universally available for free electronically, the rest of the
sh> unnecessary edifice will peacefully vanish in the "perestroika"
sh> quietly occasioned by the ftp/http subversion...
You might find it is already happening anyway...
(But when it has happened, you may want to pay for the filtering
done by a good review system, I suspect!)
Tim Berners-Lee
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:33:36 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Re: A Subversive Proposal
Note: I have to point out that behind the desideratum shared by many of
us -- that the esoteric scientific and scholarly literature can and
should be made available electronically to all for free, and that public
ftp/http archives may well hasten the day when they are -- there are
some NONdivisive differences of opinion regarding the need for quality
control (peer review, editing/copy-editing). Nothing hinges on them for
the matter at hand. I just happen to be relatively conservative on that
subtopic, and Andrew Odlyzko relatively laissez-faire. -- Stevan Harnad
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: amo@research.att.com
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 08:02 EDT
To: harnad@Princeton.EDU
Thank you very much for sending your proposal. It's been my contention
for a long time (for example, in the original draft of the "Tragic loss
..." essay) that widespread distribution of preprints through
electronic media, either via preprint servers such as Ginsparg's, or
through ftp directories, would subvert paper journals. One thing that
is worth emphasizing, though, is just how easy it is for a scholar to
do this with modern tools. Enclosed below is an excerpt from the
revision of my essay (which will hopefully be finished in a couple of
days) that dwells on this point.
Concerning Lorrin Garson's message, I agree completely with your
[Harnad's] estimates, and will have some quantitative arguments in my
essay to support them.
XXX. A brave new world
The novel methods of scholarly information dissemination that have been
made possible by modern technology can be seen in the system that I
have started to use recently. All my recent preprints can be accessed
through Mosaic at URL
ftp://netlib.att.com/netlib/att/math/odlyzko/index.html.Z
(Preprints of some older, already published papers are also available there,
but may have to be removed if publishers complain.) For those without
access to Mosaic, ftp access is available on machine netlib.att.com.
After logging in as "anonymous" and giving the full email address as
password, all the user has to do is give the commands
cd netlib/att/math/odlyzko
binary
get index.Z
to obtain a copy of the (compressed) index file, which describes what
preprints are available. Finally, those without ftp access can send
the message
send index from att/math/odlyzko
to netlib@research.att.com, and the index file will arrive via return
mail, with instructions for retrieving individual papers. (This system
contains more than just my own preprints. For papers of my colleague
Neil Sloane, use the same commands as above, but with "odlyzko"
replaced by "sloane," for example.)
The system described above gives access to my and my colleagues
preprints to all the 20 million users of the Net (as the Internet and
various other networks are called). Moreover, this access is almost
always free (although that might change, as I will discuss later), and
available around the clock (except when networks or computers
malfunction, of course). Further, this access is very easy. What is
most remarkable about it, though, is that it is also easy for me to add
papers to it. All I need to do (once a paper has been typeset in TeX
or LaTeX, say) is to give the commands
latex analytic dvips analytic.dvi > /usr/math/odlyzko/analytic.comp.ps
and edit the file /usr/math/odlyzko/index by adding to it the lines
file att/math/odlyzko/analytic.comp.ps
title Analytic Computations in Number Theory
by Andrew M. Odlyzko
# to appear in "Mathematics of Computation 1943-1993,"
W. Gautschi, ed., Amer. Math. Soc., Proc. Symp. Appl. Math.,
1994.
Everything else is done authomatically by the system, which was written
by Eric Grosse, and which is available for free. (In practice there is
a bit more work, since I also make the source files available in the
src directory, to make text searches easier, but it is not much.)
The only time-consuming part in using Grosse's system is the
typesetting of the paper, but that is something that would be done in
any case. The extra effort needed to make the preprint available is a
matter of a minute or two. This is a dramatic change compared to the
situation of even a few years ago, and certainly to that of a few
decades ago, when the only way for a scholar to communicate with a wide
audience was to go through the slow and expensive process of publishing
in a conventional journal. Now it is possible to reach a much broader
audience with just a few keystrokes.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:33:53 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Re: A Subversive Proposal
From: david@arch.ping.dk (David Stodolsky)
To: harnad@Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: Further subversive matters
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 11:13:21 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: topsoe@euromath.dk
> sh> I do think that pubishers can play a role in this, but then they must
> sh> explicitly rejoin on the subsidized-model end, rather than hoping to
> sh> continue on the trade model.
If we can locate a European Publisher that will cooperate, then there
is a good chance of getting at least of few years of subsidy under
the EU's Fourth Framework for R & D. In the Telematics area, there
is supposedly going to be an emphasis on applications, as opposed
to infrastructure development, which has been the main line so far.
Directorate General XIII/E has already funded exploratory actions in
multimedia publishing, using Third Framework money for feasibility
projects preparing for the Information Engineering program under
the new Fourth Framework. Two of the examples of areas suitable for
pilot applications listed:
:the development of new forms of Sci. & Tech. publishing using networks
and exchangeable media
:sector specific demo projects from electronic products and services
such as electronic newspaper or magazine development
My feeling, however, is that the publishers are a lost cause due to the
conflict of interest. I think a better option is a company that
benefits from the move to on-line access. If scientists are going to
develop their reputations on-line, then security is essential. Maybe
one of the smart card producers would cooperate. I am investigating
these companies in connection with another project and can bring this
up as an option. Network operators also are a possibility. RARE is
coordinating some activity, but I have yet to see anything definite.
For further info fax to:
European Commission
DG XIII, Directorate E
JMO C4/024
L-2920 Luxembourg
Fax: (352) 430132847
Contact: R. F. de Bruine
David S. Stodolsky, PhD Internet: stodolsk@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Peder Lykkes Vej 8, 4. tv. Internet: david@arch.ping.dk
DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark Voice + Fax: + 45 32 97 66 74
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:34:20 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Lorrin Garson (Amer. Chem. Soc.) Reply to Subversive Proposal
Dear Lorrin,
Thanks for your detailed reply about publication costs and electronic
innovations at the American Chemical Society, which is appended below,
for all, as you requested. I am very impressed by the scale of electronic
innovativeness you describe taking place at the ACS.
The status quo I should have said that paper publishers would be
endeavoring to preserve was the trade model itself: pay-to-see, whether
on screen or on paper. You raise a valid point about technical and
graphical capabilities and expenses, and you are right that my own
data, from a mostly-text discipline, are insufficient to establish the
generality of my <25% per-page claim. I will accordingly allow my
colleagues in the more technical disciplines to bring forward their own
figures in response to what you write below. My own reaction to the
impressive panaroma of innovations you describe (apart from admiration
for what you have accomplished) would be the following:
(1) Many the graphical capabilities you describe are likely to be
available on the author/researcher's end these days, as are the
technical-text generating capabilities. So what authors submit for
publication may be very close to the final product (and they could
incorporate editing and design feedback into it in their revision). It
is not at all clear that having these functions instead performed by the
publisher will be either optimal technically or a justification for
sticking to the pay-to-see model instead of the free-access-to-all
model for esoteric publication.
(2) The coding will soon be standardized, or near standardized, so that
will be provided from the author's end too (guided, of course, by
feedback from editors, copy editors and production editors, to which I
will return below), and hence no justification for sticking to the
pay-to-see status quo.
(3) Powerful public-domain search/storage/retrieval tools are already
being developed and made available to all (e.g., wais, www, etc.). So
this too need no longer be something the publisher does for the author,
and is again not a justification for preserving the status quo.
So what seems to remain in the calculations you describe -- assuming
author's end graphics and text-processing plus archive management tools
are in place for all -- is (as I suggested) the true cost of quality
control: refereeing and editing (include copy-editing and design). I
regret that I have to say that I continue to believe that the true cost of
this essential service is well under 25% per page in all fields of
science and scholarship. I will allow those who are more technically
expert than I to follow up on (1) to (3).
One last point: ACS is noncommercial, but is it not worrisome that, as
you describe below, it so readily makes common cause with so many
others who most decidedly are not? Esoteric publishing simply does not
belong in this paradigm.
Best wishes,
Stevan
From: lrg96@acs.org (Lorrin Garson)
Subject: Publication costs (cont.)
To: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad at Princeton University)
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 94 15:57:07 EDT
Stevan,
As of yesterday I am on vacation for three weeks, and about to leave for
British Columbia and Alaska. However, before going, I wanted to respond to
your latest message in our exchange of thought and comments on publishing
costs.
Perhaps the disparity of our cost figures is a consequence of the type of
material we publish. My impression is that journals in the humanities are
much simplier and would therefore be less expensive to create in the
front-end process. In fact, chemistry may be the most challenging of the
sciences with much information in complex tables, display math, graphics---
including chemical structures and other line art, half-tones and color.
Tables, math, and artwork are labor intensive (expensive) to handle whether
for print or electronic products. Also, in the sciences, there are many
special characters and multi-level positioning which must be handled; we have
over 500 special characters for our journals and seven levels of super- and
subscripts (on line, 3 levels above and 3 levels below). These special
characters must also be handled whether on paper or electronically. I must
confess I don't read humanities journals and my experience in this domain is
limited to undergraduate textbooks. But even with undergraduate text books,
there is a marked difference in manufacturing costs because of the difference
in complexity of material.
We are indeed both addressing the issue of what you call "esoteric
publications," that is, scholarly journals for which authors submit
manuscripts without receiving payment or royalty.
Your statement "The entire superstructure is set up to hurtle headlong toward
print on paper . . ." is incorrect. Since 1974 the ACS has been
publishing it's journals on a database structure aimed toward the day when
electronic products would be created. We started preserving our journal data
in an SGML-like structure long before SGML became an ISO standard. Our print
products are spun-off from the database, not the other way around. I am
afraid your perception of how we produce journals is quite erroneous.
Approximately 80-85% of our costs are for creating this database and 15-20%
for printing. The majority is for peer review, processing manuscripts (50%
are now done electronically; this will probably reach 60-80% by the end of
1995), editing, copy-editing, proof-reading, etc.
Also your statement "It's natural for them [paper publishers] to do whatever
they can to preserve the status quo, or something close to it." is also very
inaccurate---certainly incorrect for the the ACS. Let me give you a few
highlights of the ACS' electronic publishing activities:
(a) 1980: One thousand articles from the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry were
loaded on BRS as the first fulltext file in chemistry, probably the first
fulltext file in the sciences. This was an experimental prototype file which
was tested by a few dozen volunteers.
(b) 1981: An experimental file of 16 ACS journals was loaded at BRS. The
coverage was 1976 to current for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and 1980
to current for the other journals. The file was evaluated by about 300
individuals.
(c) 1982: The fulltext of ACS journals file at BRS became a commercial product
in November.
(d) 1984: Our colleagues at Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) established STN
International in cooperation with node operators in Karlsruhe, Germany and
Tokyo, Japan. This is a true network with files located at any one node
accessed from Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim. Users are not aware
in day-to-day searching/retrieving on which continent the files are located.
(e) 1985: We developed a prototype CD-ROM in cooperation with OCLC using the
chemistry journal Inorganic Chemistry. This prototype was fulltext
searchable and provided on-the-fly composition with display of our full
character set, including super- and subscripts.
(f) 1986: On September 28th, the ACS made the fulltext of all its chemistry
journals available on STN (the CJACS file). This file allows fulltext
searching and display, but does not contain mathematics, tables or math. The
file is available today and contains our journal data from 1982 to the
present. The file is updated every two weeks.
(g) 1987-90: Files from John Wiley (CJWILEY file ), the Royal Society of
Chemistry (CJRSC file), VCH Publishers (CJVCH), and Elsevier Science
Publishers (CJELSEVIER file) were loaded on STN International. These files
are still available and regularly updated. [My group processes the data for
these publishers for file loading.]
(h) 1990 to date: The ACS has been involved with colleagues at Bellcore, OCLC,
CAS, and Cornell University to create a prototype electronic library at
Cornell University. This is called the CORE project; a non-commercial,
experimental endeavor
(i) 1993: The ACS made supplementary material for the Journal of the American
Chemical Society available on an Internet server (acsinfo@acs.org). These
are TIFF-Group-4-FAX compressed files available for downloading by anonymous
ftp or through a Gopher interface. There are approximately 20,000 pages per
year loaded on the server. The file is still available and is updated
weekly.
(j) 1994-1996: The ACS is a participant in the Red Sage project at the
University of California at San Francisco. Approximately 20 publishers are
involved (with Springer-Verlag being the dominant publisher) along with UCSF
and Bell Laboratories, to create a prototype electronic library in the fields
of radiology and molecular biology.
(k) 1994: On June 19th, the ACS/CAS made electronic pages of all its chemistry
journals available via STN International, thus tables, mathematics, line art
and half-tones are now available by downloading via the Internet, direct dial
modem or by FAX.
(l) 1994: Later this month we will ship the first CD-ROMs of two of our
titles: Journal of the American Chemical Society and Biochemistry. The
CD-ROMs contain fielded, full-text searching capabilities, capability to
display and print journal page images, with special processing of half-tone
images to accommodate non-grey scale printers, display and printing of color
images, etc.
(m) By the end of this year we will have all of the graphics for our journals
as separately callable objects, linked to the text, along with SGML encoded
data, including tables and mathematics.
Stevan, I assure you the ACS as well as most main-line traditional, commercial
publishers of scientific information are not trying to preserve the status
quo but rather are very active in developing electronic information products.
Other not-for-profit organizations in the sciences, notably physics,
astronomy, medicine/biology and engineering, are also very active in this
domain.
By the way, the ACS is a not-for-profit organization, but it is also a
not-for-loss institution. The Publications and Chemical Abstracts Service
Divisions are not subsidized from external sources, nor from ACS members'
dues. These two divisions are charged by the ACS Board of Directors to
annually return a small net to the ACS' reserves.
I would like to suggest that publishing electronic journals is in fact going
to be more expensive than printing. For example, I believe most of the data we
currently publish in journals today will in the future be acquired as
coherent, digital data. This is starting now in the field of x-ray
crystallography and will likely spread to other areas of structure such as
spectroscopy (IR, UV, MS, NMR, etc.), biological data, in vitro testing, etc.
The journal Protein Science (published by Cambridge University Press for the
Protein Society) now publishes with each issue a floppy disk which contains
protein/enzyme structure data which can be visualized with a program called
Kinemage, which is also provided with the journal. The Protein Society plans
to make these data also available on CD-ROM and via the Internet. The
collection, maintenance (including indexing and cataloging), and
dissemination of these data will, I believe, be more costly than printing,
but the information will be much more valuable to the scientific community.
Of course, when we get to this point we won't be publishing journals; the
output will be called something else.
I am afraid you haven't convinced me to your view point and our cost figures
are so diametric we can't possibly both be correct. As I mentioned in my
opening, perhaps the great disparity lies in the nature of the information we
publish. Have I through my verbiage above changed your perceptions of
publishing and associated costs? Probably not . . .
It seems we are unlikely to resolve the issue by merely exchanging messages.
Sometime when you are in Washington area, or when I am in Princeton, why
don't we sit down and try to thrash this out. If on some occasion you should
be in Columbus, Ohio, I would be very happy to walk you through our
production facilities (data entry, database building, composition but not
printing, which is done in Easton, Pennsylvania). In any case, please count
on being my guest for lunch or dinner when and where me might meet.
I won't be responding to e-mail until after July 25th.
Finally, I would like to ask that you forward this message to those to whom
you sent your last message. Thank you.
Best regards,
Lorrin
--
************************** From: Lorrin R. Garson **************************
Publications Division, American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C.
E-mail: lrg96@acs.org Phone: (202) 872-4541 FAX (202) 872-4389
*****************************************************************************
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:34:45 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: On Esoteric Publication
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 18:54:41 -0400
> From: lesk@bellcore.com (Michael E Lesk)
>
> Steve, Lorrin
>
> I wonder if you both know about an article "Reader rip-off: why are books
> so expensive" by Tony Rothman in the New Republic for Feb. 3, 1992.
>
> He is mostly talking about trade books, and finds most of the cost in
> distribution. He says that a $20 book costs about $3 to produce. (The
> author gets $2, the publisher gets $4 for overhead, the distributor
> gets $3 and the bookstore gets $8). For a 20,000 copy run typesetting is
> not important -- it is 10% of the production cost. Paper is only slightly
> more, about 15% of production cost.
>
> Unfortunately, scientific journals have already achieved his most obvious
> recommendation: eliminate the bookstore retail markup and go to mailorder.
>
> But his overall point is still true- most of the money in the current system
> is NOT going to run presses. It's distribution and organization that is
> taking the money, not the production side. I think that's true for scientific
> journals as well.
>
> Michael
Hi Mike,
I'm sure Rothman's right about those figures, but I think that's probably
more general even than book economics and probably gets to the heart of
capitalism (and middle-men. etc.).
Rather than take all of THAT on, I think the simple pertinent fact in
the case of ESOTERIC (no-market) publication (which makes it different
from sell-your-words trade publication) is that it is NOT a "product"
from which the author does, can or expects to make money through
selling it! That is something peculiar to esoteric publication,
independently either of the mark-ups of trade book/magazine publishing
or commerce in general: THE AUTHOR WANTS YOU TO READ HIS WORK, THAT'S
ALL. That motive should never have had to make common cause with an
economic model in which there is a MARKET for the work, people ready to
pay for it, and the author writing it because he expects to get part of
that revenue -- a model in which it is in the interests of the author as
well as the publisher to interpose a price-tag between the author and
his readership.
This anomaly in the special case of esoteric publishing is in now a
position to be remedied in short order WITHOUT taking on either the
inefficiencies of trade publishing in general, or of trade in general.
Stevan Harnad
esoteric 213 aj
.es-*-'ter-ik
LL [italic esotericus], fr. Gk [italic es{o-}terikos], fr. [italic
es{o-}ter{o-}], compar. of [italic eis{o-}], [italic es{o-}] within,
fr. [italic eis] into, fr. [italic en] in -- more at [mini IN]
1 a aj designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone
1 b aj of or relating to knowledge that is restricted to a small group
2 a aj limited to a small circle <~ pursuits>
2 b aj [mini PRIVATE], [mini CONFIDENTIAL] <an purpose="" ~="">
esoterically 21313 av -i-k(*-)l{e-}
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:35:26 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: More subversion: Ginsparg's Reply to Garson
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Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 23:19:57 -0600
From: Paul Ginsparg 505-667-7353 <ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov>
Message-Id: <9407060519.AA19350@qfwfq.lanl.gov>
To: harnad@Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: Lorrin Garson (Amer. Chem. Soc.) Reply to Subversive Proposal
Status: R
lg>> From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@princeton.edu>
lg>> Subject: Lorrin Garson (Amer. Chem. Soc.) Reply to Subversive Proposal
lg>> ...
lg>> I will allow those who are more technically
lg>> expert than I to follow up on (1) to (3).
stevan,
essentially your responses are correct, but tentative due to unfamiliarity
with publishing technical material including in-line equations, graphics, etc.
in physics, we've been transmitting such material without compromise over
the networks for close to a decade now so i can make slightly more definitive
comments below.
i've lost track of all the different lists (please forward to
whichever may be relevant -- feel free to edit if necessary, have been
through this many times in many forums and answers grow increasingly abrupt).
enjoy, pg
lg> From: lrg96@acs.org (Lorrin Garson)
lg> Subject: Publication costs (cont.)
lg> To: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad at Princeton University)
lg> Date: Sun, 3 Jul 94 15:57:07 EDT
lg> Perhaps the disparity of our cost figures is a consequence of the type of
lg> material we publish. My impression is that journals in the humanities are
lg> much simplier and would therefore be less expensive to create in the
lg> front-end process. In fact, chemistry may be the most challenging of the
lg> sciences with much information in complex tables, display math, graphics---
lg> including chemical structures and other line art, half-tones and color.
i suspect physics is roughly as challenging as chemistry.
who is providing all of the above material? in physics, we the authors produce
the tables and graphics ourselves, and can typically integrate them into
an electronic end product better than can the publishing companies on paper.
lg> Tables, math, and artwork are labor intensive (expensive) to handle whether
lg> for print or electronic products. Also, in the sciences, there are many
lg> special characters and multilevel positioning which must be handled; we have
lg> over 500 special characters for our journals and seven levels of super- and
lg> subscripts (on line, 3 levels above and 3 levels below).
why are you retypsetting everything provided to you? in physics, the journal
publications are frequently lower quality precisely because of the errors
introduced in the typesetting process (it is very difficult to proofread
yet again something that has already been proofread hundreds of times
for our own versions; especially when many of the conventional pub co's
weren't even running spellcheckers to catch their trivial errors.)
lg> These special characters must also be handled whether on paper or
lg> electronically. I must confess I don't read humanities journals and my
lg> experience in this domain is limited to undergraduate textbooks. But even
lg> with undergraduate text books, there is a marked difference in
lg> manufacturing costs because of the difference in complexity of material.
if handled properly, scientific research can be propagated electronically
as easily as can non-scientific. this is not conjecture -- the e-print
archives on xxx.lanl.gov have from their inception been full text
with all in-line figures and equations (and the astrophysicists have begun
to submit .mpeg files with on-line animation), all author-prepared, and
in no case are any compromises necessary for professional research
communication. as i say, the author produced material is frequently superior
in quality to the ultimate print form from the publisher.
lg> Your statement "The entire superstructure is set up to hurtle headlong
lg> toward print on paper . . ." is incorrect.
lg> ...
lg> Also your statement "It's natural for them [paper publishers] to do whatever
lg> they can to preserve the status quo, or something close to it." is also very
lg> inaccurate---certainly incorrect for the the ACS.
lg> Let me give you a few
lg> highlights of the ACS' electronic publishing activities:
i am afraid that the litany of "achievements" below tends to support rather
than refute stevan's statement. instead they are strawpeople that convey
the impression of forward-looking, but remain too firmly rooted in the
status quo. essentially this view of the electronic format is literally to
repeat the entire process, and then *after* the final stage, essentially as an
afterthought, take an electronic photo (i.e. bitmap) of the finished version,
post it somewhere, and suggest that that constitutes vision for the future.
from this myopic viewpoint, of course the electronic version appears
to add to the overall expense. this just means you'll be hard-pressed to
compete when someone else comes along with a better optimized and
more streamlined operation.
lg> (a) 1980: ...
prior to 1984 the relevant wordprocessing and graphics simply was
not available. any info on usage patterns, cost, etc., is irrelevant.
totally different medium. continuing...
lg> (f) 1986: On September 28th, the ACS made the fulltext of all its chemistry
lg> journals available on STN (the CJACS file). This file allows fulltext
lg> searching and display, but does not contain mathematics, tables or math. The
lg> file is available today and contains our journal data from 1982 to the
lg> present. The file is updated every two weeks.
lg> (g) 1987-90: Files from John Wiley (CJWILEY file ), the Royal Society of
lg> Chemistry (CJRSC file), VCH Publishers (CJVCH), and Elsevier Science
lg> Publishers (CJELSEVIER file) were loaded on STN International.
no mathematics, tables, or math. in physics, this would have been less than
useless and would convince people of the superiority of paper.
lg> (h) 1990 to date: The ACS has been involved with colleagues at Bellcore,
lg> OCLC,CAS, and Cornell University to create a prototype electronic library at
lg> Cornell University. This is called the CORE project; a non-commercial,
lg> experimental endeavor
isn't this just another scan and shred project to post bitmaps
of existing journals? for some reason, many journals seem unable to
distinguish superficial appearance from information content and insist
that they are *defined* by their superficial appearance. (the american
physical society, for example, proposed an electronic version of its
journals which retained every artifact of the paper version -- including
a two column format with equations that occasionally cross between columns.
[a format that many physicists have grown to despise. aps would
likely be subject to a full-scale network attack if they ever ventured to
post new material in such a senseless electronic format.]
it is important to rethink the compromises embodied in the current paper
format and not robotically propagate them to the electronic format.
indeed when i demoed a bitmap server to some physics postdocs, the uniform
response was incredulity ["my god, it's a picture of each page."] then
laughter. we're just not interested in the dead formats promoted in general
by OCLC and e.g. Bell's "rightpages".)
and, again, of course your costs are unaffected or increased -- everything
proceeds as before with an extra step added at the end.
very soon we will demand functionality (hypertext, in-line links to other
resources and applications, public annotation threads, etc.) that can
*only* be embodied in the electronic format from the start.
lg> (i) 1993:The ACS made supplementary material for the Journal of the American
lg> Chemical Society available on an Internet server (acsinfo@acs.org). These
lg> are TIFF-Group-4-FAX compressed files available for downloading by anonymous
lg> ftp or through a Gopher interface. There are approximately 20,000 pages per
lg> year loaded on the server. The file is still available and is updated
lg> weekly.
more after-the-fact bitmaps. not useful, unfortunately.
anyway, rather than continue point by point, i am just trying to emphasize
how all of this substantiates stevan's point that publishers base their
cost estimates of the electronic format on an outmoded mentality,
viewing it as an "add-on" to existing activities rather than
as a means to alter, improve, optimize, and streamline communication
of research in a fundamental manner. there is nothing fundamentally different
about highly technical scientific material as compared with the humanities
-- researchers across the board, once empowered to produce a final format
that suits their standards, and given the means of distribution, will
take full advantage. the likely outcome is to force established publishers
to rethink what they're doing and concede that their cost estimates
were based on the wrong analysis.
lg> Stevan, I assure you the ACS as well as most main-line traditional,
lg> commercial publishers of scientific information are not trying to preserve
lg> the status quo but rather are very active in developing electronic
lg> information products. Other not-for-profit organizations in the sciences,
lg> notably physics, astronomy, medicine/biology and engineering, are also very
lg> active in this domain.
i have met with a continuous stream of representatives from "main-line,
traditional, commercial publishers of scientific information" over the
past three years and yes, they are trying to do *something*, mainly stay
in the ballgame somehow, but that *something* is not necessarily optimized
for the interests of researchers, either in cost, functionality, or means of
access. no idea to which "not-for-profit organizations" you refer in physics
-- there, at least, i believe i know what is going on (perhaps the confusion
is over what constitutes "very active" as opposed to "very productive").
lg> I would like to suggest that publishing electronic journals is in fact going
lg> to be more expensive than printing.
i would like to suggest that those institutions and organizations for whom
publishing electronic journals will in fact prove more expensive than printing
do not have a very bright future in store.
lg> I am afraid you haven't convinced me to your view point and our cost figures
lg> are so diametric we can't possibly both be correct. As I mentioned in my
lg> opening,perhaps the great disparity lies in the nature of the information we
lg> publish.
unlikely.
lg> Have I through my verbiage above changed your perceptions of
lg> publishing and associated costs? Probably not . . .
unfortunately not at all.
Paul Ginsparg
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:36:10 EDT
Reply-To: Christine Sundt <csundt@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Christine Sundt <csundt@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Publication announcement -- VISUAL RESOURCES
This announcement is being cross-posted to the following lists: VRA-L,
CAAH, IMAGELIB and PHOTO-CD. Please feel free to forward it to other
pertinent lists.
========================================================================
VVV VVV ______________________________________________ RRR RRR\
V // R R
V // VISUAL RESOURCES R R
V // An international journal for scholars and R RRRR/
V // professionals working with the documentation R \\
V// of visual materials - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE R \\
VVV ________________________________________________________ RRR RRR
RECENTLY PUBLISHED ARTICLES
(Volume X, Number 1)
ISSUES IN ELECTRONIC IMAGE (A Special Issue edited by Christine L. Sundt)
EDITORIAL: Reshaping Life and Culture Digitally
Benjamin R. Kessler
Electronic Images in Visual Resources Collections:
Some Strategic Questions
Michael Ester
Digital Images in the Context of Visual Collections
and Scholarship
Deirdre C. Stam
Pondering Pixeled Pictures: Research Directions in the
Digital Imaging of Art Objects
Victoria Wyatt and Ged McLean
Imaging Databases in Research and Teaching: Global
Perspectives and New Research Technologies
William Weinstein
Designing an Image Database: A Holistic Approach
Jim Wallace
Project Chapman: The Direct Delivery of Digital
Smithsonian Photographic Images Via the Internet
MEDIA REVIEWS
Elizabeth O'Donnell
Perseus 1.0: Interactive Sources and Studies on Ancient
Greece, Gregory Crane (editor-in-chief)
Margaret N. Webster
"The Future of Memories": the Kodak Photo CD System
Visual Resources examines early attempts to document images, assesses the
effect of electronic technology on visual materials, and analyzes new ways to
organize and access visual information. By promoting experimentation and
speculation about visual materials, it provides a unique approach to the
appreciation of visual documentation.
For more information regarding subscriptions, Special Issues, and our book
series, as well as guidelines for submitting manuscripts, please contact the
editors:
Helene E. Roberts Christine L. Sundt
Dartmouth College Architecture & Allied Arts Library
Art History Department University of Oregon, Lawrence Hall
6033 Carpenter Hall Eugene, OR 97403
Hanover, NH 03755 <csundt@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Sample copies of this journal may be obtained from the publisher, Gordon and
Breach, c/o STBS Order Department, P.O. Box 786 Cooper Station, New York, NY
10276, USA or P.O. Box 90, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8JL, UK.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:36:37 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: More Subversion: Now from the mathematicians
From: amo@research.att.com (Andrew Odlyzko)
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 94 07:57 EDT
To: harnad@Princeton.EDU
Subject: more subversion
Stevan,
Concerning a bunch of your postings from yesterday, I agree
wholeheardtedly that the issue of costs of electronic publications can
and should be separated from that of peer review. I felt you had
confused the two in your comment on my message to you. The section from
the forthcoming revision of my essay that I had sent you was meant just
to demonstrate how easy it is to disseminate information with modern
technology. It did not deal with quality of the information at all. The
next paragraph in the essay (which I did not send to you) talks of how
the same mechanism can be used by the editor of a journal to
disseminate refereed papers.
At the end of this message I append two additional sections from my
essay that discuss costs of scholarly journals.
Concerning Mike Lesk's message, I agree with you that the figures he
cites are not directly relevant to esoteric scholarly publishing.
However, it is interesting to note that even in the trade press,
electronics is likely to cause substantial changes, and will squeeze
out some of the distribution costs that Mike cites. Publishers are
talking of producing customized textbooks, for example. For one of your
future courses in cognitive psychology, for example, you might choose
from a publisher's catalog what sections you want to go into your
students' textbook. The students will then go to your school's
bookstore and have a copy printed for them on the new machines that
companies like Xerox are developing. (As I recall, Xerox is already
marketing one such machine.) This will eliminate the need for
publishers and bookstores to overstock and ship back and forth tons of
paper that is not used. (The driving force for this development is not
so much the college textbook market, but all the myriad corporate
documents, computer manuals, etc., which are frequently changed and are
typically needed only in small quantities. However, the same technology
will be used in the college textbook market.)
Best regards, Andrew Odlyzko
XXX Costs of present system
To understand the present and future of publishing, we need to have a
clear picture of the costs involved. This involves both the explicit
costs, such as those for journal subscriptions, where money that is
allocated for publications changes hands, and the implicit costs, such
as those for the time of authors and referees.
What is the cost of producing a typical mathematical paper? It appears
that the average researcher publishes two or three papers per year.
The total cost of employing such a person is at least $ 150 K per year
(this is a conservative estimate, over twice the average salary of the
average mathematician in the US, as it is meant to include standard
salary, grant support, benefits, as well as all the office space,
libraries, and university administration costs). Let us assign one
third of this cost to research activities. If we do that, we conclude
that each paper costs at least $ 20,000, and this cost is born by
taxpayers, students' parents, or donors to universities.
The reviewers of scholarly papers are almost uniformly unpaid, and so
are most editors. It is hard to estimate how much effort they devote
to a paper. It appears that about half of the papers in mathematics
that are submitted are accepted by a typical journal. Since many
submissions require several revisions and extensive correspondence, and
an increasing number of papers use two referees, it seems reasonable to
estimate that between one and two weeks' time on the part of editors
and referees is devoted to their jobs for each accepted papers. Thus
the value of their time is around $ 4,000.
In mathematics, there are two main reviewing journals, Mathematical
Reviews (Math. Rev.) and Zentralblatt fuer Mathematik (Zbl.). Both
rely primarily on unpaid outside reviewers. If a reviewer spends a day
preparing a review, reading the paper, locating additional references,
and so on, then the implicit cost is around $ 500 for each reviewing
journal, or $ 1,000 for each published paper.
We next turn to the explicit costs of scholarly publishing. How much
does it cost to publish a paper in a research journal? Let us take the
figures in [AMSS]. If we assume that a paper is typeset with 50,000
characters, and multiply that by the cost per character given in [AMSS]
for any given journal, and then multiply by the circulation for that
journal, we obtain an estimate for how much it costs to publish at
article in that journal. For example, according to [AMSS], Amer. J.
Math. has a circulation of 1458, and an annual subscription costs
$ 0.048 per 1,000 characters. This produces an estimate of
$ 1458*50*0.048, or about $ 3,500 for the cost of publishing a single
article there. This figure includes all the editorial, printing, and
mailing expenses. Doing this for the other journals listed in [AMSS]
for which both costs and circulation are given (but excluding Bull.
Amer. Math. Soc., which differs substantially in scope and especially
circulation from the standard research journals) produces estimates for
single article costs between $ 900 (for the Notre Dame J. Formal Logic)
and $ 8,700. The median cost figure is about $ 4,000, and is the one I
will use.
For comparison, Physical Review Letters (PRL) has about 2,500
institutional subscriptions at about $ 1,500 each, plus 4,500
individual subscriptions at $ 140 each, which together with page
charges produce annual revenue of about $ 5 M. Since PRL publishes
about 2,400 out of the 6,000 submissions it receives each year, the
cost per published paper is about $ 2,000. Since these are all short
papers (extended abstracts only), the relatively high cost is
presumably accounted for largely by PRL having several paid full-time
professional editors.
Reviewing journals are comparatively cheap, if one considers the cost
per paper reviewed. Math. Rev. has annual revenue of around $ 5 M
(about 1,000 subscriptions at $ 5,000 each), so the explicit cost for
each of the 50,000 reviews published each year is $ 100. The figure
for Zbl. is presumably similar. For comparison, Chemical Abstracts
publishes about 500,000 reviews per year at a total cost of $ 150 M,
for a cost per review of $ 300. The much higher monetary cost of these
reviews than those in Math. Rev. is caused by having a paid in-house
staff prepare them instead of relying on the unpaid help of outside
scholars.
Most of the cost of producing traditional scholarly journals is in the
processing of the manuscript (the "first-copy" cost [Grycz]), and very
little in printing and distribution. The PRL individual subscription
price of $ 140 per year is set to cover the marginal cost of printing
and mailing one additional copy of each issue, and the bulk of the
money collected from libraries goes for all the editing and overhead
costs. Similar figures seem to apply to other publishers. The first
copy costs are as high as they are because of the variety of
specialists involved in typesetting the paper, editing it before and
after typesetting, proofreading, and so on.
It is helpful to estimate other costs of publishing scholarly papers.
Typesetting mathematical papers costs between $ 10 and $ 20 per page in
the US, depending on whether one counts all the overheads of a fully
loaded salary or considers just the cost of employing a part-timer on
an occasional basis. Therefore the cost of preparing a typical 20-page
paper is $ 200-400. (When this same paper is typeset by the author,
the implicit cost is likely to be $ 1,000-3,000, both because of higher
wages and lower speed, but the comparison is not relevant, since
scholars who do their own typesetting mix it with the basic composition
of the manuscript.)
While very few editors of mathematical journals are paid, most have
secretarial support, supplied either by their home institution or paid
by the publisher. Based on data from Walter Gautschi, the managing
editor of Math. Comp., and Andrew Appel, the editor-in-chief of ACM
Trans. Progr. Languages, it appears that it is possible to have an
editorial assistant that handles all the correspondence involved in
editing a journal for $ 100-400 per published paper.
XXX How much should journals cost?
Is $ 4,000 per article too much to pay for a scholarly journal
publication? This sum is only a small fraction of the $ 24,000 that
doing the research, writing the paper, and having it reviewed cost.
However, it is an extraordinarily high sum if looked at from another
point of view. If indeed only 20 scholars read the typical paper, then
this means the cost of each reading is $ 200. How many scholars would
not flinch if, on approaching a library shelf, they had to insert $ 200
into a meter for each article they read, even if the money were coming
from their research grant or their department's budget? Serious
readers are not the only constituency for journals, of course.
Tremendous value is derived by scholars from skimming articles to learn
what has been done and approximately how. Many more articles are
skimmed than read. However, even if the typical article is skimmed by
200 scholars, then the cost per article is still $ 20. How many
scholars would be willing to pay that, if the cost were stated
explicitly this way? Of course, they or their institutions are paying
this sum, but the cost is concealed in separate budgets. This high
cost, and scholars' general unwillingness to pay such astronomical
prices, is likely to doom any efforts to have pay-per-view in scholarly
publications, at least with present prices, as charges sufficient to
recover current high costs would deter readers.
Another way to look at the cost figures is to consider the total cost
of journals. Let us recall that 50,000 mathematical papers are
published each year, so the total cost of traditional mathematical
journals is about $ 200 M per year. If we assume that 35 % of this
cost is paid by subscribers in the US (which is probably a low
estimate), then we find that US universities, laboratories, and
individuals spend $ 70 M per year for mathematical journals. That is
almost exactly the same as the NSF budget for mathematical research.
If we could eliminate this cost, we could potentially double the NSF
budget for mathematics at no extra cost to society at large. (If we
eliminated all the other library costs by converting even old
publications to electronic formats, we could save another $ 70-150 M
per year in the US, which could be used to increase research funding
even further.) Of course, the tradeoff is not that simple, since
journals are paid for from different sources than research grants, and
we do not have much freedom in moving public and private funding
around. However, the $ 70 M figure for just journal subscriptions is
sufficiently large that it cannot easily grow, and there will be
pressure to lower it if some method for doing so can be found. One of
the main influences of new electronic technologies is likely to be to
focus attention on the high costs of scholarly publishing.
To what extent can publishing costs be lowered? Some publishers have
predicted that electronic publication of journals would lower the costs
only by around 30 %, which is only slightly more than the cost of
printing and mailing. However, that assumes that the current editing
procedures are followed. If one lowers the standards, then even
traditional paper journals could be produced at a fraction (between one
tenth and one quarter) of the present $ 4,000 per article. After all,
one can xerox author-prepared manuscripts, staple them together, and
call that a journal issue. The present scholarly publishing system has
evolved into its present high-cost state only because of its strange
nature. The ultimate consumers, the scholars, do not pay directly for
the journals, and are seldom even aware of the costs of the
publications they demand. They have never been presented with a range
of cost and quality options and asked to choose among them. The
publishers do not compete on price, but engage in "monopolistic
competition," [Grycz], in which different journals present incomparable
material, and strive to be the best in a specialized area. This system
has many features in common with the US medical system, another
producer of high-quality but also extremely high-priced services. If
there were a single US federal agency responsible for scholarly
publications, there would undoubtedly be Congressional hearings
featuring outcries against the $ 200 cost of each article read by a
scholar instead of the $ 500 flashlight for the military. There would
be questions whether scholars were not using Cadillacs where Chevys (or
even bicycles) would do. Personally I do like the high quality of
present journals. I have published many papers in them, and expect to
publish quite a few more before they disappear. However, I suspect
that society will not be willing to continue paying the price for them.
A few years ago, drastic decreases in the costs of journals would have
meant going from Cadillacs to bicycles, with journals consisting of
stapled collections of mimeographed copies. However, with the advances
in technology described in previous sections, we can now easily move to
something that is at least at the level of a Chevy in luxury, and in
addition has the cross-country capabilities of a helicopter. One
solution is to transform current journals into much cheaper electronic
ones. Eliminating printing and distribution would by itself save
15-30% of the present costs. However, much larger savings should be
possible. This would require reengineering the entire publishing
enterprise so as to eliminate whole layers of specialists, just as many
other businesses have had to do. Recall that keyboarding a paper costs
only $ 200-400, and is currently mostly provided by the author's
institution or is done by the author. All the correspondence about the
paper can be handled by an assistant for $ 100-200 per paper, and this
cost is likely to decrease as communications moves further towards
email. It should be possible to provide editing assistance for
$ 200-600 per (already typeset) paper that would achieve reasonable
quality. What would be lost? Many of the features of the existing
system would be gone, as a typical paper might be processed by just a
single editing generalist who would combine many of the roles of
today's editors, copy editors, and proofreaders. The uniformity of
appearance of papers in a journal might be gone. Would that be a great
loss, though? Should not the unit of scholarly publication be the
individual paper, and not the journal issue? For bulky paper
publications, it was natural to bundle them into larger packages. Most
of the time, though, a scholar reads or even skims only a couple of
articles per issue. Since most of the literature searching involves
moving between different journals with different formats, why bother to
keep uniform style in each journal? A uniform style of journal
references also contributes to the quality of present publications.
However, just how valuable is it, and how valuable will it be in the
future, when each reference might have a hypertext link to the paper
being referenced, or at least something like the URL address?
My general conclusion is that it should be possible to publish
scholarly journals electronically for well under $ 1,000 per article,
and probably under $ 500, without losing too much quality. This agrees
with Harnad's contention [YY] that electronic scholarly publication
should not cost more than one quarter of what it does now. The cost of
reading a single article is still going to be so high as to make
per-per-view impractical, but various of the site-license models
discussed in [Grycz] should allow for recovery of these costs.
Can explicit costs be lowered even further? One approach that is
already widely used among existing electronic journals is to provide
free access, with all the labor involved in running them performed by
scholars. My feeling is that this model is likely to predominate.
This will mean creating some additional costs for the authors, editors,
and their institutions, but those are not likely to be large.
Publishers and librarians often scoff at the idea of scholars being
their own publishers. However, they appear to be underestimating how
easy that is with the recent advances in technology. Editors and
referees already put about as much effort into running scholarly
journals as do the publishers. The additional effort needed to publish
an electronic journal is slight, especially if we relax standards about
appearance. (It's worth emphasizing that we are not talking of
changing the peer review standards. Those are maintained by the unpaid
editors and referees anyway, and can be maintained at the same level in
free electronic journals.) The example in Section YY of the system
that my colleagues and I use for preprint distribution shows just how
easy it is to operate a rudimentary electronic journal.
Will scholars accept the quality of papers produced by other scholars
without the help of the skilled professionals that publishers provide?
My feeling is that they will, especially since the gap between what an
author can produce and what publishers provide is steadily narrowing
with advances in hardware and software. As evidence, consider the
increasing number of books that are produced by publishers taking the
authors' PostScript files and printing them. Authors have to write
their manuscripts anyway, and with modern tools this is becoming as
easy to do at the terminal as on paper, even for technical material.
Most of the high cost of traditional publishing is caused by the need
for communication and cooperation among the many experts involved in
the process. With modern technology, doing something is becoming easier
than explaining to somebody else what to do.
[further discussion of free scholarly journals to come]
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 18:54:41 -0400
> From: lesk@bellcore.com (Michael E Lesk)
>
> Steve, Lorrin
>
> I wonder if you both know about an article "Reader rip-off: why are books
> so expensive" by Tony Rothman in the New Republic for Feb. 3, 1992.
>
> He is mostly talking about trade books, and finds most of the cost in
> distribution. He says that a $20 book costs about $3 to produce. (The
> author gets $2, the publisher gets $4 for overhead, the distributor
> gets $3 and the bookstore gets $8). For a 20,000 copy run typesetting is
> not important -- it is 10% of the production cost. Paper is only slightly
> more, about 15% of production cost.
>
> Unfortunately, scientific journals have already achieved his most obvious
> recommendation: eliminate the bookstore retail markup and go to mailorder.
>
> But his overall point is still true- most of the money in the current system
> is NOT going to run presses. It's distribution and organization that is
> taking the money, not the production side. I think that's true for scientific
> journals as well.
>
> Michael
Hi Mike,
I'm sure Rothman's right about those figures, but I think that's probably
more general even than book economics and probably gets to the heart of
capitalism (and middle-men. etc.).
Rather than take all of THAT on, I think the simple pertinent fact in
the case of ESOTERIC (no-market) publication (which makes it different
from sell-your-words trade publication) is that it is NOT a "product"
from which the author does, can or expects to make money through
selling it! That is something peculiar to esoteric publication,
independently either of the mark-ups of trade book/magazine publishing
or commerce in general: THE AUTHOR WANTS YOU TO READ HIS WORK, THAT'S
ALL. That motive should never have had to make common cause with an
economic model in which there is a MARKET for the work, people ready to
pay for it, and the author writing it because he expects to get part of
that revenue -- a model in which it is in the interests of the author as
well as the publisher to interpose a price-tag between the author and
his readership.
This anomaly in the special case of esoteric publishing is now in a
position to be remedied in short order WITHOUT taking on either the
inefficiencies of trade publishing in general, or of trade in general.
Stevan Harnad
esoteric 213 aj .es-*-'ter-ik
LL [italic esotericus], fr. Gk [italic es{o-}terikos], fr. [italic
es{o-}ter{o-}], compar. of [italic eis{o-}], [italic es{o-}] within,
fr. [italic eis] into, fr. [italic en] in -- more at [mini IN]
1 a aj designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone
1 b aj of or relating to knowledge that is restricted to a small group
2 a aj limited to a small circle <~ pursuits>
2 b aj [mini PRIVATE], [mini CONFIDENTIAL] <an purpose="" ~="">
esoterically 21313 av -i-k(*-)l{e-}
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:37:22 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: (fwd) Library Role in Archiving
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 14:42:44 EDT
From: Peter Graham <psgraham@gandalf.rutgers.edu>
One of the points Paul Ginsparg makes that bears thinking about is the
proposal that various archives be established, e.g. by scholarly societies
but also presumably by other agencies.
Let me condense an argument very much by suggesting that this function is
what libraries are for, perhaps uniquely for: the long-term preservation
function. Some of us in the library community have been discussing what it
is that libraries bring distinctively to the electronic environment. One of
the functions is the continuing one of assuring that information that is here
today is also here tomorrow (as I sometimes like to put it, If I love this
information in May will it still be here in December?).
Libraries, unlike publishers, individual scholars, and scholarly societies,
are explicitly in this for the long term. I think it is our responsibility
in the library community to determine what is necessary for long-term
provision of information. This will include matters such as
--backup
--technology (hardware) refreshing (e.g. from vax to unix to ?, from 5.25"
floppy to 3.5" floppy to ?, from magnetic disk to optical disk to crystal,
etc.)
--technology (software) refreshing (e.g. from Wordperfect 1.1 to v6.0, from
DisplayWrite to Word, from LaTeX to ?, from CorelDraw to ?, etc.).
--accessibly search engines
--authenticity and completeness
--long-term commmitments of people, money and systems (this being the hardest
thing of all) in an environment where budgets are typically only annual.
There's more to say but this thread tends to bunch up in indigestible chunks
anyway, so I shove this out to get this ball rolling. (metaphor?) --pg
Peter Graham psgraham@gandalf.rutgers.edu Rutgers University Libraries
169 College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08903 (908)445-5908; fax (908)445-5888
CHANGE 7/1 from (908)932-xxxx to (908) 445-xxxx (not all of Rutgers changes)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:38:37 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Entlich Reply to Ginsparg
From: Richard Entlich <rentlich@oldal.mannlib.cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: Ginsparg's Reply to Garson
To: harnad@Princeton.EDU
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 94 13:53:12 EDT
Stevan,
You forwarded Paul Ginsparg's comments on Lorrin Garson's response to
your "subversive" proposal to VPIEJ-L and perhaps elsewhere. Please
forward my comments to whatever lists you sent his comments.
Dr. Ginsparg['s]...
comments on the CORE (Chemistry Online Retrieval Experiment) project
are ill-informed. First of all, CORE was not conceived, nor has it ever
been portrayed as a model for de novo electronic publishing. CORE is a
retrospective conversion project, designed to test the efficacy of a
variety of approaches to capturing previously published material, using
whatever combination of machine-readable formats may be available or
obtainable through conversion. Perhaps high energy physicists have no
interest in anything published more than a few picoseconds ago, but in most
disciplines, the existing print corpus has ongoing value.
Yes, CORE is using bitmapped page images, but it is hardly "another scan
and shred project to post bitmaps of existing journals." Full-page
bitmaps are used 1) because they are a reasonable alternative for
conversion of existing print archives to machine-readable form, and 2)
to capture portions of pages which were not available in machine-
readable form, mainly illustrations of various types. However, the heart
of the CORE project is over ten years of marked-up machine-readable text
files from twenty ACS journals. These files are converted from ACS
proprietary markup to SGML.
The resulting files can be searched, displayed and navigated via
a sophisticated X Window based interface developed by OCLC called
Scepter. Full-text searching is provided (including about two dozen
fields, from author and title to CAS registry number and figure
captions) and supports Boolean and adjacency operators, truncation, and
direct searching on Greek letters and diacritics. Text is displayed
using standard and custom-designed X Window fonts. The interface also
supports direct access to article subsections, hypertext searching and
citation linking, and full article printing.
Article text, equations and tables are all displayed based on the
existing machine-readable files. Only figures are displayed as bitmaps.
CORE makes the best possible use of these bitmaps by extracting them
from the full-page image file and making them accessible from icons
embedded in the text. In Scepter, they are also displayed thumbnail size
along with the article front matter so they can be browsed as a kind of
"visual abstract."
Another important element of CORE is that it is based on a large corpus
of highly regarded publications, spanning many subdisciplines within
chemistry. In addition to working out technical problems, CORE was
designed to test user acceptance of network journal delivery in a
variety of formats. A large enough body of material to create more than
a "toy" system was seen as essential to the user testing process.
Perhaps physicists are content with downloading TeK source or
PostScript, but Ginsparg's system will not necessarily translate
smoothly to other disciplines, at least not right away.
Not every group of scholars has the same degree of computing
sophistication, or access to state-of-the-art computing equipment. Not
everyone has ready access and familiarity with Unix workstations or can
afford to replace equipment in order to keep pace with the latest
network fad. For instance, there are still plenty of Macintoshes and PCs
around which cannot run NCSA Mosaic.
I recognize that Ginsparg wants to make every physicist a self-publisher
and believes that his colleagues all share that desire and are equipped
to do so. Perhaps the pervasive use of computers in physics and
established standard of TeK for manuscript preparation makes this
reasonable--for physics. But even physicians, who are, as a group,
wealthy and fairly technically literate, have expressed doubts about
electronic journals. (See, for example, JAMA, May 6, 1992, vol.267,
no.17, p.2374 and The New England Journal of Medicine, Jan. 16, 1992,
vol.326, no. 3, pp.195-97). Some of their concerns focus on the peer
review process, but others focus on the expense of computing equipment,
and lack of format standardization for manuscript generation.
And speaking of medicine, Ginsparg takes a shot at "...dead formats
promoted in general by OCLC." OCLC happens to co-publish (with AAAS) an
electronic journal in medicine, the Online Journal of Current Clinical
Trials. Though I am in no way a spokesperson for OCLC, I am puzzled at
Ginsparg's comments. OCLC has done pioneering work in the creation of de
novo networked electronic journals, most of which is based on TeK and
SGML. These hardly qualify as "dead formats."
Lest I come off sounding like an apologist for the publishing community,
let me make my position clear. As a librarian, I am acutely aware of the
down side of print publishing in terms of cost, distribution, access,
time lag, functionality, space requirements, preservation, etc.
Libraries have been too reluctant to embrace new technologies which
offer potential solutions to some of these problems. But it is also
hardly the case that Ginsparg's system resolves all the myriad issues
involved in the transition from print to electronic publishing and
distribution of scholarly articles. Some of the reticence on the part of
libraries reflects the tremendous flux and lack of standardization in
information technology. One does not throw out a proven, centuries old
system, whatever its flaws and limitations, without solid assurance that
its replacement is a reliable, stable substitute for the long-term.
I am as excited as anyone working in the electronic journal area about
the promise of new technologies. I also recognize that progress towards
network publishing will probably cause upheaval within libraries and
very likely the disappearance of some. Libraries will attempt to find
continuing relevance. Nevertheless, we will not support print publishing
when it ceases to meet the needs of our patrons. In the meantime,
despite the success of Ginsparg's preprint system, more research is
needed in the areas of interface design, organization and classification
of machine-readable files, the creation of machine-readable archives
which will remain accessible for centuries, etc. Even though it is based
on previously published material, CORE is helping to address some of
these thorny issues.
--Richard Entlich
Technical Project Manager
Albert R. Mann Library, Information Technology Section
Cornell University
entlich@cornell.edu
(Note: some of the above comments are based on a talk I gave at the 9th
annual NASIG (North American Serials Interest Group) conference in
Vancouver, BC last month and will subsequently appear in the conference
proceedings.)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:43:13 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Ginsparg's Reply to Entlich
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 94 20:17:21 -0600
From: Paul Ginsparg 505-667-7353 <ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov>
Subject: Re: Entlich Reply to Ginsparg
richard entlich's remarks miss the point. the point i was trying to
make was that garson's examples of electronic involvement were all
irrelevant to the argument at hand, that of cost estimates for true
electronic research distribution, and were just confusing the issues.
i'm eager to see other kinds of publishing efforts that look promising.
i offer the physics and related servers as an example to others who
might want to do something similar; various features clearly will not be
applicable for all communities. others can learn from our mistakes.
(o'donnell's Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science (MIT Press)
will be a most interesting experiment -- to see if they can provide
sufficient "value-added" for which people will voluntarily pay.)
> [Ginsparg's] comments on the CORE (Chemistry Online Retrieval Experiment)
> project are ill-informed. First of all, CORE was not conceived, nor has it
> ever been portrayed as a model for de novo electronic publishing. CORE is a
> retrospective conversion project,
correct, that's precisely why i identified it as irrelevant to the question of
costs of an enterprise that starts electronic from inception.
> Perhaps high energy physicists have no
> interest in anything published more than a few picoseconds ago, but in most
> disciplines, the existing print corpus has ongoing value.
my community accesses the archival database (journals in libraries) as
well as the growing electronic one, never argued otherwise -- not sure
why we're being reviled here. how best to port the archival database to
electronic format is an important question, it is just not relevant to
the issue at hand, as mentioned above. (and this is neither the proper
forum to give an exhaustive technical critique of the "sophisticated X
Window based interface developed by OCLC called Scepter.")
> In addition to working out technical problems, CORE was
> designed to test user acceptance of network journal delivery in a
> variety of formats.
the report i heard from the head librarian at cornell (harvard
"gateways to knowledge" meeting last fall) was that user acceptance was
remarkably low for reasons they did not yet understand.
> Perhaps physicists are content with downloading TeK source or
> PostScript, but Ginsparg's system will not necessarily translate
> smoothly to other disciplines, at least not right away.
that's TeX (the X according to Knuth is a chi, hence the pronunciation).
undoubtedly it won't transfer smoothly, i have no doubt there are many
features peculiar to my community. but we are looking towards the
future and can envision a gradual transition. different communities
will have different standards. perhaps no matter what word-processor is
used, they may be able to choose the final output format (as we
currently choose postscript for some applications): acrobat pdf, sgml,
or some other -- all readily interconvertible. five years from now, the
options for author-prepared documents are guaranted to be dramatically
improved over now; and each generation of more sophisticated software
grows *easier* to use. the point is to start thinking ahead now.
> For instance, there are still plenty of Macintoshes and PCs
> around which cannot run NCSA Mosaic.
not sure i understand this comment. we've got macmosaic running here
on the lowest end mac classic -- probably just means there are some macs
and pc's not connected to the internet because no one installed mactcp
or equivalent. it is true that the windows version of mosaic will not
run on a pc that cannot run windows, but there will always be a mix of
technology at any given time and servers can always provide a lowest common
denominator interface (the systems i set up still allow for equal low-end
e-mail access via dumb terminal and printer).
the important point is that many communities will find self-sufficiency
in their interests, and they will proceed accordingly.
> OCLC happens to co-publish (with AAAS) an electronic journal in medicine,
> the Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials.
yes, this was announced with great fanfare in mid '92. it required
proprietary software that ran on low-end pc's ("for instance there are
still plenty" of high end machines that do not run low-end pc
emulation. in a few years will there be more of these or more "macs and
pcs around which cannot run ncsa mosaic"?) and was far from
state-of-the-art even at the time (i remember discussing this with
representatives of other publishing companies.) after more than half a
year it had published a grand total of only seven submissions (as
reported in Science, another AAAS publication), and was used as the
standard example of how not to proceed. i do not have statistics for
how it is currently faring, but perhaps they have since made
improvements to correct the deficiencies -- might even provide some
solid basis for the 25% vs 75% cost question, but not if they're still
too remote from critical mass.
> OCLC has done pioneering work in the creation of de
> novo networked electronic journals, most of which is based on TeK and
> SGML. These hardly qualify as "dead formats."
as i mentioned in my message to andrew o., as a member of an aps advisory
board i've seen their more recent proposals and while it is inappropriate
to comment in detail here, i can readily affirm that there's nothing
that impacts the issue of costs of publishing scientific vs.
non-scientific material.
> Lest I come off sounding like an apologist for the publishing community,
> let me make my position clear. As a librarian, I am acutely aware of the
> down side of print publishing in terms of cost, distribution, access,
> time lag, functionality, space requirements, preservation, etc.
> Libraries have been too reluctant to embrace new technologies which
> offer potential solutions to some of these problems.
and i am entirely sympathetic to the plight of librarians for whom
committing prematurely to the wrong technology would be a disaster.
and i am sympathetic because i've always been a fan of libraries
and librarians (aren't all academics?) and they're as much victims of
the practices of pub co's as we are.
> But it is also hardly the case that Ginsparg's system resolves all the
> myriad issues involved in the transition from print to electronic
> publishing and distribution of scholarly articles.
no argument.
> Some of the reticence on the part of libraries reflects the tremendous flux
> and lack of standardization in information technology. One does not throw
> out a proven, centuries old system, whatever its flaws and limitations,
> without solid assurance that its replacement is a reliable, stable
> substitute for the long-term.
no argument. this is why it's so much easier for us to test the envelope --
the consequences of failure are less pronounced.
> I am as excited as anyone working in the electronic journal area about
> the promise of new technologies. I also recognize that progress towards
> network publishing will probably cause upheaval within libraries and
> very likely the disappearance of some. Libraries will attempt to find
> continuing relevance.
important issues. and by no means clear at present what will be the
evolving role of libraries (and in particular of university research
libraries which satisfy a wide variety of different needs). perhaps
they will be out of the loop entirely for many aspects of scholarly
research communication, or perhaps they will become the natural local
repositories to organize and serve this information to the rest of the
world. cornell's mann library is clearly ahead of the game in technical
sophistication (i have no problem with that, i got my doctorate from
cornell) so may not be the best short-term model for involvement from
the library community, e.g.:
> the creation of machine-readable archives
> which will remain accessible for centuries, etc. Even though it is based
> on previously published material, CORE is helping to address some of
> these thorny issues.
very few libraries currently have dedicated resources to address these
issues. but in the most optimistic scenario, perhaps this will become
commonplace in a few years and libraries and research communities can
become partners in subversion to their mutual benefit. time will tell.
none of these issues impact the cost distinction between scientific and
non-scientific publication, however, and that was the original issue.
Paul Ginsparg
PS
it is still not clear exactly how things will proceed from community to
community -- harnad's original "subversion" proposal passed to an economist
got back:
>> ... but Harnad is a bit off (at least for econ types). Most of
>> them care less about whether others read their stuff, what is important is
>> publishing because that is what determines salary and promotion (chairs and
>> deans). My guess is that around 2011 his vision will happen and journals
>> will be a thing of the past, and I will be retired.
(c.f. harnad on compos mentis; but also comment a bit off of course for usual
reason that the on-line versions will ultimately receive similar certification
in your scheme and be used [or abused] for allocation of jobs, promotions,
and grant money.)
[SH: Of course Paul's reply is exactly the right one for this
chesnut about promotion credit, etc. It's yet another example
of one of those prima facie questions, so easily answered, that
keeps resurfacing anew somewhere else every time it's laid to
rest...]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract of paper presented at ASIS 1992 SESSIONS ON:
"FULL-TEXT ELECTRONIC ACCESS TO PERIODICALS," sponsored by the
ASIS Special Interest Group on Library Automation and
Networking (SIG/LAN) and the Association of Research Libraries
(ARL) at the 55th ASIS Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh Hilton,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 26-29, 1992. Session II.
Full-Text Electronic Access to Periodicals: Strategies for
Implementation
WHAT SCHOLARS WANT AND NEED FROM ELECTRONIC JOURNALS
Stevan Harnad
It is useful to remind ourselves now and again why scholars and
scientists do what they do, rather than going straight into the junk
bond market: They presumably want to contribute to mankind's cumulative
knowledge. They have to make a living too, of course, but if doing that
as comfortably and prosperously as possible were their primary motive
they could surely find better ways. Prestige no doubt matters too, but
here again there are less rigororous roads one might have taken than
that of learned inquiry. So scholars publish not primarily to pad
their CVs or to earn royalties on their words, but to inform their peers
of their findings, and to be informed by them in turn, in that
collaborative, interactive spiral whereby mankind's knowledge
increases. My own estimate is that the electronic medium has the
potential to extend individual scholars' intellectual life-lines (i.e.,
the size of their lifelong contribution) by an order of magnitude.
For scholars and scientists, paper is not an end but a means. It has
served us well for several millenia, but it would have been suprising
indeed if this man-made medium had turned out to be optimal for all
time. In reality, paper has always had one notable drawback: its
turnaround time. Although it allowed us to encode, preserve and share
ideas and findings incomparably more effectively than we could ever
have done orally, its tempo was always significantly slower than the
oral interactions to which the speed of thought seems to be organically
adapted. Electronic journals have now made it possible for scholarly
publication to escape this rate-limiting constraint of the paper
medium, allowing scholarly communication to become much more rapid,
global and interactive than ever before. It is important that we not
allow the realization of the new medium's revolutionary potential to be
retarded by clinging superstitiously to familiar but incidental
features of the paper medium.
What scholars accordingly need is electronic journals that provide:
(1) rapid, expert peer-review, (2) rapid copy-editing, proofing and
publication of accepted articles, (3) rapid, interactive, peer
commentary, and (4) a permanent, universally accessible, searchable and
retrievable electronic archive. Ideally, the true costs of providing
these services should be subsidized by Universities, Learned Societies,
Libraries and the Government, but if they must be passed on to the
"scholar-consumer," let us make sure that they are only the real costs,
and not further unnecessary ones arising from emulating inessential
features of the old medium.
For scholars and scientists the greatest disadvantage of paper
publication has always been its turnaround time, which is hopelessly
out of phase with the human thought process. Electronic networked
publication now makes it possible for the first time in the history of
learned inquiry to explore the full interactive potential of the human
brain in a medium that provides the discipline, permanence, and quality
control of the peer-reviewed written medium along with the speed, scope
and interactiveness of a "live" global symposium. PSYCOLOQUY is a
refereed electronic journal sponsored by the American Psychological
Association and dedicated to "Scholarly Skywriting": "target articles"
reporting important new ideas and findings followed closely by multiple
peer commentary and authors' responses. It is in its unique capacity
for interactive publication that the revolutionary potential of the new
medium lies rather than in its capacity to duplicate the features of
paper publication in a faster and cheaper form.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 08:44:00 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Familiar prima facie worries...
The following questions from Bill Turner at Cornell Library fall in the
category of "prima facie" worries that get voiced over and over. One
replies to the them, only to hear them resurface somewhere else as
vociferously as ever. There ARE some profound questions about electronic
publishing, but, alas, these are not they! These are questions based
entirely on old papyrocentric thinking and habits. Nothing personal
about Bill! Many, many others have asked the exact same questions. I had
planned to write an article for Serials Review, laying them to rest once
and for all (and still hope to do so, if I ever find the time to for it);
and I carry them around (along with 30 or so further prima facie
questions) on transparencies, ready to fix their wagon every time I
give a talk. So hear goes, for the Nth time...:
> Date: Wed, 06 Jul 94 10:55:33 EDT
> From: Bill Turner - Cornell University Library <wrt@cornellc>
> Status: RO
>
> Steven, I am in agreement with much of what you are saying about
> electronic publishing etc., but I think you (and MANY others) are
> totally ignoring the hard questions about electronic publishing.
>
> Is there a real archive? Is it guaranteed to always be there?
Bill,
Is there a real paper archive, and is it guaranteed to be always there?
If so, why? and who/what underwrites the guarantee? Whatever your
reply in the case of paper, the SAME reply (mutatis mutandis) applies
to electronic archiving. Paper is an object; tapes are objects; disks
are objects. The safest way to protect a flotilla of objects is to make
them redundant, distribute them the world over, and have professionals
(scholars and librarians for the most part, in the case of scholarly
texts) devoted to preserving them for posterity. In the case of
electronic archives, this includes making sure that texts get
transfered with every technology upgrade.
There is absolutely no problem in principle here. Nothing unique to
electronic archiving. And in fact the electronic archive is potentially
much more powerful, efficient, accessible, and inexpensive.
> How do I know that what I have retrieved from the network is what you
> wrote?
How do you know in the case of a paper text? Chicanery is possible there
too. Why don't we worry about it? Well, in the case of esoteric paper
publication (which is the kind I'm interested in) it's rarely of any
interest to anyone to tamper with it, but if it is, it COULD be
protected, at least to the level of the encryption of military secrets:
Is that secure enough?
> If you decide your work contained an error, how do you correct the
> multitude of copies out there?
How do you do it in paper? Publish an erratum or a second edition. The
Net has the virtue of being able to make prominent pointers and links
to other items along a "thread" of scholarship, including errata and
new editions.
Again, no problem WHATSOEVER that is peculiar to electronics over paper;
the instinct that there somehow is is simply a paper-bred illusion.
> If you notice that someone ELSE's work contains errors, how do you do
> anything about it?
Need I go on? What do you do in paper? Do the same (much more
powerfully and efficiently) in the Virtual Library.
> What do you do about malicious mischief?
There ARE some real security problems on the Net. But esoteric
publication is far from being at the greatest risk; encrypted,
distributed, off-loaded archives, faithfully maintained, are probably
more than good enough for scholarship and science except in rare special
cases where even more stringent measures are possible.
> We have a real "caveat emptor" situation being actively pursued by
> people who in some cases have a particular axe to grind (they think
> publishers are getting filthy rich and want to stop it), and they are
> willing to accept great losses so long as the publishers are hurt
> worse.
I know there are some such people, but I am certainly not one of them. I
am quite aware that esoteric scholarly publication is not a gold mine, like
movies and the tabloids. I'm grateful publishers do it; I would just
like to see them adjust to the new, non-trade model that electronic
publishing now makes possible.
> Would you REALLY entrust any critical information to the Internet right
> now? Bill Turner
Please address this to the 20,000 physicists world-wide who are doing
just that, in Paul Ginsparg's Archive, to the tune of 35,000 "hits"
per day! In the past I had had occasion to call much of Usenet a "global
graffiti board for trivial pursuit," but thanks to Paul Ginsparg, plus
the editors of some brave new electronic journals, a portion of
cyberspace is now being carved out where scholars and scientists really
CAN feel secure in entrusting their intellectual wares.
Stevan Harnad
Editor, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, PSYCOLOQUY
Cognitive Science Laboratory
Princeton University
221 Nassau Street
Princeton NJ 08544-2093
harnad@princeton.edu
609-921-7771
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 13:57:57 EDT
Reply-To: Richard Entlich <rentlich@oldal.mannlib.cornell.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Richard Entlich <rentlich@oldal.mannlib.cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: Ginsparg's Reply to Entlich
In-Reply-To: from "Stevan Harnad" at Jul 11, 94 8:43 am
>richard entlich's remarks miss the point. the point i was trying to
>make was that garson's examples of electronic involvement were all
>irrelevant to the argument at hand, that of cost estimates for true
>electronic research distribution, and were just confusing the issues.
Paul Ginsparg's intention may have been as stated above, but part of the
effect was to promulgate a highly misleading description and unjustified
criticism of a project in which I (and many others) have invested several
years. (This accounts for the angry tone of my original response). The
CORE Project is obviously fair game for criticism, but even if that
criticism was a sidebar to Ginsparg's thesis, it should have been based
on fact, not speculation.
>(and this is neither the proper forum to give an exhaustive technical
>critique of the "sophisticated X Window based interface developed by OCLC
>called Scepter.")
Since the technical aspects of the CORE Project were inaccurately
portrayed in this forum, what forum but this should be used to provide
technical details which set the record straight?
Anyone interested in a brief summary and bibliography about the CORE
Project may request one from me at the address given below.
--Richard Entlich
Mann Library, Cornell University
entlich@cornell.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 1994 09:08:22 EDT
Reply-To: Guido Van Garsse AKSES LIBRARY <m8363@eurokom.ie>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Guido Van Garsse AKSES LIBRARY <m8363@eurokom.ie>
Subject: telepublishing
%TO VPIEJ-L@VTVM1
We just finished a marketing & feasibility report on STM networkpublishing
Vol.1: resources analysis
Vol.2: costs and feasibility of STM telepublishing
Vol.3: directory online resources
Vol.4: directory paper resources
Vol.5: directory of existing electronic journals and newsletters
Vol.6: use and need of digital information in special libraries and
documentation centers. Network behavior of libraries and doc centers
We are very much interested in sharing our experiences on network publishing
with other academic and commercial publishers. If you have published any
material on telepublishing, and willing to share it, please contact:
Guido Van Garsse
Akses news library
Parklaan 2
B-9100 Sint Niklaas
Belgium
Tel +32 3 7765063
Fax +32 3 7780785
Guido.Van.Garsse@eurokom.ie
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 08:29:20 EDT
Reply-To: bob jansen <bob.jansen@ditsydh.syd.dit.csiro.au>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: bob jansen <bob.jansen@ditsydh.syd.dit.csiro.au>
Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ere.umontreal.ca> writes
>Good old Hegel has taugh us that the new could come out of the old
>only if it incorporated enough of the old itself to allow its very
>emergence. In other words, moving to the future will require incorporating
>some of the old, and in the case of e-publishing, this means incorporating
>some role for paper.
It is difficult to see, initially, what role paper would have in electronic
publishing. However, I believe the issue is not the role, but the
functionality provided by paper-based technology. Following on from Hegel's
ideas, any EP product requires some functionality of paper-based technology
to ensure that existing readers can continue to associate with the new
medium. This, in my mind, is a major contributor to the
'lost-in-hyperspace' syndrome associated with hypermedia. Readers do not
have access to the complex cognitive cues available in paper-based
technology, cues we are all taught about as part of our education. Looking
back to the early times after Gutenberg, the new movable-type technology
carried forward aspects of manuscript and scroll technology where
appropriate. This has to be the case for EP as well. Where appropriate, the
environment provided to the reader should utilise existing paradigms, but
the problem for the software builder becomes 'when to quit the
paradigm/metaphor because it has become inappropriate'.
One example of this similarity between paper-based and electronic
publishing is the issue of authoring and reading. Many tools on the market
today assume, implicitly, that reading is a subset of authoring. Hence, if
I provide you with the authoring tool, you will be able to read my
document. Simple analysis indicates the falacy of this assumption. Reading
and authoring share common aspects, but reading is not writing. Reading
requires different functions and hence a different tool. How many people
read large amounts of electronic information using microsoft word. It can
be done, I know, but it is not comfortable. For large amounts most of us
would still print it out, because we can associate more favourably with the
paper version that the microsoft word interface. This does not mean the the
Word interface is bad, just that it is inappropriate, it was writen for
writing, not reading.
Given, then the lack of standards for reading, how can we do what Steve
suggests, publish all our work electronically? One way is to develop
conventions for the source data and that is what the TEI innitiative has
been attempting in conjunction with the SGML standard. However, we need to
go further, we need conventions for the functionality of reading
tools/environments.
rgds
bobj
-------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Bob Jansen
Principal Research Scientist, Knowledge-Based Systems
CSIRO Division of Information Technology
Physical: Building E6B, Macquarie University Campus,
North Ryde NSW 2113, AUSTRALIA
Postal: Locked Bag 17, North Ryde NSW 2113, AUSTRALIA
Phone: +612 325 3100 Fax: +612 325 3101
email: jansen@syd.dit.csiro.au
-------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 08:30:00 EDT
Reply-To: RUEDNBRG@NYUACF.BITNET
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Lucia Ruedenberg <ruednbrg@nyuacf.bitnet>
Subject: Announcing: TDR_forum 142
______________________________________________________________________
______ ______ ______
######| ######\ ######\
##| ##| ##\ ##|__##|
##| ##| ##| ######/
##| ##|__##/ ##| ##\
___________________ ##| ######/ ##| ##\_______________________
The Journal of Performance Studies T142 (Summer 1994)
TDR_FORUM ON PERFORM-L
TDR is a quarterly journal that explores the diverse world of performance
with an emphasis on the intercultural, interdisciplinary and experimental.
The TDR_FORUM occurs on Perform-l, a discussion list for Performance
Studies. Every quarter, we focus on one article from TDR's latest issue.
Our discussion for the summer features:
"Shanghai Revisted: Chinese Theatre and the Forces
of the Market" - by David W. Jiang
______________________________________________________________________
______ ______ ______
######| ######\ ######\
##| ##| ##\ ##|__##|
##| ##| ##| ######/
##| ##|__##/ ##| ##\
___________________ ##| ######/ ##| ##\_______________________
The Journal of Performance Studies T142 (Summer 1994)
TDR_FORUM ON PERFORM-L
As many of you know by now...the TDR_FORUM occurs on Perform-l
quarterly to stimulate discussion and exchange with the authors.
This summer we feature the following article:
"Shanghai Revisted: Chinese Theatre and the Forces
of the Market" - by David W. Jiang
David Jiang is a theatre and TV director/actor, who is
educated in Shanghai, China. He was a grantee of the Asian
Cultural Council and a visiting scholar in New York University,
Performance Studies from 1989 to 1991. He is now doing a theatre
research project with the University of Leeds, U.K.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from:
TDR T142 Summer 1994
Shanghai Revisited: Chinese Theatre and the Forces of the Market
David W. Jiang
Summer 1993 in Shanghai, China's biggest city and cultural
center: I had not been there in four years, since I left for
America. I must say, I was impressed by the newly built-high
rises and the vibrant appearance of the business districts, but
when I opened a newspaper all I saw were ads for Hong Kong films,
Taiwan pop stars, night clubs, and of course karaoke. No theatre.
When I walked by theatres I knew full well nothing theatrical was
happening. Box offices were empty, posters advertised everything
but theatre, entrances led to clothing stores, fast food shops,
expensive cafes, discos, and karaokes. Theatres have set up
businesses like these on their premises. Auditoriums were used
for non-theatre events: no rehearsals, no artists. "Call them at
home," the receptionists suggested, "because they never come
here." What happened?
-----------------------------------------------end of excerpt---------
Subscribe to Perform-l by sending e-mail to: mailserv@acfcluster.nyu.edu,
with one line in the body of the msg: sub perform-l yourrealname.
To download Jiang's artictle via anonymous ftp:
ftp acfcluster.nyu.edu,
cd perform
get tdr_jiang.txt.
quit
To get Jiang's article via e-mail:
Send e-mail to: mailserv@acfcluster.nyu.edu
Leave subject blank.
Put only this line, just as it appears, in the letter:
send [anonymous.perform]tdr_jiang.txt
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Direct questions or problems subscribing to the discussion list to:
Lucia Ruedenberg ruednbrg@acfcluster.nyu.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 08:30:24 EDT
Reply-To: David Stodolsky <david@arch.ping.dk>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: David Stodolsky <david@arch.ping.dk>
Subject: Re: telepublishing
In Regards to your letter <199407131337.PAA08190@eunet.EU.net>:
> We are very much interested in sharing our experiences on network publishing
> with other academic and commercial publishers. If you have published any
> material on telepublishing, and willing to share it, please contact:
I would like to see your report.
My paper can be FTPed from:
ftp.EU.net in
~documents/authors/Stodolsky.
Retrieve and examine the file by typing, for example
(characters before and including ":" or ">" indicate machine's prompting for
input):
> ftp ftp.EU.net
login:ftp
password:
ftp> bin
ftp> cd documents/authors/Stodolsky
ftp> get consensus.jour.Z
ftp> bye
> uncompress consensus.jour.Z
> view consensus.jour
An uncompressed version of this article is available by FTP from gorm.ruc.dk in:
~groupware/stodolsky
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Consensus Journals:
Invitational journals based upon peer review
David S. Stodolsky
University of Copenhagen
DK-1130 Copenhagen K
david@arch.ping.dk
Abstract
Computer networks open new possibilities for
scientific communication in terms of
quality, efficiency, and rapidity. Consensus
journals have the economy of invitational
journals and the objectivity of journals
based upon the peer review. That is, all
articles are published and the reader
benefits from article selection based upon
impartial refereeing. An additional benefit
of consensus journals is that the
negotiation process that typically occurs
prior to publication is automated, thus
saving efforts of participants.
Readers submit reviews that evaluate
articles on agreed dimensions. A statistical
procedure is used to identify the most
knowledgeable representative of each
consensus position and these persons are
invited to submit articles that justify the
review judgments they have submitted. A
major advantage of this approach is the
ability to develop reputation without
article publication.
The approach includes a protection mechanism
based upon pseudonyms, which substitutes for
the protection of anonymity typical of
scientific journals. This reduces the
potential for irresponsible behavior and
facilitates reputation development. The
level of quality enhancement is superior to
that achievable with anonymous peer review.
Eliminating the editor and the delay
associated with conventional refereeing
makes message quality enhancement available
in message systems for educational and
business environments.
David S. Stodolsky, PhD Internet: stodolsk@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Peder Lykkes Vej 8, 4. tv. Internet: david@arch.ping.dk
DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark Voice + Fax: + 45 32 97 66 74
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 13:28:39 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Archive of Subversion Discussion
> From: John Merritt Unsworth <jmu2m@jefferson.village.virginia.edu>
> Date: Wed, 13 Jul 1994 18:05:56 -0400 (EDT)
>
> I've put the [subversion] exchange on the gopher server at the Institute:
>
> gopher to jefferson.village.virginia.edu, choose related readings from
> the first menu, choose electronic publishing next, then you'll see it.
> If there's material missing or out of order, let me know; I'll continue
> to update what I've got, if more discussion accrues.
>
> Thanks, John
Hi John,
The discussion of my subversive proposal for accelerating the
transition to electronic scholarly publication seems to have had
something of an impact, so I have archived it all too. I checked your
archive and there are indeed quite a few modules missing from it,
some of them rather important ones. There is a complete archive in:
ftp: princeton.edu//pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/Subversive.Proposal
It's all in one big file (3618 lines) called: archive.NOW
Contributions are separated by a line of "-----------------------"
If you break it up at every "----------------" you will have
every module and can add any further ones you wish to your archive.
Chrs, Stevan
P.S. You can also get to my archive by archie, gopher, www, etc. Many
pointers and paths.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad
Editor, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, PSYCOLOQUY
Cognitive Science Laboratory
Princeton University
221 Nassau Street
Princeton NJ 08544-2093
harnad@princeton.edu
609-921-7771
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 16:24:47 EDT
Reply-To: Margaret E Sokolik <msokolik@uclink.berkeley.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Margaret E Sokolik <msokolik@uclink.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Seeking info. on language-related MUDs, MOOs, etc.
TESL-EJ, a fully refereed journal for English as a Second Language and
language acquisition is seeking information describing language-related
cyberspace on the Internet. If you have a MUD, MOO, WWW pages, gopherspace,
or other archived information relevant to language education, and a
well-written description of what is contained in it, please contact me.
For example, in our first issue, we featured an article describing Project
Gutenberg, with information on access. In our upcoming issue, we will
publish a description of pedagogically-oriented (Microsoft) files that
integrate voice recording.
Please contact me directly.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Maggi Sokolik, Editor
TESL-EJ
msokolik@uclink.berkeley.edu
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 08:41:37 EDT
Reply-To: Imagine more!!! <beyret@hisar.cc.boun.edu.tr>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Imagine more!!! <beyret@hisar.cc.boun.edu.tr>
Subject: A new and different e-journal!!!...Writership Invitation.. (fwd)
Hi Everybody!
I'd like to inform you about a new electronic journal held by students
of Bogazici University in Istanubl,Turkiye.
This is such a journal that is published by its readers.I mean that
people all over the world can send their articles to be published in it.
The name for that kind of journal could only be,of course," Imagination ".
If you read the rest of this mail you will see that it really deserves this
name.
One of our aims is to create another cooperation environment for people
all over the world.Cooperation will be in publishing Imagination ,discussing
numerous actual subjects,yielding alternative solutions for a lot of problems,
for example the environmental problems and of course making use of our
imagination.We believe that cooperation is the best thing in bringing
individuals more closer to eachother and understand more eachother.
Another aim is to yield an environment on which students,professor and
companies can meet and work together to add new developments to Science
and Technology.
So,every kind of advise,critic and idea are welcome for publishing and
for other areas.
Here are the departments and brief information about eachother.As I said
before,you can tell me your thoughts about any of them and even you can tell
me to forget it and go for another one.For more detailed info,you can try
Bogazici Gopher(gopher.boun) or Bogazici WWW.
Forum
An environment in which actual subjects are discussed internationally.
Inventions&Inventors
Our time's inventors can introduce us themselves and their inventions.
Lighting Bulb
An environment on which individuals who have a light idea but
unfortunately not enough opportunity(financial or equipmental)to
implement it and companies or other individuals who'd like to sponsor
such an idea can meet each other and work together.Your dreams
can be truth!!
Research&Cooperation
An environment on which students,professors and experts of different
countries can meet each other to cooperate for a period,for example a
month,to find solutions for various problems of,for example,a company or
environmental problems using their knowledge,experiences,skills and of
course imagination.It is like a project contest that is held by
groups built up individuals of differrent nations,status and
disciplines.At the end of the period the proposals will be published in
Imagination and the best team will be selected.
Fiction Stories
Your short imaginative stories can appear at this department
Organizations Board
News from latest organizations,when,where and how?Call for papers.
Astronomy&Space Research
Interesting events occur at Space,news about space researches and short
stories related with astronomy coming from your imagination.
Environment
Articles of environmental problems.Latest news.
Employment Opprtunities
Virtual Reality
Artificial Intelligence
Electronics
Business
Culture
Art&Media
.
.
.
If you'd like to join us to create such an imaginative journal send
me an e-mail.
If you have any questions about anything feel free to ask me.All
you have to do is just send an e-mail to:
beyret@vs6410.cc.boun.edu.tr
Ersin Beyret
Imagination
Bogazici University
Istanbul/TURKIYE.
James Powell ... Library Automation, University Libraries, VPI&SU
1-4986 ... JPOWELL@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU
... jpowell@borg.lib.vt.edu - NeXTMail welcome here
... Owner of VPIEJ-L, a discussion list for Electronic Journals
Archives: http://borg.lib.vt.edu:80/ gopher://oldborg.lib.vt.edu:70/
file://borg.lib.vt.edu/~ftp
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 08:41:58 EDT
Reply-To: amo@research.att.com
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: amo@research.att.com
Subject: Revised version of "Tragic loss of good riddance ..."
A revised version of my essay, "Tragic loss or good riddance? The
impending demise of traditional scholarly journals" is now available.
This revision consists of a condensed version, to be submitted for
publication in Notices AMS, and a full version, with all the data
and arguments.
The new version can be accessed through Mosaic at URL
ftp://netlib.att.com/netlib/att/math/odlyzko/tragic.loss.Z
For those without access to Mosaic, ftp access is available on machine
netlib.att.com. After logging in as "anonymous" and giving the full
email address as password, do
cd netlib/att/math/odlyzko
binary
get tragic.loss.Z
to obtain a copy of the (compressed) version.
To obtain the revision through email, send the message
send tragic.loss from att/math/odlyzko
to netlib@research.att.com. The (uncompressed) that that will be
send is 194 KB. If your mailer cannot handle large files, include
in your message the line
mailsize 40k
if you wish the revision to be sent in chunks of at most 40 KB, say.
Andrew Odlyzko
AT&T Bell Laboratories
amo@research.att.com
James Powell ... Library Automation, University Libraries, VPI&SU
1-4986 ... JPOWELL@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU
... jpowell@borg.lib.vt.edu - NeXTMail welcome here
... Owner of VPIEJ-L, a discussion list for Electronic Journals
Archives: http://borg.lib.vt.edu:80/ gopher://oldborg.lib.vt.edu:70/
file://borg.lib.vt.edu/~ftp
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 1994 08:27:24 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Paying for the Pipe vs. the Piper in Esoteric Publishing
Below is a draft of a paper by Bernard Naylor, Director of the
University of Southampton Library and much involved in the future of
journal publication in the UK, annotated with comments by me. Further
discussion is invited. -- Stevan Harnad
> From: "Bernard Naylor" <b.naylor@soton.ac.uk>
> Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 17:30:01 BST
>
> THE FUTURE OF THE SCHOLARLY JOURNAL
>
> Paper delivered to the general meeting of LIBER on Thursday 7 July 1994
>
> CLEARING THE GROUND
>
> Bernard Naylor
> University of Southampton
>
> Before entering onto the main substance of this paper, it will be useful to
> clear the ground on a number of points.
>
> The first thing to remember is that publishing journals is a large
> international industry. Much of the content of journals is brought to
> fruition in universities, and universities are prominent buyers of the
> ultimate product. What goes on in between is an industry. The shares of
> journal publishing companies and subscription agents are quoted on the
> Stock Exchange. Journal publishing companies draw up accounts which
> reveal profits and losses. They raise capital for new ventures. In the
> final analysis, they know that unless they trade profitably, they will
> end up in liquidation.
The possibilities opened up by electronic scholarly publishing allow us
to make finer distinctions: There's (1) trade publishing; then there's
(2) trade scholarly publishing; then there's (3) "esoteric" (no market)
scholarly publishing, which until now has also had to be treated on the
trade model, but now this is no longer true. The trade model is the
selling of the author's words; both publisher and author expect to make
some money from this. In esoteric publishing, where there is virtually
no market for the author's words, the trade model has continued to be
applied because paper (and its attendant sizeable expenses) offered no
alternative. Electronic-only publication (at less than 25% of the cost
of paper publication) offers a radical alternative. The author, his
learned societies, institutions and grants pay these much lower per-page
expenses and the words are then available to all for free. This is also in
agreement with the motivational structure of esoteric publication,
where the scholar/scientist's main interest is in reaching the eyes and
minds of his peers in cumulative, collaborative research, not in making
revenue from the sale of his words.
> Some academic publishers take a longer term and less commercial view of
> their operations, but their constraints are getting tighter, too. Some
> societies have hived off their journals to commercial companies, either
> to be rid of the administrative burden, or with the object of
> generating increased income. Sponsoring institutions also take a much
> less indulgent view about the spending of the institution's money on a
> journal, for example by the provision of administrative support in the
> office of a teaching department. Where they might once have done this
> just for the prestige, now they are more likely to demand financial
> compensation.
>
> If we are speculating about the future of the journal, we are also
> anticipating change in the industry. Large international industries do
> not make radical change tidily, and fortunes can be made and lost in
> the process. I cannot think of any industry which has successfully
> restructured itself solely as a result of customers (which is what we
> librarians are) sitting round tables and talking about their problems.
> So, while I think that exchanges of views among players in the journals
> industry are very much needed at the present time, I do not expect
> miracles of readjustment to flow from them.
Libraries may be the paying customers, but the real consumers (and also
the producers) of esoteric publications are the scholars themselves.
Libraries have been hostages in the Faustian bargain scholars have had to
make with paper publishers in order to reach the eyes and minds of their
fellow-scholars. Libraries are now much better advised to ally
themselves with those scholars, forming consortia to help pay in
advance the much reduced per-page costs of electronic publication, with
the product then available for free to all, rather than inadvertently
prolonging the status quo by merely readjusting the trade model to
which publishers will no doubt cling until forced to adopt the
advance-subsidy model out of necessity.
> The second introductory point concerns the number of players in the
> journals industry, librarians, publishers, serials agents, document
> delivery services, writers, editors, users of journals. Some players do
> more than one thing. Writers of articles are usually readers of
> journals. Blackwells is an agent and a publisher. CARL is a document
> delivery service based on libraries. The result of this is some
> confusion of roles. Obviously, the players do not all have identical
> interests. A particularly interesting question is: who are journals
> published for? Is it for librarians who buy them but rarely read them?
> Is it for library users, who curse if they are cancelled, but have
> little financial stake in the purchasing process? Is it for writers
> (usually themselves library users also) who want to see their work in
> print because of the academic prestige attached - and even though they
> may suspect that very few people will ever read it? Journal publishing
> clearly is an industry but in some respects it is a very strange
> industry.
Your last alternative is closest to the truth for esoteric publication.
This has been irrelevant in paper-only days, because the true costs
simply made it impossible to adapt to the true motivational structure of
esoteric publication. Now this is at last possible, and science and
scholarship will be much better served once the need for the requisite
restructuring is recognized and met.
But, again, issues are confused if one mixes apples and oranges. What
is appropriate for ESOTERIC scientific and scholarly writing (and
that's a huge chunk of the literature) is not appropriate for trade
scientific and scholarly writing, where there really is and always has
been money to be made for both author and publisher from the sale of
the text, because there really is a large market of readers willing to
pay for it.
> My third introductory point concerns the complexity of the journals
> problem. There are some features, copyright for example, which are
> worth a whole series of lectures in themselves. Every debate on the
> future of journals risks foundering on interventions like: "yes, but
> you have forgotten to mention such a thing". I propose to concentrate
> mainly on two factors, the economics of the situation and the impact of
> technology. This is for two reasons. First, because I think they are,
> in the final analysis, the most important, and secondly, because the
> other problems are often produced or intensified by these two. For
> example, the problems of copyright often arise because of activities
> libraries get up to in respect of journals to which they cannot afford
> to subscribe or because of the remarkable opportunities opened up by
> information technology - opportunities which many journal publishers
> regard as threats to their ownership of copyright.
It is a foregone conclusion that copyright is a very different matter
in the trade model -- where it is assigned to the publisher to protect
him and the author from "theft of intellectual property" -- as compared
to the esoteric model, where subsidies are paid so the property can
reach as many interested peers as possible, with no arbitrary and
counterproductive price-tag acting as a barrier to access.
Needless to say, if they contributed to up-front subsidy of electronic
page charges (for free-for-all acquisitions), libraries would save vastly
over anything they could hope for on the trade model -- in paper, because
of its true [but now unnecessary] expenses, and in a pay-per-view or
similar electronic system where the price-barrier would be artificially
re-introduced, needlessly raising prices for all, while at the same time
blocking rather than promoting access to the esoteric work, which is what,
after all, is the purpose of esoteric publication.
> ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE JOURNALS PROBLEM
>
> There are many ways of looking at the economic aspects of the journal
> problem. Let me get one of them out of the way to begin with. In all
> the conflicts about the cost of journals, I have little time for the
> demonising of any of the parties to the conflict. Some publishers are
> no doubt wicked profiteers, just as a few (but very few) librarians are
> cavalier about the rights of copyright owners. On the whole, I think
> publishers want to make a decent living like most people in an
> industry, and some of the economic problems of dwindling circulation
> lists and price increases which continually exceed the rise in the
> retail price index are problems they would prefer to do without if only
> they thought they could.
I agree that it's absurd to treat scholarly publishers as villains: They
could obviously do much better in tabloids, best-sellers or movies. But
they ARE linked to the status quo, just as tobacco producers are, and
only necessity will be the mother of invention on their part. I am
grateful that they are willing to publish learned work rather than more
money-making stuff, but my gratitude tapers off as their interests come
into conflict with those of (esoteric) scholars. In libraries they have
the kind of "inelastic" demand that produces price spirals and even the
kind of situation in which a virus is so effective that it causes the
extinction of both itself and its host. Electronic-only publication now
offers a path out of this cycle; publishers will only adapt to that new
path if they are forced to take it. If I were them, I too would
probably want to preserve the trade model and the status quo for as
long as possible.
> I therefore need to restate the economic problem, and I present it,
> first, as follows:
>
> "The scholarly community in general and academic Libraries in
> particular cannot at present afford as much scholarly communication of
> a print-on-paper kind as they would like."
>
> Economists would probably say there is an excess of supply over demand,
> and it was one of those economists who identified the journals problem
> in those terms, and asked me in a rather exasperated way: "Then why are
> prices going up instead of down?"
Simple answer: The wrong people are being taken to be the "consumers,"
by analogy with trade publication: The consumers are authors, their
institutions, societies and research grants. What they are consuming is
a "public address" (PA) system that allows them to influence the minds
and work of their intended readership, present and future. When paper
was the only option, we had to pretend this was not so, as if the
intended readers were the consumers. (They never were the real
consumers, of course; libraries and universities, their proxies,
subsidized their consumership by paying for paper journals.)
Remedy this topsy-turvy situation, now that the vastly reduced expenses
and vastly enhanced reach of electronic publication makes this
possible, by paying for esoteric publication where it makes sense: Up
front. Then prices will indeed go down instead of up, as more and more
information is produced.
> One answer undoubtedly is that demand for journals is quite a funny
> concept in economic terms. Normally, we associate demand for a product
> with the economic power to purchase it. Most managers of academic
> libraries do not themselves demand journals; the demand comes more from
> their users who do not have to pick up the bills. This is a potent
> factor in the way that supply and demand in the journals industry
> operates. I could therefore try a further restatement of the economic
> problem in the following terms:
In other words, scholarly publication is ALREADY subsidized: Electronic
publication now makes it possible to recoup the greatly reduced true
costs at the logical point -- the (negligible) price of using the PA
system -- instead of the absurd one of a subsidized (and largely
nonexistent) esoteric readership.
> "The scholarly community in general would like more scholarly
> communication of a print-on-paper kind but academic libraries consider
> that they cannot afford it from their present resources and have often
> been unable to achieve the increase in resources necessary to afford
> it."
Like publishers, the scholarly community will only become more
imaginative and inventive under the pressure of necessity. Their reading
is now subsidized; all they do is lobby libraries for their favorite
esoteric lore. If they could have their fill from an electronic source,
they would no longer press for the paper and its attendant limits.
> If there is an excess of supply over demand in the journals industry,
> and there seems no prospect of an increase in demand, the obvious
> alternative is that supply ought to fall. However, whichever way you
> look at it, supply is tending to increase. We are getting more articles
> in our existing journals. We are getting more new journals - though old
> ones are dying too. All this should be evidence of burgeoning demand;
> and so it is, but demand from the users of journals rather than their
> purchasers, the libraries. The normal self-readjusting tension between
> supply and demand fails to operate.
And, per-(esoteric)-article, those users are precious few! If many
(unrelated, uninteresting) articles were not artificially drawn together
into issues and volumes, the constituency for any given (esoteric)
article would have no clout at all (the average article in SCI is cited
by no one and read by not many more). The solution is not to keep
thinking of it all the old, trade-based way but to do the requisite
perestroika: The real consumers are the "suppliers" -- the authors and
their institutions, etc. The real costs of publication is electronic are
much lower. So the literature could afford to keep growing if these true
minimal costs were simply shifted to those in whose interests it is that
they should be paid. It is in Universities' interests that their scholars
should publish. If page-charges were part of their research grants or
even their salaries, we could afford to let an unlimited number of
flowers bloom, with their individual cultivators paying the minimal
expenses of displaying them to all, and all scholars being the
benificiaries (when they swap their esoteric-authors' hats for their
esoteric-readers' hats).
> In effect, we have looked at two possible responses to the mismatch
> between supply and demand. One is to increase demand - but libraries
> cannot seem to get more money. The other is to reduce supply - but it
> is increasing. A third would be to reduce costs - but costs too are
> increasing. So cancelling subscriptions is very understandable, and
> many economists would see it as tending to remedy the mismatch between
> supply and demand. Unfortunately, the whole situation is so untypical
> that the librarians' response has so far shown few signs of putting
> things right.
Costs may be increasing in paper, but certainly not in electronic-only
publication: They are shrinking, and will continue to do so as the
software and hardware for the global virtual library continues to be
developed.
> JUST IN TIME AND JUST IN CASE
>
> Another noteworthy thing about journals as a product is that you can
> consume journals in one of two ways. The normal way we consume journals
> is by subscribing to them. We can also consume them by ordering
> individual journal articles from document delivery services. This is
> not unique to journals. Some people do not own cars but can
> nevertheless avail themselves of motorised transport. They can hire a
> self-drive car or take a taxi. The car owner has made a "just in case"
> purchase; he spends because he has a general expectation of his needs.
> The hired car or taxi user is a "just in time" consumer; he spends
> because he has a precise and immediate need.
Both models are inappropriate -- whether journal-subscription or
pay-per-view, the price-tag interposed between author and reader is
completely at odds with the true motivational structure of (esoteric)
scholarship and science.
> It is now becoming clear to me that the future of the journal involves
> a battle over "just in case" and "just in time" in the journals
> industry. Like the consumer who does not want to afford to own a car
> and falls back on "just in time" car hire, the librarian who cannot
> afford to subscribe to a journal "just in case", falls back on "just in
> time" provision, that is from a document delivery service. We may care
> to note, in passing that, in a user service environment, "just in time"
> is usually more accurately described as "just too late". The user
> normally would like something at the time of asking and the delay while
> the document is delivered may be acceptable but is usually second
> best.
Catchy as they have become, neither option is optimal, and they do not
cover the true options: subsidized, free-for-all electronic publication
is a third way (and should perhaps be seen as "just in case" for as all:
writers and readers).
> The more important thing is this. The "just in time" car user makes a
> fairly realistic contribution towards the cost of the product; he pays
> the car hire firm or the taxi driver. By contrast, the "just in time"
> journal user makes a very poor contribution - but the contribution is
> increasing as document delivery services increasingly collect royalties
> on behalf of the owners of the journals from which they supply copies.
> Royalties are not liked by librarians but they do make for a more
> realistic choice for the consumer between "just in time" and "just in
> case". They also help to ensure that the "just in time" approach does
> not irretrievably damage the financial viability of the product on
> which it is dependent.
All old, papyrocentric ways of looking at things, unfortunately.
> As we all know, document delivery services are improving dramatically
> at the present time, and it looks as though information technology will
> allow further improvements. I have already referred to document supply
> as an example of "just too late" provision. With improvements in
> networking and in the terminals available to end users, and with the
> advances in such technologies as CD-ROM, it is becoming increasingly
> possible to take journals in electronic form, either by subscription,
> or by the purchase of individual articles as required. There is an
> increasing number of experiments taking place. Some publishers are
> offering electronic versions of their journals, alongside the
> traditional product. Some are pursuing new service concepts, in such
> experiments as ADONIS, TULIP and RED SAGE. Some are launching entirely
> new journals in the electronic medium only, such as PSYCOLOQUY. The
> number of those is growing steadily but from a very small base. Some
> document supply services - and CARL is the obvious example - are making
> increasing use of fax. The overall effect is that the tardiness of
> document supply looks like a diminishing factor. Libraries and end
> users feel increasingly confident that document supply services will
> soon be able to meet their needs quickly enough - at a price.
Something very basic is being lost in mixing apples and oranges like
this. Some of these "delivery" systems are hybrid and trade-based, just
like paper, and charge admission to the reader; others are not, and
apply their much lower expenses for quality control, distribution and
archiving in the form of an up-front subsidy, with resulting free
delivery to all! The implications are radically different -- one a
minor improvement on the status quo, the other a radical restructuring
of the means of production and access to (esoteric) knowledge.
> CONTINGENT FACTORS
>
> This welcome trend contains lots of problematical factors and I ought to
> enumerate some of them.
>
> There are technical problems. Can the networks cope with the
> bandwidth? The answer seems to be "yes" as long as we are talking of a
> few experiments, but "possibly not" if we are thinking of this as a
> heavily-used technique. Can the end user terminals cope with the
> bandwidth? The answer is "by no means all of them", and for the time
> being a terminal adequate to present high resolution illustrations is
> more expensive than a standard terminal for word-processing and spread
> sheets. Are the formats for articles satisfactorily standardised? No.
> Are there outstanding questions about user interfaces? Most certainly.
> The trouble-free transmission of journal articles of all kinds and in
> large numbers is still technically some way in the future.
No insoluble problems here, and again necessity will be the mother of
invention. Once an irreversible commitment to electronic-only delivery of
esoteric scholarship is made, the hardware, user-friendliness,
familiarity, channel capacity and standardization will all follow suit.
There are no problems of principle here.
> Then there are the financial problems. In principle, one copy of a
> journal in Boston Spa or Hanover can feed photocopies of articles to
> every library there is, and the price the user would pay at present is
> mainly one of delay. With technical advance, one electronic copy of a
> journal could satisfy the world, and delay would be minimal or nil. So
> far, the way of paying for such a development has not emerged. Indeed,
> plenty of people are not sure it needs to be paid for. They believe
> "the age of the free lunch" has really arrived. I think a way will be
> found to enable people to pay in advance "just in case" for electronic
> journals as they do for printed ones. There are examples such as CD-ROM
> and the BIDS services, launched in recent years in the UK, which can
> help us to sort this out. I also believe that some system of licensing
> users will impose the necessary controls to protect revenue.
I hope I have provided some support for my view that this may not be the
right way to conceptualize the true cost or demand structure, or how to
accommodate it optimally.
> Questions of copyright are tightly bound up with the financial
> problems. I can remember the days when photocopies were spewed slowly
> and wetly from a foul smelling chemical sink - and nobody attached any
> importance to copyright, because it was very difficult to contravene to
> any significant extent. Copyright became a serious issue with the
> growing ease of photocopying. With the lightning ease of electronic
> transfer, the serious issue has become a potential nightmare for a
> publisher interested in protecting copyright, and by implication his
> revenue stream. So far, we are barely at the stage of defining the
> issues sufficiently clearly to suggest a blueprint for a possible
> solution.
But what about the AUTHOR? Is HE worried about all the people
photo-copying or electronically retrieving his work, or is he happy
about it? Remember, this is an esoteric author who is not and has never
made or expected REVENUE from all those little-read papers of his. In
the old, Faustian days, his choice was to accept the Faustian pact (of
allowing access to his work only to paid ticket-holders) because that
was the only way to reach an audience AT ALL. But now that there is
another option, it's time to rethink all of this (as I've argue, for
example, in Harnad 1994).
The usual red herring that is introduced in copyright laws plays on the
author's fear of plagiarism; but this has NOTHING to do with copyright as
used to deter unpaid readers. There are other, better ways to protect one's
work from plagiarism (especially in the Virtual Library, with it's all
powerful search/retrieve/compare tools) than by assigning copyright to a
publisher so he can block non-ticket-holders at the door....
> An increase in dependence on photocopied articles has made some people
> question whether the journal or the journal part will survive as a unit
> of publication. It is suggested that the individual article,
> identified through an indexing or abstracting service and obtained
> through a document delivery service, is now the focal point. However,
> the demand for journals of a traditional kind continues among library
> users, and I hear a great deal from ordinary library users in defence
> of browsing, or rather in enthusiastic advocacy of browsing, enough to
> satisfy me that it has to be taken seriously and allowed for, if
> possible. To my mind, the forecast that the individual article as
> publishing unit would rise in triumph, like a phoenix, from the ashes
> of the dead journal, was more fashionable a year or two ago than it is
> now.
I'm afraid I completely disagree. Journals will continue to exist
(because they are a sensible way of taxonomizing the literature by
subject matter and by the level of quality control [peer review] that
their contents have undergone), but the pertinent "item" will of course
be the article -- and there will of course be no need for date-locked
issues in which an arbitrary set of apples and oranges co-appear: The
year-number and journal-name will be a sufficient first cut. The rest
will be done by sophisticated search/retrieval tools and archiving
links and pointers.
> The last point I want to make in this section of my paper concerns the
> question of how the great abundance of conventional printed journals
> will decline and disappear. Our own behaviour and the behaviour our
> users expect of us suggest that the least popular journals will be
> replaced first, because those are the ones we cancel and for which we
> first come to depend on modern methods of document supply. This makes
> the exciting new technology a crutch for our weakness rather than a
> banner for our ambitions for the future, a strange role indeed. What
> does look certain is that secondary source periodicals, such as
> indexing and abstracting tools, in printed form, are in terminal
> decline. Otherwise, the broad image of the future shape of events is
> still surprisingly unclear.
This unfortunately takes the status quo for granted. Electronic-only
publication is for ALL of the (esoteric) scholarly/scientific literature,
and within that medium the rest can be taken care of by the quality
control mechanisms (peer review) and reader preferences.
> REBIRTH OF THE JOURNAL
>
> In addressing the economic aspects of the journal problem, I have
> slipped imperceptibly into talking about technology. I now embark on a
> more formal discussion of technology from one significant aspect. Let
> us imagine, if we can, that the potential of the network had emerged in
> a setting where the exchange of knowledge was not already underpinned
> by a host of printed journals. What do we observe on the network? We
> can see people informally exchanging information in the most natural
> way. We can see this process being organised into discussion groups so
> that people with common interests can have readier access to one
> another's views.
So far, the amount of quality control on the Net is negligible. The Net
began as a Global Graffiti Board for Trivial Pursuit (as I've had
occasion to call it) because it was put together mostly by hackers and
students, rather than by scientists and scholars; it is a mistake,
though, to assume that this initial anarchy is something intrinsic to
the medium. There is plenty of room in the skyways for unconstrained
discussion as well as a rigorously peer-reviewed literature -- plus
everything in between. In particular, everything that was possible in
paper can be duplicated on the Net (including, if anyone really wants
it, lie-in-bed, leafable, virtual magazines and books).
> We can see a controversy starting to emerge as to whether the flow of
> knowledge should be entirely unmoderated or whether there should be
> some discipline and some prior assessment of the value of each
> contribution. We can sense increasing concern about the sheer exuberant
> volume of communication. How can we be sure we are not missing
> something significant? How can we avoid being swamped by masses of
> trivia and irrelevant detail?
The medium that generated the information glut is also the best means of
managing it. Tools are being developed for navigating the anarchy:
dynamic filters, set to search for and include/exclude whatever the user
specifies, based on header tags as well as content analysis. You could
receive everything on everything, or only the top 3 refereed journals of
ornithology.
> We can already notice anxieties about the
> economic future of this massive information flow. For now, it is all
> happening for nothing, but persistent rumours about charging for the
> Internet at the point of use refuse to lie down. We can hear some
> people saying that a policy of charging for access to information over
> the Internet would simply be a sensible mechanism for securing the
> future of this medium of communication. We can hear other voices saying
> that freedom of information means that access to information should be
> free and that the chance to implement such a radical proposal is with
> us now. We can also identify the demand that the system should have a
> means of clearly fixing each intellectual contribution to the exchange,
> so that there is no argument about who said something, what they
> actually said and whether they can establish a claim to be the first to
> say it.
We have to distinguish "public access radio" uses of the Internet (the
Global Graffiti Board) from its use for esoteric scholarship. Commercial
and Dilettante-Chat-Group uses will eventually have to pay their way
(one of the biggest current bandwidth-gobblers is porno-graphics), and
that will be no great loss to anyone; but esoteric science and
scholarship will be but a flea on the tail of that dog, and all would be
better served if it continued to get a free ride in perpetuum.
> The interesting thing to me in all this is that I can see history
> repeating itself. In the early growth of scientific communication, and
> in the appearance of the first scientific journals, we can see some of
> these same important considerations asserting themselves, especially
> the individual's desire to establish the primacy of his or her
> discovery, and the role of the peer group in establishing the authority
> of a medium of communication and in assessing the intellectual value of
> a particular finding or report, before it is promulgated. As the
> history of the journal has developed, we can see the same
> considerations about the importance of scientific communication as a
> social process coming to the surface. There is a kind of special irony
> in the fact that, as the printed journal is today trying to face up to
> the difficult challenges of its uncertain financial future, the
> electronic equivalent is already posing the question: how can we ensure
> that, as a medium of communication, it can serve its purposes, and, at
> the same time, pay for itself?
I will be interested to hear your views on quality control (this paper
was mostly about the economics).
> CONCLUSION
>
> I therefore see two convergent developments taking place as a result of
> the availability of electronic networks. In the first, I can see the
> possibility that electronic networks will remove most of the delay
> involved in the "just in time" provision of journal articles. This
> process has already raised questions about the nature of the journal,
> why articles are bundled together in the way they are, and whether a
> new communication technology will provoke radical change. In the
> second, I can see a new parallel process of knowledge communication
> growing up; and the present signs are that it is tentatively moving
> towards operating conventions which strongly echo the conventions of
> the traditional print-on-paper product.
I think it's simpler than this: The Net has opened up some remarkable
possibilities -- for example, interactive ones -- that are not available
in any other medium, and they will develop and flourish. But in addition
to that, it has made it possible to take over completely the scholarly and
scientific literature that has so far appeared only in refereed paper
journals, and in doing so to emulate all of its pertinent properties,
prominently improving on only one of them: It will no longer be necessary
to apply the entirely inappropriate trade model (with the price tag it
interposes between text and reader) to esoteric scholarly and scientific
work. Accessibility will be free for all scholars and will be augmented
by powerful and sophisticated search and retrieval tools as well as the
resource that is entirely unique to the Net: Interactive publication (peer
commentary and response on both the refereed and unrefereed literature).
> As for how quickly these changes will take place, I would first say
> that it is likely to vary from subject to subject. Having said that, I
> am very mindful of the so-called millenial religious sects. From time
> to time the end of the world, like the end of the printed journal, is
> prophesied. So far, it has never come about and so we tend to laugh at
> further such predictions. Some people say that the world will never
> end, just as they say the printed journal will always be with us. They
> could be right but on the whole I don't believe them. Whether I will
> be around to see them being proved wrong, I wouldn't like to predict.
>
> Bernard Naylor Southampton July 1994
I make no specific predictions either. But I hope that if the growing
number of free peer-reviewed electronic journals is not sufficient to
make the paper cards fall, then perhaps something like my subversive
proposal -- that all scholars in all disciplines should make their preprints
(and then their refereed reprints) available in public ftp/http archives
starting NOW -- will help bring them down.
Best wishes, Stevan
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad
Editor, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, PSYCOLOQUY
Cognitive Science Laboratory
Princeton University
221 Nassau Street
Princeton NJ 08544-2093
The following file is retrievable from directory pub/harnad/Harnad on
host princeton.edu
Harnad, S. (1994) Implementing Peer Review on the Net:
Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals. Proceedings
of International Conference on Refereed Electronic Journals: Towards
a Consortium for Networked Publications. University of Manitoba,
Winnipeg 1-2 October 1993 (in press)
FILENAME: harnad94.peer.review
ABSTRACT: Electronic networks have made it possible for scholarly
periodical publishing to shift from a trade model, in which the author
sells his words through the mediation of the expensive and inefficient
technology of paper, to a collaborative model, in which the much lower
real costs and much broader reach of purely electronic publication are
subsidized in advance, by universities, libraries, and the scholarly
societies in each specialty. To take advantage of this, paper
publishing's traditional quality control mechanism, peer review, will
have to be implemented on the Net, thereby recreating the hierarchies
of journals that allow authors, readers, and promotion committees to
calibrate their judgments rationally -- or as rationally as traditional
peer review ever allowed them to do it. The Net also offers the
possibility of implementing peer review more efficiently and equitably,
and of supplementing it with what is the Net's real revolutionary
dimension: interactive publication in the form of open peer commentary
on published work. Most of this "scholarly skywriting" likewise needs
to be constrained by peer review, but there is room on the Net for
unrefereed discussion too, both in high-level peer discussion forums to
which only qualified specialists in a given field have read/write
access and in the general electronic vanity press.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 1994 08:28:39 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Odlyzko's Comments on Naylor
From: amo@research.att.com (Andrew Odlyzko)
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 16:48 EDT
Stevan,
As usual, I largely agree with your comments on the Naylor paper.
However, I would like to make a couple of points.
1. You say:
>I agree that it's absurd to treat scholarly publishers as villains: They
>could obviously do much better in tabloids, best-sellers or movies. But
>they ARE linked to the status quo, just as tobacco producers are, and
>only necessity will be the mother of invention on their part. I am
>grateful that they are willing to publish learned work rather than more
>money-making stuff, but my gratitude tapers off as their interests come
>into conflict with those of (esoteric) scholars. ...
There is no evidence that publishers would be much better off
publishing "tabloids, best-sellers or movies." Scholarly publishing is
carried out by the commercial publishers and many nonprofit ones
because it is profitable. (The profits of the nonprofit publishers are
not called that, but they do exist, and are substantial in many cases.)
In fact, I would not be surprised if the profits in scholarly journals
were higher than in tabloids, since there is less competition and much
greater barriers to entry. (One of the reasons that ethical drug
companies are so much more profitable than the typical industrial
companies is that government safety regulation requires huge
investments and long lead times before a new drug can be marketed.
In publishing investments are not huge, but it takes a while for
a journal to reach a reasonable level of subscribers.)
2. The arguments in favor of "just in time," often known as
"pay-per-view," do have validity. However, as I argue in the long
version of my essay, this method cannot possibly succeed in esoteric
scholarly publishing (at least not with today's high costs) because of
the prohibitively high prices that would be involved. A typical
copyright fee that publishers print in some journals seems to be in the
range of $ 5-10, and scholars are upset by this. However, if an article
costs $ 4,000 to produce, as I estimate, then you would need to find
400 to 800 scholars willing to pay for it just to recover the costs. I
don't see that as realistic for the overwhelming majority of esoteric
scholarly publications.
Best regards, Andrew
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 16:11:23 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Re: Paying for the Pipe vs. the Piper in Esoteric Publishing
> Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 19:56:04 -0600
> From: Paul Ginsparg 505-667-7353 <ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov>
>
> stevan,
> little to add to what you say (reminds me how helpful your participation
> would have been in october for us were you not already slated to be abroad).
>
> i do have one minor nit to pick regarding the occasional:
>
>sh> So far, the amount of quality control on the Net is negligible. The Net
>sh> began as a Global Graffiti Board for Trivial Pursuit (as I've had
>sh> occasion to call it) because it was put together mostly by hackers and
>sh> students, rather than by scientists and scholars;
>
> while a delightful metaphor, i believe the "GGBfTP" tends to promote
> some confusion. there is a very important distinction between UseNet (a
> collection of distributed access newsgroups) and the Internet (a linked
> group of networks that includes UseNet as a small subset) -- indeed
> this distinction is frequently blurred in the popular press (for
> example during recent mass advertising postings to usenet newsgroups,
> so-called "spamming" incidents, the n.y. times et al. write this as a
> dreaded challenge to The Internet [read prototype infobahn], not
> understanding that usenet is irrelevant to the vast majority of
> internet usage. indeed these news reports are universally "flamed" on
> comp.admin.misc with USENET != INTERNET [!= shorthand for "not
> equal"]).
>
> surely you do not mean the internet when you say "put together mostly by
> hackers and students". though later on you do specify:
>
>sh> ... uses of the Internet (the Global Graffiti Board) from
>
> in fact my little corner of the internet *was* assembled by "scientists
> and scholars", starting from the high energy physics decnet in the
> early 80's (one of a number of autonomous networks that in the mid 80's
> joined together to form "the internet"). as i mentioned in some earlier
> correspondence, we never formed the negative association of "electronic
> communication = low quality" since the electronic communication within
> my community by electronic mail, etc., was always of arbitrarily high
> quality and has been an invaluable research resource for the past
> decade (part of the reason the "e-print archives" were such a natural
> development for us). the nature of the internet is such that any
> background static never affected us since it never came unsolicited.
>
> moreover it is not even true that the majority of material available
> via the Internet is unmoderated. currently, anyone who sets up a www
> server gives some thought to the construction of the pages, and as well
> some thought to the links to other resources collected. we may not
> agree with much of the judgment exhibited at some sights, but then we
> simply avoid them. (just as in research where i can learn whom to
> trust, when i browse web sites i can get a feeling for who has
> assembled the higher than average quality information). similar remarks
> apply to longstanding automated anonymous ftp sites -- typically
> someone puts some thought into organization and what is archived (it is
> much rarer for anon ftp sites to allow arbitrary uploads; usually
> things go into incoming/ and are archived or removed).
> i am not of course arguing that the standards are at the levels of
> conventional peer review, but it is important to note that they are far
> from nonexistent.
>
> sure there are many silly bulletin boards that spring up, and we've seen
> the usenet statistics from news.admin, but have a look at
> http://www.gatech.edu/gvu/stats/NSF/merit.html
> for the overall nsfnet backbone traffic to see just how negligible a
> fraction of the overall internet traffic usenet constitutes.
>
> so i think you may be doing a minor disservice by coming down *too
> hard* on the current quality of electronic communication with an
> all-too-colorful metaphor that applies only to a small segment of the
> current total bandwidth. and my impression is that many new entries are
> continuously increasing in quality (you recently mentioned unsworth et
> al's iath site which includes pmc -- for numerous other such examples
> see http://wings.buffalo.edu/contest/ ).
>
> it will be far easier to build what we want metaphorically on the much
> larger sector of the internet that possesses incipient quality, rather
> than overemphasizing the much smaller anarchic sector at this point.
>
> hope these comments are helpful.
>
> regards, pg
Paul,
You may be right that there is and has all along been more quality in
some regions of cyberspace than I have given it credit for. Historians
will have to sort this out.
But my concerns are specifically with scholarly/scientific PUBLICATION,
and, as far as I know, the uucp-style Usenet Groups and the Bitnet
listserv groups were the first mass circulation electronic forums.
Personal email, file retrieval, collaborative computation, data exchange,
etc. among scholars and scientists certainly constitute traffic on the
Internet, but they are not the kind of mass-circulation communication
that is directly comparable with the paper scholarly literature -- at
least not until your HEP preprint archive came into existence.
In any case, for present purposes this much can be said with high
confidence, and without the aid of careful historic research (and I
don't think you'll disagree): With the prominent exception of your
preprint archive (which is a special case, because, for the time being
at least, it is parasitic on the refereed paper literature for which
most of its PREprints are ultimately destined -- the "Invisible Hand"
effect I have spoken of before), if one were to make a direct comparison
between (say) the latest 20-, 10-, 5- or 1-year paper
scholarly/scientific literature, within or across disciplines, and the
electronic literature, there would be ABSOLUTELY NO CONTEST. The
current electronic literature's quantity and quality is still
infinitesmal in comparison to the corresponding paper literature. The
point of my metaphor was to emphasize that this is just an artifact of
demographic initial conditions (which is certainly is), and not
intrinsic to the two respective media, as many Luddites are eager to
infer. (And the point of my "Subversive Proposal" was that this very
disparity could be turned to the dramatic and speedy advantage of
electronic publication through immediate universal public ftp archiving
by all authors of the esoteric scholarly preprint/reprint literature).
I don't really think you disagree with this; you number among the
converted, where it is safe to insist that the Net HAS generated a good
deal of quality to date after all. But that's an absolute judgment,
whereas I was making a relative judgment. I admire the nuggets that the
anarchy has generated so far, but the fact is still, I think, that the
lion's share of it is junk, just as the paper scholarly literature
would be mostly junk if it were unconstrained by economics and
anarchically generated (with mostly students and hackers at the helm,
instead of the peers of the realm, who are so far still the UNconverted
to whom I am preaching).
Out of this anarchy are now at last emerging the traditional structures
of scholarly/scientific quality-control; once these achieve a critical
mass, what I said about the Global Graffiti Board will be past history.
But for now, to hasten that day, those who sample or hear about the
Net's CURRNENT state (qua publication medium) -- in comparison, I
stress, with the paper scholarly literature -- must be reassured that
these are just initial conditions and not at all representative of the
potential steady state.
I do know the distinctions among Net, Internet, Usenet, etc., and use
them loosely because, as I said, my preaching is intended for the
UNconverted, who are not impressed by computational nuggets from DARPA
days but can see clearly (if they even go so far as to look) that most
of what passes for scholarly/scientific publication and communication
on the Net to date looks a lot more like Trivial Pursuit among
dilettantes than the quality-controlled literature they associate
exclusively with paper.
Best wishes, Stevan
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad
Editor, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, PSYCOLOQUY
Cognitive Science Laboratory
Princeton University
221 Nassau Street
Princeton NJ 08544-2093
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 16:12:58 EDT
Reply-To: Judith Oppenheimer <producer@pipeline.com>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Judith Oppenheimer <producer@pipeline.com>
Organization: The Pipeline
Subject: religious publishing
Can anyone point me in the direction of Net resources of info
on religious publishing?
Please respond to Producer@pipeline.com. Thanks.
Judith
***********************************************************
J. Oppenheimer
Producer@pipeline.com
"Everyone comes here with only 24 hours in a day... and their
word."
***********************************************************
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 16:13:21 EDT
Reply-To: "Todd A. Jacobs" <tjacobs@clark.net>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: "Todd A. Jacobs" <tjacobs@clark.net>
Organization: Jacobs Publishing, LTD
Subject: Association of Digital Publishers
ASSOCIATION OF DIGITAL PUBLISHERS
6052 Wilmington Pike, Dept. 161
Dayton, Ohio 45459
Associtation of Digital Publishers Releases New Guidelines
_ADP Guarantee of Excellence(tm)_ Unveiled
For Immediate Release
Tuesday, July 19, 1994
Contact: Todd A. Jacobs
Chairman of the Board
Association of Digital Publishers
202-388-9742
Silver Spring, MD--The Association of Digital Publishers publicly
released its new platform today. In response to growing public
concern over the lack of codified professional ethics in electronic
publishing, the ADP unveiled its Quality Assurance Criteria. These
criteria encompass basic customer-satisfaction criteria such as
replacement of defective merchandise, fair pricing, and truth in
advertising. While such guidelines are standard practice for many
successful businesses, the ADP has made them mandatory for its
membership, and has instituted grievance procedures to handle
publishers who do not conform to the Association's high standards.
The ADP also went further, and adopted the _ADP Guarantee of
Excellence(tm)_ guidelines. The _ADP Guarantee of Excellence(tm)_
label may only be used by ADP publishers who meet its most exacting
standards. Unlike the Quality Assurance Criteria, compliance with the
Guarantee is optional. To earn the _ADP Guarantee of Excellence(tm)_
label, a publisher must first meet all basic Quality Assurance
Criteria. In addition, the publisher must then:
* guarantee customer satisfaction
* offer a money-back guarantee on defective merchandise
within the first ten days
* offer free technical support during the first 30 days
By enforcing these guidelines, the Association of Digital Publishers
expects to see a rise in sales figures as a result of higher consumer
confidence.
Several established electronic publishers across the country have
already thrown their support behind the ADP's new guidelines. Jacobs
Publishing, LTD, which operates out of Silver Spring, MD, was one of
the original proponents of the standard. A spokesperson for the
company said: "We felt that a higher standard needed to be established
quickly. We need to separate professional electronic publishers from
the hobbyists, so that consumers can make informed choices about how
they want to spend their hard-earned dollars."
AuthorsNet(tm) Writers Network, based in Dayton, Ohio, is
supporting the initiative because it feels that the new standards
offer better protection for authors, as well as consumers. One
AuthorsNet(tm) member suggested that the "traditional [publishing]
houses have been squeezing writers unfairly for years. By creating
standards of professionalism and fair play at the outset, the ADP
could ensure that electronic publishing remains more open and friendly
to authors like me."
For more information about the ADP and its consumer services,
please write to:
Association of Digital Publishers
6052 Wilmington Pike, Dept. 161
Dayton, Ohio 45459
# # #
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 1994 12:56:23 EDT
Reply-To: phil-preprints-admin@phil-preprints.L.chiba-u.ac.jp
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: phil-preprints-admin@phil-preprints.L.chiba-u.ac.jp
Subject: News from the IPPE (19 Jul 94)
===================================
N e w s f r o m t h e I P P E
=================================== 18 July 1994
------------------
Summer renovations
------------------ The International Philosophical Preprint Exchange
staff is taking advantage of the slow summer season to implement some
big changes for the coming academic year. In October, the IPPE will be
opening a World Wide Web (Mosaic) server, making possible hypertext
links between documents on the system. In October we will also be
renovating our Gopher support, in order to provide more friendlier and
more informative menus (Gopher techies may be interested to know that we
will be running our own Gopher server, rather than using Gopher as a
front-end to our ftp server).
The current ftp and mail-server based access to the IPPE will remain
available, although there may be some reorganization to accomodate the
new Web and Gopher services. (Please see the end of this message for
access information.)
----------------------------
More journals coming on line
---------------------------- By September several more journals will
join the roster of those journals and book series making their abstracts
and tables of contents available on the IPPE. We have plenty of space
to accomodate yet more journals, series, and conferences, and we encourage
the staffs of these organizations to contact us.
----------------------------------
IPPE well represented at workshops
---------------------------------- Several members of the IPPE staff
were among the most prominent participants in the workshop on philosophy
and electronic communications at the Canadian Philosophical Association
conference held this past June in Calgary. Present were Carolyn Burke
(administrator), Richard Reiner (coordinator), and Istvan Berkeley, who
was also one of the organizers of the workshop.
Richard Reiner and George Gale of the IPPE staff will also be
participating in the round-table on computer mediated communication at
the joint PSA/SSSS/HSA conference to be held in New Orleans in October.
-----------------------------------------------------
Submission rates fluctuate, but readership stays high
----------------------------------------------------- The end of the
academic year saw a steep climb in the rate of preprint submissions to
the IPPE. As we move into the summer season, however, submissions have
slowed to a trickle. Usage rates, on the other hand, have remained
relatively constant at approximately one hundred accesses per day (this
does not include usage of the dozens of mirror sites through which the
IPPE collection, in association with Project Gutenberg, is available).
Anyone with a good explanation of these apparently contradictory
phenomena is invited to communicate with the IPPE staff.
----------------
IPPE Usage Study
---------------- A study of the effects on academic communication due
to emerging technologies such as the IPPE is being conducted by Charles
Schwartz, Social Sciences Bibliographer at the Fondren Library, Rice
University, in conjunction with IPPE administrator Carolyn L Burke. We
hope to better understand the emerging changes in the structure of
communication within the philosophical community. Results of this study
will be made available in the new year.
Accessing the International Philosophical Preprint Exchange:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By gopher: "gopher apa.oxy.edu" or "gopher kasey.umkc.edu".
By ftp: "ftp Phil-Preprints.L.Chiba-U.ac.jp", or
"ftp mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu".
By email: "mail phil-preprints-service@Phil-Preprints.L.Chiba-U.ac.jp".
By www: "http://csmaclab-www.uchicago.edu/philosophyProject/philos.html"
To place a paper or comment on the IPPE: see pub/submissions/README.
If you have questions: send mail to <cburke@nexus.yorku.ca>.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 08:27:03 EDT
Reply-To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@princeton.edu>
Subject: Itemized Costs of Peer Review
Dear Andrew,
Below is a discussion of an important side-issue that has arisen in
discussions regarding a confidential proposal concerning electronic
publication. The side issue is: In what do the true residual costs of
electronic-only periodical publishing actually consist?
I am circulating this to a wider group. At the request of the author of
the proposal, the proposal itself is not circulated, and I have deleted
below anything that refers to its content. Nothing hinges on what is
removed, however. The present discussion concerns what the real
functions and real costs of the editorial office of a peer-reviewed
journal are.
I will try to itemize quite explicitly what comprises that residual
" < 25% of paper per-page costs" for quality control that will continue
to need to be covered in electronic-only periodical publication. Apart
from spelling this out explicitly, I also note in passing what
might be some cross-disciplinary differences (especially between highly
technical and symbolic texts, as in mathematics, and more
prose-intensive disciplines -- the latter constituting the vast
majority of the esoteric scholarly/scientific periodical corpus). In
certain important respects, my own discipline of "cognitive science" (a
mix of experimental psychology, theoretical psychology, brain science,
biology, computer science, linguistics and philosophy) is perhaps
better positioned than mathematics to provide a representative model
that would apply to most of the rest of learned publication (though
there may well be other views on this).
Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
ao> From: amo@research.att.com
ao> Date: Fri, 22 Jul 94 22:39 EDT
>
ao> Stevan,
>
ao> A few remarks on your comments on [the anonymous] proposal.
ao> I agree with you fully that the full [text of any published article]
ao> has to be certified, and that this certification has to be performed
ao> by the scholars who are editors and referees. I assumed that this is
ao> also what [the author] had in mind.
>
ao> I was a little confused by your discussion of what scholarly
ao> publishing ought to cost. Aside from the scholar's time
ao> in doing the research and writing a paper, we have
ao> the following stages in publishing it:
>
ao> (a) Typing or typesetting the manuscript. This essentially
ao> always takes place at the author's institution, and
ao> is increasingly being done by the author, since
ao> technology has made that alternative attractive.
>
ao> (b) Peer review. This is done by scholars who are editors
ao> and referees, and who are almost never paid. Secretarial
ao> assistance is usually provided by these scholars'
ao> institutions, and sometimes is reimbursed or provided
ao> by the publishers.
>
ao> (c) Typesetting, copy editing, printing, distribution, etc.,
ao> by the publishers after the peer review and author revisions
ao> are completed.
>
ao> It seems safe to assume that the costs of (a), which I estimated
ao> at $ 200-400 per paper, will continue to be shouldered by the
ao> authors' institutions in those increasingly rare cases that
ao> the scholars do not typeset their own paper.
Andrew,
I agree about (a) and its costs. But I have to point out that in over
15 years of editing Behavioral and Brain Sciences and 5 years of
editing PSYCOLOQUY, I have never once encountered a paper where the
author's final draft could be published verbatim! In any case, this is
not the real issue, as you will shortly see; the real issue is the cost
of generating a publishable peer-reviewed text, and that consists
(relatively seamlessly) of all of (b) plus copy editing (i.e., one
component of (c)).
ao> In discussing economics of future scholarly journals it seems
ao> worthwhile considering (b) and (c) separately. Here is where
ao> I do not fully understand what you advocate. Perhaps it is
ao> because our fields have different practices and different
ao> expectations. In one place in your message you say
>
sh> But what about the costs (and responsibility) of implementing peer
sh> review for the "free texts"? THOSE costs, plus some subsequent editing
sh> and copy-editing, are the only TRUE costs in electronic-publication...
sh> I estimate those true, essential
sh> costs of purely electronic quality control at (well) below 25% of
sh> per-page paper costs (i.e., current journal page costs).
>
ao> In that passage you seem to imply that in the electronic world
ao> both (b) and (c) should cost below 25% of the current figure.
ao> Later on, though, you say
>
sh> Copy-editing (which is what is really at issue here)
sh> is such a minor part of the function (and the cost)
sh> of publishing that it hardly seems worth talking about. (If that were all
sh> there was to it, Universitites could easily hire a staff copy-editor
sh> to vet all final texts, and that would be the end of it.) It's the REST
sh> of the quality control (implementing peer review and substantive
sh> editing) that's the real work, and it's not clear from this proposal
sh> who is to see that that's done, who's to do it, and how its true expenses
sh> (a per-page cost I estimate at under 25%, but not zero) are to be paid.
>
ao> Here you seem to be saying the 25% is to go for peer review and
ao> "substantive editing." Perhaps what we need here is your definition
ao> of "copy-editing" and "substantive editing." Also, what do you mean
ao> by the costs of peer review? Your answers might clarify
ao> what you really have in mind in the passages above. In the meantime,
ao> I'll explain how I see the situation.
>
ao> Both of us agree that (b) is indispensable. The only part of (b) that
ao> I expect will continue to cost money is the secretarial assistance,
ao> which I estimate in my essay should cost a maximum of $ 100-200 per
ao> paper. In mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering,
ao> and the few other fields that I know, the only editing that is provided
ao> at this stage is what the referees and editors do gratis. Sometimes
ao> this editing is extensive, and might be called "substantive editing"
ao> by any reasonable definition of the term. I have had a few referees
ao> completely rewrite some particularly interesting papers by Chinese
ao> or Russian writers whose command of English was practically non-existent.
ao> We also have the example of Walter Gautschi, which I cite in my essay,
ao> who does extensive editing of manuscripts in his unpaid job as editor.
ao> (Most of his work is copy editing, but some I would classify as
ao> substantive.) In the overwhelming majority of cases, though, the editing
ao> at this stage is trivial, such as referees pointing out the most egregious
ao> mistakes. I expect this situation to continue, at least in my field.
>
ao> The editing in stage (c) that I am used to can be classified as
ao> copy-editing. This involves correcting typographical mistakes,
ao> formatting the paper, providing running heads, page numbers,
ao> making sure references follow the journal's standards and are
ao> actually invoked in the text, etc. I would not call any of this
ao> "substantive editing." Furthermore, neither I nor any of my
ao> colleagues that I have ever discussed this with would want anything
ao> more than what is provided. The risk of getting the mathematical
ao> substance of the paper damaged is just too great. There are all
ao> too many horror stories of newly hired employees at publishers
ao> trying to "improve" the presentation in a math paper only to
ao> mangle it hopelessly.
>
ao> What do I see in the future? Well, (b) will be carried out as
ao> before, primarily by unpaid scholars, possibly with some minor
ao> assistance from secretaries. This will cost $100-200 per paper.
>
ao> Stage (c) now costs $ 4,000 per paper. This goes for printing,
ao> distribution, and copy editing, but not (at least in the case
ao> of mathematics) for "substantive editing." When we move to
ao> electronic publishing, the only thing in stage (c) that
ao> I feel will be worth preserving will be copy editing. It is
ao> not all that minor a part of the publishing process, as it
ao> seems to account for the bulk of the present cost. The reason
ao> it is so costly is that it involves several layers of specialists.
ao> It used to be that publishing involved the extremely expensive
ao> steps of typesetting and printing, and it was not possible to
ao> lower their costs below a certain level. Thus there was
ao> an absolute floor under the cost of stage (c). In the future,
ao> when (c) consists basically just of copy editing, I expect we
ao> will be able to operate it at any price we choose, and my guess is
ao> that an expenditure of $ 200-600 per paper will provide adequate
ao> quality. Whether this function will be done at publishers or
ao> the authors' institutions, I am not sure.
>
ao> Best regards, Andrew
Let us say we agree, roughly speaking, about copy-editing, the only
expense in (c) worth mentioning, once we move to electronic-only
publishing. But my estimate of < 25% of paper per-page costs in
electronic only periodicals was definitely NOT based only on the cost of
(c); (b) costs money too, and is far more important than copy editing.
First let me itemize what (b) entails (and I will argue that the
copy-editing component of (c) is probably best assimilated seamlessly
with (b), but not much hangs on that):
A journal has an Editor. Editing takes time -- time that would otherwise
be devoted to research, teaching and publishing. Refereeing takes time
too, but the difference is that refereeing is done on a voluntary,
as-time-is-available basis, whereas if someone accepts the commitment to
edit a journal (or to subedit a section of a journal) he must give
requisite time to process the entire manuscript flow. What does that
time consist of?
(1) Submitted manuscripts must be processed; this is done by an
editorial administrator and secretaries who report to the Editor (and
must be paid by someone).
(2) The Editor (or Subeditor) must read or at least skim all
submissions and select referees (sometimes with the help of an
Editorial Board, sometimes even with formal weekly real-time meetings,
for journals with high submission rates and large annual page-counts).
(3) The editorial administrator and secretaries must then see to it that
the referees are invited, receive the manusscripts, submit the reports in
time, get followed up, get replaced if delinquent, etc.
(4) For each manuscript, once the reports are in, the Editor (or
Subeditor, or Board) must read or skim the manuscript (conscientiousness
varies -- as does the rigor of the peer-review provided by a given
journal) as well as the referee reports and prepare a disposition
letter, indicating whether the manuscript is rejected, accepted (rare
without revision, at least in my fields), conditionally accepted contingent
on minor revision, or requires major revision and re-refereeing (if the
latter, go back to (1) and start again when the revised draft is
submitted).
(5) A conscientious Editor, though he may only have skimmed manuscripts
until they reach the possibly acceptable stage, will become more
actively involved in the manuscripts that are likely to be published,
not only in making the substantive judgements about which referee
recommendations need to be followed, and when they have been
successfully met, but in the finalizing of the manuscript itself. This
is what I call substantive editing (it is not the checking of format and
references) and it is an essential part of the peer review process --
indeed, without it, the Editor is not really Editing but simply doing
box scores on referee reports (and the quality of the journal will
reflect this).
(6) Finally, when the Editor judges it is ready, the paper is accepted,
with the prior and subsequent negotiations between Editor and author,
then copy editor and author, and finally the proofing of the final text
mediated by the editorial administrator and secretaries, all reporting
to the Editor.
(1) - (6) is, in broad strokes, the relatively seamless stream that
leads to a peer-reviewed publication. It takes time (the time of the
Editor, editorial administrator, editorial office secretaries, and
copy-editors; hence it also costs money. (Note that I have NOT reckoned
in the time contributed by the referees, which is a voluntary service
we all perform when we have time, and perform gratis; these are
editorial, and hence publishing costs only).
There are many different ways that journal editorial offices are
structured. One common model (the one used, for example, by the American
Psychological Association, which publishes most of the leading
psychology journals) is to have an Editor appointed for from 4-6 years;
he receives an honorarium and/or some of his time is bought from his
University, and the editorial office receives a budget to pay for the
editorial help (editorial administrator and secretaries -- copy-editing
may be administered by the editorial office or the publisher, depending
on which is more efficient).
In brief, I think your misconstrual of the true functions and costs of
generating peer-reviewed publications is based on assuming that Editors
and editorial office staff can be thought of in the same way as
referees, donating their services gratis whenever time is available:
They cannot be, however, because editing a journal is a calendar-based,
unrelenting, obligatory workload (and time-consuming in direct
proportion to a journal's manuscript flow and annual page count) rather
than a voluntary, ad lib function such as refereeing. It is an ongoing
commitment that takes time from other things scholars and scientists
do, and takes it systematically, on a daily, weekly basis.
Perhaps in some disciplines the Editor's function can be decentralized
and distributed -- but some centralized entity still has to keep up
with the manuscript flow without developing arbitrary lags -- and I for
one think peer review, for better or for worse, is best filtered
through an Editor's unitary judgment rather than an anarchic system
with only local answerability (I could be wrong on this); but either
way, SOMEONE has to make the commitment to exercise editorial judgment,
a key component in peer review (peer review is not simply referees,
voting).
Disciplines like mathematics may require less copy editing or less
substantive editing than others; fine. If they needed less in paper,
they'll likewise need less on the Net. But many (most) disciplines do
need substantive editing and copy editing, and I'll bet my < 25% figure
adjusts for this across disciplines: The less prose-intensive
disciplines probably already had lower copy-editing costs, so their 25%
of paper costs will simply be a smaller absolute figure (unless other
special costs counterbalance it) than the 25% for more prose-intensive
disciplines. In any case, as you see, I've stressed copy-editorial
functions less than editorial ones in all of these considerations.
So there you have it. In my view, it's (1) - (6) that underlie the true
per-page costs of electronic-only publication, and I think the < 25%
figure will derive mostly from (1) - (5).
Best wishes, Stevan
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad
Editor, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, PSYCOLOQUY
Cognitive Science Laboratory
Princeton University
221 Nassau Street
Princeton NJ 08544-2093
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 08:28:13 EDT
Reply-To: Ann Okerson <ann@cni.org>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Ann Okerson <ann@cni.org>
Subject: Directory of Electronic Journals/Internet Edition
ARL OFFERS DIRECTORY OF E-JOURNALS & NEWSLETTERS ON INTERNET
*******************************************************************
The Association of Research Libraries announces the availability by
gopher of its innovative Directory of Electronic Journals and
Newsletters, listing 440+ titles in the current version.
gopher://arl.cni.org:70/11/scomm/edir
Later this year, WAIS- searching and WWW access will be provided.
Since 1991, ARL has published a printed version of the e-journals
and newsletters directory. In 1991, 1992, and 1993, this work was
compiled by Michael Strangelove at the University of Ottawa. As of
1994, the compilation of this database moved to the ARL, currently
the work of Lisabeth King, Research Assistant, with the contributions
of many of you.
The printed book also includes the definitive directory of academic
discussions, created and maintained by a team led by Diane Kovacs of
Kent State University. This work has been available on the Internet
throughout its existence and can be retrieved from the listserv@kentvm
or listserv@kentvm.kent edu. You may also retrieve it via anonymous ftp
to: ksuvxa.kent.edu.
Now in its fourth edition, the printed Directory of Electronic Journals,
Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists is an unrivalled source of
information for high quality academic resources on the Internet. If you
are interested in obtaining it, please message ARL's Office of
Scientific and Academic Publishing: osap@cni.org
We do invite you to offer the ARL e-journal directory through your local
or wide area network by pointing your gopher to arl.cni.org. *We would
appreciate knowing you are doing so, to give us a sense of how wide the
use of the e-version is.* We welcome any comments you may have. Please
direct them to Ann Okerson (ann@cni.org), the project coordinator for
ARL. The gopher file was created by Dru Mogge, ARL's Electronic Services
Coordinator.
MODERATED LIST FOR NEW JOURNAL/NEWSLETTER ANNOUNCEMENTS
Keeping such a resource current is a constant responsibility. To
facilitate this, we have also created the list:
NewJour-L@e-math.ams.org
which publishes announcements of new electronic journals as they become
available. To subscribe, send mail to listproc@e-math.ams.org with
nothing on the Subject: line and the single message SUBSCRIBE NEWJOUR-L.
We welcome your postings to this moderated list. The postings in turn
inform our database.
We thank the many contributors and commentators who make this project
possible.
Ann Okerson
Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing
Association of Research Libraries
Washington, DC
ann@cni.org
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 08:28:33 EDT
Reply-To: amo@research.att.com
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
Comments: W: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and
ignored.
From: amo@research.att.com
Various email discussions that involved Stevan Harnad and myself,
as well as others, have uncovered an important question, namely
whether it is customary to pay scholars who work as editors.
(Relevant payments might take the form of a stipend on top of
the editor's regular salary or might be paid to the editor's
university to lessen the editor's teaching duties.)
It appears that practices vary between fields.
Harnad says that in his area, cognitive science (which he
describes as "a mix of experimental psychology, theoretical
psychology, brain science, biology, computer science, linguistics
and philosophy"), such payments are common, and conjectures that
his area is typical in its publishing practices. I have not
seen any need to pay editors, because this is simply not done
in the areas I know. I have served in the past, or am now serving,
on the editorial boards of 18 different journals. These journals
are published by several learned societies (AMS, IEEE, SIAM, etc.)
as well as by some commercial publishers. Slightly over
half are in mathematics (both pure and applied), and the others
are in computer science, cryptology, electrical engineering,
and one that is partially in physics. Not a single one of these
jobs involved any financial compensation for me. The editors do
work for free in these areas (*).
Are there any studies that address the question of how often
editors are paid, and how much? Any information in this area
would be helpful.
Payments to editors should be considered separately from paying
for secretarial assistance. The latter is rather common, it
seems. Information on how much it costs would be useful as well.
Answers to the questions posed here will be helpful in assessing
the costs of future electronic journals. If it is customery in
an area to provide substantial payments to editors, and this
practice persists, this will alter calculations of how much
scholarly journals will cost, and might restrict the choice
among various models for future electronic journals.
Andrew Odlyzko
amo@research.att.com
(*) I am aware that there are journals with paid editors.
For example, Physical Review Letters, which I cite in my
essay "Tragic loss ...," has about four full-time senior
physicists in charge of the peer-review process (which
also involves unpaid volunteer editors). Other Physical
Review publications have a mix of paid and unpaid editors
in charge. Mathematical review journals,
such as Mathematical Reviews, also have paid staffs of
professional mathematicians. Such situations are easy
to identify. The main question, though, is how often
are scholars who work part-time as editors compensated
financially? In the areas I know, this is uncommon,
and when it occurs, is minor. (For example, one journal
on whose editorial board I now serve is paying its two
managing editors $ 1,000 per year each.)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 15:48:06 EDT
Reply-To: James Powell <jpowell@vtvm1.bitnet>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: James Powell <jpowell@vtvm1.bitnet>
Subject: VPI Report of the Scholarly Communications Task Force available
The full text of this report is now available in electronic form at:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/reports/SCTF-1994.html
Postscript and Adobe Acrobat versions are also available, see:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/reports/reports.html
or FTP scholar.lib.vt.edu and cd /pub/SCP/reports.
--------------------------------------------------
Report of the Scholarly Communications Task Force
May 10, 1994
- Gail McMillan, chair
- Paul Metz
- James Powell
- Maggie Zarnosky
University Libraries
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Report of the Scholarly Communications Task Force
Executive Summary
Since University Libraries' initial efforts to provide access to electronic
journals in 1991, much has happened in this area of scholarly communications,
not the least of which is the rapidly growing number of journals freely
available via the Internet. In 1991, the ARL directory of electronic journals
listed 27, with only seven of these being refereed. Today there are over 50
such titles and nearly half of them are refereed. Our library currently
provides access to 12 electronic journals, double the number of experimental
subscriptions placed in 1991.
University Libraries at Virginia Tech is one of the relatively few libraries
that has fully accepted electronic publications as a true scholarly resource
and provided access for its academic community. There is no doubt it was the
correct decision when the Libraries decided not to wait for others to find
solutions to supporting this new scholarly resource. If we had done so, we
would still be waiting for those solutions. Instead, we have learned from our
experiences accessing, storing, processing, and providing access to an
increasing number of electronic journals. Now the Libraries are in a position
to improve our methods and continue to learn from these evolving scholarly
materials.
The Scholarly Communications Task Force strongly recommends fully implementing
those policies and procedures not already in place as described in the Report
of the Task Force on the Electronic Journal. However, having learned from three
years experience with electronic journals on VM1, the task force believes that
the Library Gopher server is a better system for storage, and through which to
provide access--both campus-wide and worldwide. There are many reasons for
supporting this recommendation, including:
- It is already owned by University Libraries.
- Purchasing additional disk space for the Library Gopher would be more
economical (now and in the long term) than is renting space on VM1.
- Journals would be accessible without a VM account and access would be
anonymous, thereby providing a wider ranging library service reaching beyond
our immediate university community at no additional expense.
- The Library Gopher is capable of delivering a broader range of journal
formats than does VM1; it is ready now for more sophisticated journals than
the text- only ones to which the Libraries currently subscribe, including
journals that have (or may have in the future) digital images (still and
moving) and audio.
- Storing journals electronically currently requires 22Mb storage on VM1, about
twice the amount required in 1992.
- Because of better control and in-house processing, a smaller amount of
storage space is required for storing the same number of issues on the
Library Gopher.
- The Libraries currently have the equipment and the staff available to do this
in-house. * Retrieval can be done with the assistance of an intermediary
(i.e., librarians and information specialists), or by the scholars
themselves.
The task force recommends that the Library Gopher provide storage and access to
electronic journals and subsume all related uses of VM1 for electronic
journals.
Gopher is not necessarily the ultimate in electronic journal access mechanisms.
Other means, such as World Wide Web and its companion client Mosaic software,
offer more flexibility in organizing and presenting information and more
opportunity to include instructions at the point where they would be most
helpful. However, the Library Gopher will serve the Libraries' needs as well as
those of our user communities while not limiting the provision of access to the
kinds of journals that are currently available for the broadest spectrum of
readers.
Since the University Libraries also support the Scholarly Communications
Project, the Library Gopher should provide an invisible link to the
publications of the Project.
The journals published by the Project should not be copied to the Library
Gopher; this would be an unnecessary duplication and is not necessary to
improve access or for security purposes. It would be most appropriate for
electronic journals that are described in VTLS to be directly accessible from
the online bibliographic and holdings records, however, this is not currently
possible. To reiterate the policies currently in place, we believe that
electronic journals should remain in electronic form at every stage, from
initial processing through to reader access. We do not recommend printing,
binding, or shelving these materials and none of the task force consultants
recommended doing so. We do not recommend transferring any of our issues of
electronic journals to diskettes or computer tapes. This would result in
undesirable delays in access to a publication medium that is designed to take
advantage of immediate and near-constant availability. Because the Interim
University Librarian (and the Vice President for Information Systems) fully
support this philosophy, appropriate funds will remain available to maintain
access to electronic journals.
To support this policy, the Libraries must provide distributed
access--distributed throughout the Virginia Tech (and larger) community and
throughout the Libraries. This means storage space must be evaluated and added
before anticipated growth so that we can ensure that the server has the
appropriate capacity to remain nearly- constantly available to many users
simultaneously from local and remote terminals.
To take full advantage of electronic journals, the Libraries' server must be
promptly updated when new titles and new issues of subscriptions become
available.
Access to any of the Libraries' online information resources (e.g., VTLS, the
CD-ROM network, and the Library Gopher) is, of course, dependent upon an
individual's access to telecommunications lines and equipment. Not everyone in
our university community (let alone the broader community of library clientele
served by the University Libraries) has this; therefore, the Libraries must
provide access within their walls to PCs and Macs equipped with viewing
software as readily available as other equipment with which to read library
materials (e.g., microfilm readers and CD-ROM players).
Availability is not enough. It is also the Libraries' responsibility to provide
education and training through its regular and extraordinary programs (e.g.,
Faculty Development Institutes, internal bibliographic instruction, Collegiate
Librarian Initiative, and the Internet Interest Group).
No area of the University Libraries should be impervious to electronic
journals. This extends from the public service areas to the technical service
areas. To successfully integrate electronic journals into our technical
processing units, automatic receipt and posting should be implemented wherever
possible. This will somewhat relieve the Serials Receiving staff from the
burden of additional check- ins of still-unique library materials.
At this time the Scholarly Communications Task Force is prepared to seek more
than simple "near-term" solutions. We feel the University Libraries are now in
a position to draw upon our past three year's experiences with electronic
journals and to provide storage and access to future scholarly journals that
contain more than ASCII characters, such as mathematical notations and in-line
graphics. The task force has addressed these and other issues with the goal of
perpetuating this exceptional information resource. Every area of University
Libraries should promote full implementation as well as full use of electronic
journals.
James Powell ... Library Automation, University Libraries, VPI&SU
1-4986 ... JPOWELL@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU
... jpowell@borg.lib.vt.edu - NeXTMail welcome here
... Owner of VPIEJ-L, a discussion list for Electronic Journals
Archives: http://borg.lib.vt.edu:80/ gopher://oldborg.lib.vt.edu:70/
file://borg.lib.vt.edu/~ftp
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 1994 17:05:38 EDT
Reply-To: Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu>
Subject: VT Model
The following is a proposal being explored at the Scholarly
Communications Project (University Libraries, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University,
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/). It is a co-publication plan
that could move commercial and academic publishers into the
age of electronic publishing, and libraries into a role as
sources for current as well as historical electronic
information.
BACKGROUND
The University Libraries (through the Scholarly
Communications Project) currently publishes three scholarly
journals, the abstracts of a fourth, raw data for a fifth,
and provides ongoing access to all of its electronic
publications. We also experiment in other areas of
scholarly communications including digital images (and soon
digital video) with hypertext links to descriptive text, and
electronic theses and dissertations. Later this fiscal year
we will be expanding our publishing operation with nine new
titles.
These activities have provided us with four years of
valuable experience, but the Project is seeking electronic
publishing models that have the potential to have a impact
on the immediate problems of traditional publication. The
idea described below (which I'll refer to as the VT Model
for this discussion) is the work of the Project's Advisory
Board, influenced by a plan Birkhaeuser Boston has announced
for the Journal of Mathematical Systems, Estimation, and
Control.
This is not put forward as a vision of the final state of
electronic publication. It is an attempt to find an
intermediate step which makes sense to all parties and might
get us through the immediate decade with some semblance of
grace. It is a proposal that we are prepared to implement.
Below is a very brief description of the proposal and
following this are explanatory notes. Your comments are
welcome.
THE PROPOSAL
Journals would be "co-published" jointly by a traditional
publisher and a library. Journal editorial boards would
continue to function much as they do now, but papers
accepted for publication would be processed in two parts.
One part would be the full text. This would be subject to
minimal copy editing but would retain all aspects of full
peer review to retain high standards of scholarship. The
full text would be electronically archived (free to all
parties) through a research library. The other part would be
a summary or extended abstract published by the publisher,
either on paper or through a database with access charges.
This would be carefully edited to efficiently communicate
the content and significance of the full text.
VOLUME
As the information explosion progresses our system must find
ways to handle greater volume of new information. Libraries
have the expertise to secure, organize, and indefinitely
archive large quantities of information for public use.
Publishers have expertise in the certification, sorting, and
refinement of information. A much larger volume could be
handled if we do not insist that everything pass through all
parts of both systems. The VT model proposes dividing the
load between publishers and libraries to exploit the
strengths of each. In particular if each library would
maintain the files for a modest number of journals then
current subscription budgets would support a much larger
volume.
FINDING INFORMATION
Scholars search for information in two modes: directed
searches in which the objective is known, and "browsing."
Electronic networks offer wonderful new tools for directed
searching. It is now possible (and software is available on
a few platforms) to embed an active link in a paper as a
reference to another paper. Selecting the link automatically
locates and opens a copy of the second paper. Electronic
preprint collections and tools like this make it likely that
publishers will lose control of the directed-search mode in
the near future.
On the other hand browsing is not getting easier. The
sorting done by the huge spectrum of traditional journals is
invaluable for this and so far there is no real electronic
substitute for the serendipity nourished by random browsing
of paper in a library. Browsing, either paper or
electronic, is greatly enhanced by high-quality abstracts or
summaries. One might guess that 90-95% of the people who
"look at" an article are browsing, and go no further than
the abstract. It is not necessary to have the summary
packaged with the full text; after information is discovered
through a summary, getting the full text is a
directed-search problem which can be handled efficiently.
The VT model offers material in two ways, in the current
best formats for both of these two modes of acquiring
information.
PUBLISHER'S PRODUCT
This model suggests a change in point of view about what a
journal publisher's product should be. Currently the
obvious product is full text. We are suggesting that the
publisher's principal product could be summaries, and the
full text would be regarded as an electronic supplement.
The old mind-set was to deny access to non-subscribers. The
new attitude would be that subscribers receive guides and
aids to finding material which is in principle freely
available, but in fact is buried in an avalanche of other
information.
There is another "product" which is nearly invisible but
very important. This is quality control through editors and
peer review. There is nothing that intrinsically ties this
to traditional publishers, but that is where it is currently
located and where the track record is. It is been painfully
lacking in most areas of the electronic network. The VT
model offers a way to transfer this quality control to a
part of the network.
COSTS
There is a nearly complete consensus that scholarly material
must be made available electronically. The innovation in
the VT model is that electronic files are maintained by a
library rather than the publisher. Archives cost money, so
one maintained by a commercial publisher would almost
certainly have to be revenue-producing. But
revenue-producing archives are problematic in many ways, and
will probably fare poorly in competition with free,
non-commercial journals and preprint databases. They will
also interact awkwardly with the navigation and retrieval
tools coming into use. To be successful the archive must be
free, and the publisher, therefore, probably should not do
it. This is where the library comes in.
Part of the mission of a research library is to archive
material and make it freely available to its users.
Supporting journal archives would be a direct contribution
to this mission. It applies library resources in a
non-traditional way. Rather than having many journals free
to a few users, the library would have a few journals free
to many users. However the net effect is that all users get
better access to more information.
EDITING AND FILE PREPARATION
Once the peer review process is completed, there should be
little or no editing of the full-text file. Publishers
cannot support copy editing of files for a free archive
because editing is expensive and the costs cannot be
recovered. Editing lies outside the expertise and mission
of the library, so the library cannot support it either.
Several points should be made immediately. First, this
refers only to file and copy editing, and not content
editing or refereeing: the full text should certainly
continue to meet the high standards of reliability,
completeness, and scholarly integrity; and editors should
continue to request rewriting to improve useability.
Second, a loss of beauty seems a reasonable price for the
increase in efficiency, and indeed should not be a great
burden. The expectation is that 90-95% of users will read
the summary and go no further. Those who do progress to the
full text will primarily be specialists willing and able to
cope with stylistic differences, as long as the content is
solid. Finally, this argument applies to the preparation of
electronic files as well as copy editing. It should be the
responsibility of the author to provide a usable file.
COMPETITION
In order that the electronic full-text supplement not
"scoop" the summary journal, file access would be allowed on
the publication date of the journal.
Gail McMillan, Director gailmac@vt.edu
Scholarly Communications Project 703-231-9252
University Libraries
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 08:44:35 EDT
Reply-To: rmichael@nuacvm.acns.nwu.edu
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: rmichael@nuacvm.acns.nwu.edu
Organization: Northwestern University
Subject: Re: VT Model
In article <vpiej-l%94072617054616@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu>
Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu> writes:
>
>The following is a proposal being explored at the Scholarly
>Communications Project (University Libraries, Virginia
>Polytechnic Institute and State University,
>http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/). It is a co-publication plan
>that could move commercial and academic publishers into the
>age of electronic publishing, and libraries into a role as
>sources for current as well as historical electronic
>information.
> [material deleted]
>
>THE PROPOSAL
>Journals would be "co-published" jointly by a traditional
>publisher and a library. Journal editorial boards would
>continue to function much as they do now, but papers
>accepted for publication would be processed in two parts.
>One part would be the full text. This would be subject to
>minimal copy editing but would retain all aspects of full
>peer review to retain high standards of scholarship. The
>full text would be electronically archived (free to all
>parties) through a research library. The other part would be
>a summary or extended abstract published by the publisher,
>either on paper or through a database with access charges.
>This would be carefully edited to efficiently communicate
>the content and significance of the full text.
>
> [material deleted]
>
>FINDING INFORMATION
>Scholars search for information in two modes: directed
>searches in which the objective is known, and "browsing."
>Electronic networks offer wonderful new tools for directed
>searching. It is now possible (and software is available on
>a few platforms) to embed an active link in a paper as a
>reference to another paper. Selecting the link automatically
>locates and opens a copy of the second paper. Electronic
>preprint collections and tools like this make it likely that
>publishers will lose control of the directed-search mode in
>the near future.
>
>On the other hand browsing is not getting easier. The
>sorting done by the huge spectrum of traditional journals is
>invaluable for this and so far there is no real electronic
>substitute for the serendipity nourished by random browsing
>of paper in a library. Browsing, either paper or
>electronic, is greatly enhanced by high-quality abstracts or
>summaries. One might guess that 90-95% of the people who
>"look at" an article are browsing, and go no further than
>the abstract. It is not necessary to have the summary
>packaged with the full text; after information is discovered
>through a summary, getting the full text is a
>directed-search problem which can be handled efficiently.
>
>The VT model offers material in two ways, in the current
>best formats for both of these two modes of acquiring
>information.
>
>PUBLISHER'S PRODUCT
>This model suggests a change in point of view about what a
>journal publisher's product should be. Currently the
>obvious product is full text. We are suggesting that the
>publisher's principal product could be summaries, and the
>full text would be regarded as an electronic supplement.
>
> [much material deleted]
This is a very interesting idea, and certainly it *seems* plausible that
a commercial product with extended high-quality abstracts would have a
market with scholars who need to browse the literature in their area.
However, the idea is very similar to "The Journal of Chemical Research"
which the Chemical Society (now the Royal Society of Chemistry) started
in 1977. JCR is published in two versions, a Synopses version containing
extended abstracts, and a microfilm version containing the complete papers.
The notion was that individuals would subscripe to the Synopses version,
and when they found papers of interest they would go to their library for
the full paper. Unfortunately, the idea bombed. Research libraries subscribed,
and mostly still subscribe. However, despite the fact that this is a product
of a very prestigious scholarly society, and despite low pricing on the
Synopses version, JCR never sold well to individuals. Moreover, despite its
prestigious sponser, JCR itself has only mediocre prestige (as measured e.g.
by citation rates). It limps along.
My question is, why is JCR a flop, when it *seemed* like a good idea at the
time? And would a very similar idea (only done electronically) *not*
flop? I don't think it is possible to answer the second question without
answering the first. I don't know the answer to the first question -- do you?
Bob Michaelson
Northwestern University Library
rmichael@nwu.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 10:01:45 EDT
Reply-To: JF Rowland <j.f.rowland@lut.ac.uk>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: JF Rowland <j.f.rowland@lut.ac.uk>
Subject: Journal of Chemical Research
I'd like to follow up Bob Michaelson's remarks about the Journal
of Chemical Research (JCR), which in turn responded to Gail
McMillan's proposal from Virginia Polytechnic Institute for a
type of dual publication (free electronic full text plus
paid-for printed extended summaries), with a little more
background about JCR. I agree that "it limps along".
The journal is actually published by three learned societies
(the French and German ones as well as the British) and authors
can submit to any one of the three, with the full text in any
of the three languages; in fact only a trickle of papers are
submitted to France or Germany and very few are not in English
these days.
The full text version is available in a choice of microfiche or
miniprint (reduced size print needing a magnifying glass to
read it) but not in machine-readable form; the two published
full-text versions are repoduced directly from the author's
typescript.
The printed synopsis journal is properly copy-edited and
typeset. The text (but not diagrams) of the synopsis journal
is available in electronic form as part of the Chemical
Journals Online (CJO) service on the STN network; all of the
Royal Society of Chemistry's (RSC) journals are available in
full text on CJO along with those of The American Chemical
Society and other chemical publishers. Perhaps because it does
not contain the diagrams, and is on a commercial network, CJO
has not been a wild-fire success either.
While it is fair to say that it limps along, JCR's problem is
not a lack of subscribers; it is kept going because it pays its
way and makes a contribution to the RSC's overhead costs. The
problem is lack of appeal to authors. They would prefer to put
their papers in "a proper journal" and do not in general feel
that JCR has editorial standards as high as other leading
chemical journals; this tends, of course, to be a self-
fulfilling prophecy, since a journal can only publish papers
that are submitted to it.
Some years ago I did a study of JCR and several other British
synopsis journals that were then extant; I think JCR is the sole
survivor [Rowland, J.F.B. (1981) Synopsis journals as seen by
their authors, J. Documentation, 37(2), 69-76]. Later on I was
involved with the production of the journal as Publications
Production Manager with the RSC, and now I am interested in the
various scenarios for electronic publishing being debated on
this list. I agree with Bob Michaelson that the history of JCR
is a cautionary tale for the VPI people with their new proposal.
Fytton Rowland, Research Fellow, Phone +44 509 223057
Department of Information & Library Studies, Fax +44 509 223053
Loughborough University of Technology, E-mail:
Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK J.F.Rowland@lut.ac.uk
.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 10:02:13 EDT
Reply-To: "Evan C. Williams" <ilabs@eandc.win.net>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: "Evan C. Williams" <ilabs@eandc.win.net>
Subject: Yeah...but how can I make money with all this stuff?
Have you noticed there is every conceivable product on the market
for desktop publishing, video editing, multimedia presentations,
interactive media, BBS services, etc., yet few of us have gotten
past the technological 'dazzlement' of it all and realized how to
use these gizmos to significantly increase our productivity and
income?
Everyone is talking about the exploding market for electronic
publishing, online services, software, etc. Yet, how does the
average Joe with an idea and some knowledge compete with the big
boys?
I will be attending a seminar in September about using various types
of "new media" technology in entrepreneurial applications. It's
unique from other events I've seen because, although there will be
lots of info on the technology itself, the thrust will be on turning
this knowledge into income.
Anyway, if you would be interested in getting the full scoop on this
event, you can email ilabs@eandc.win.net. Put "NMTC '94" in the
subject and your name in the body.
--
Evan C. Williams
Illumination Labs
Publishers of: The Internet TV PowerPak (and other cool stuff)
P: (402) 484-8842, F: (402) 484-8846; ilabs@eandc.win.net
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 1994 12:25:26 EDT
Reply-To: ilya@glosha.nega.msk.su
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Ilya Etingof <ilya@glosha.nega.msk.su>
Organization: NEGA Information agency (under Independent Newspaper)
Subject: [!] Electronic version of 'Nezavisimaia gazeta'
Tomorrow's release of the 'Independent newspaper' - today in your computer!
Dear sirs
We suggest you to subscribe an electronic version of the 'Independent
newspaper', 'Nezavisimaia gazeta' in russian (central Moscow's newspaper
engaged in politics).
An electronic version includes all articles has been published within a
carbon copy version of 'Independent newspaper' and consists of a number of
alternating coding ASCII files packed by ARJ archiver (appr.300KB per day).
Neither illustrations nor publicity includes in electronic version.
We can deliver 'Independent newspaper' through 'SprintNet' or 'Internet'
(mail mode only) networks.
Please, mail or call:
(095) 925-01-21, (095) 921-72-76,
(095) 921-88-27, (095) 925-88-72.
Fax:
(095) 925-01-21.
E-mail:
root@nega.msk.su
Best regards,
Ilya Etingof
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Head of the computer department, | E-mail: root@nega.msk.su, 2:5020/22.66 |
| in the NEGA information agency | Phone: (095) 921-72-76,(095) 925-88-72 |
| under Independent Newspaper. | Fax: (095) 925-01-21 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 1994 12:26:25 EDT
Reply-To: "Todd A. Jacobs" <tjacobs@clark.net>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: "Todd A. Jacobs" <tjacobs@clark.net>
Organization: Association of Digital Publishers
Subject: ADP Expands Membership
ASSOCIATION OF DIGITAL PUBLISHERS
6052 Wilmington Pike #161
Dayton, Ohio 45459
ADP Expands Membership
Publishing Professionals Encouraged to Join
For Immediate Release
Friday, July 29, 1994
Contact: Todd A. Jacobs
Association of Digital Publishers
202-388-9742
Dayton, Ohio--At an executive meeting yesterday, the ADP Board of
Directors voted unanimously to extend alternative membership levels to
non-publishers. The Chairman of the Board explained. "Many potential
members are interested in the goals and activities of the ADP. We
felt that offering a less expensive membership level to non-publishers
would encourage more professionals to join. The focus of the ADP is
not solely on publishers; the ADP is also concerned with advancement
of the medium itself. To accomplish that goal, we need the input and
support of writers, editors, software distributors, computer
programmers, and others."
The ADP has already attracted the attention of the Electronic
Publishing Network, among other special interest groups. The
Electronic Publishing Network, a loose confederation of digital
publishers and their distributors, has taken no official position
regarding the ADP. However, several EpubNet members have already
petitioned for ADP membership. EpubNet was one of the first
professional groups to address electronic publishing issues, and it is
hoped that the bulk of its members will support the ADP initiative.
As with any consumer-oriented effort, the ADP anticipates initial
resistance among the professional community. "Quality assurance is
expensive in the short term. Things like `free technical support' are
not really free_somebody always pays for it, " said an ADP
spokesperson. "Many publishers are reluctant to join because the high
standards required by the ADP are considered too restrictive. We hope
to convince them otherwise, before consumer confidence is irreparably
harmed."
# # #
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 1994 12:28:01 EDT
Reply-To: Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu>
Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving,
and Access" <vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet>
From: Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu>
Subject: Re: VT Model
>To: boudreau@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael R. Boudreau)
>From: gailmac@vt.edu (Gail McMillan)
>Subject: Re: VT Model
>
>Thank you for send me your thoughts about the VT Model posted to VPIEJ-L
earlier this week. I'm responding to you though I'd like your permission to
post our comments to the list. Like I said initially, I certainly don't
have all the answers but the idea is a sound one that could serve publishers
and libraries well if the collaborate.
******Gail,
Of course you may post our comments to the list. I thought I had posted
mine to the whole list; did they go only to you? (Must be a result of how
the list header is set up.) Anyway, I have some clarifications, but I'll
wait until I see your responses on the list.
--Mike B.*****
>
>>Following are some comments on the VT Model for journal publishing. I find
>>the idea interesting, particularly its aim to capitalize on the distinction
>>between "browsing" and "directed searching," but I also find some of its
>>underlying assumptions to be questionable.
>>
>>
>>>Electronic networks offer wonderful new tools for directed
>>>searching. It is now possible (and software is available on
>>>a few platforms) to embed an active link in a paper as a
>>>reference to another paper. Selecting the link automatically
>>>locates and opens a copy of the second paper. Electronic
>>>preprint collections and tools like this make it likely that
>>>publishers will lose control of the directed-search mode in
>>>the near future.
>>
>>Of course, hypertext links are only one way of locating a piece of
>>information you've already identified as desirable, and they don't help if
>>you're not already reading a paper that has such links. But I'm curious as
>>to how publishers can be seen as now having "control of the directed-search
>>mode." Do you mean merely that publishers control access to the information
>>they publish? If so, how will the availability of hypertext links force
>>publishers to give up this control? They would still have to agree to let
>>their documents be linked.
>
>Why would anyone need permission to link articles? If my library
subscribes to two related titles and they are stored on the library's
server, why couldn't we implement links--perhaps ones that are identified by
subject specialists within the library (or the campus) or by activating
links authors inserted in their articles?
>>
>>>The old mind-set was to deny access to non-subscribers. The
>>>new attitude would be that subscribers receive guides and
>>>aids to finding material which is in principle freely
>>>available, but in fact is buried in an avalanche of other
>>>information.
>>
>>The most useful aspect of this idea, it seems to me, is that it recognizes
>>that organizing, storing, locating, and retrieving information are services
>>for which one can reasonably be expected to pay. But these seem to be
>>services that librarians already provide; publishers don't do this. This
>>seems to be asking publishers and librarians to switch jobs.
>
>No, certainly not. Librarians would continue to do what they do best,
including providing cost-free access to information (now its electronic, in
addition to the other formats). Publishers would continue to provide their
services, including specialized publications for their paid subscribers.
>>
>>>There is another "product" which is nearly invisible but
>>>very important. This is quality control through editors and
>>>peer review. There is nothing that intrinsically ties this
>>>to traditional publishers, but that is where it is currently
>>>located and where the track record is. It is been painfully
>>>lacking in most areas of the electronic network.
>>
>>Yes, and in the realm of electronic publishing there is a distressing
>>tendency to underestimate the importance of editing for content *as well
>>as* copy editing. If there is indeed an "information explosion" going on,
>>then copy editing and design (which will soon enough have its application
>>in e-publishing) should become even more important as scholars and other
>>users need to digest more and more information. Good copy editing and
>>design is what makes the process of reading and understanding easier.
>>
>>
>>>Archives cost money, so
>>>one maintained by a commercial publisher would almost
>>>certainly have to be revenue-producing. But
>>>revenue-producing archives are problematic in many ways, and
>>>will probably fare poorly in competition with free,
>>>non-commercial journals and preprint databases. They will
>>>also interact awkwardly with the navigation and retrieval
>>>tools coming into use.
>>
>>How do you know?
>
>Awkward in that a search may result in several hits and she would have
immediate access only to the free articles but would have to determine if
the unseen articles were worth paying for--considering what is known about
the content and the delay that may be cause during the money transactions.
>>
>>>Part of the mission of a research library is to archive
>>>material and make it freely available to its users.
>>>Supporting journal archives would be a direct contribution
>>>to this mission.
>>
>>But let's not fall into the trap of thinking that the libraries provide
>>this service "for free" just because they don't charge fees to individual
>>users. The storing, cataloging, finding, retriving skills I mentioned
>>above are indeed bought from librarians: they are paid for by taxes,
>>student fees, and so on. If a library is supporting an archive for
>>journals or any other text, you can bet your next paycheck they're going to
>>recover their costs for establishing and supporting that archive.
>
>Yes, there is no free lunch. However, we are measuring success in terms of
the numbers of searches and retrievals. Of course, some say that cost
recovery (at least) may be necessary some day. so, one possibility may be
to for the library to seek reimbursement from those who are making money on
the product. Would a publisher who is saving, say, 25% of the cost of
producing the paper journal, be willing to pay the library (even some of
that) for the storage and access service?
>>
>>>Publishers
>>>cannot support copy editing of files for a free archive
>>>because editing is expensive and the costs cannot be
>>>recovered. Editing lies outside the expertise and mission
>>>of the library, so the library cannot support it either.
>>
>>Then the solution is to find a way to recover the costs of copy editing,
>>not to dispense with it.
>
>Why? Many of us would rather read ASCII for free than to pay for a nice
layout (e.g., two columns, varied fonts, etc.).
>>
>>>editors should
>>>continue to request rewriting to improve useability.
>>
>>They can request it all they want; some authors are incapable of providing it.
>
>Perhaps the authors should pay for it then.
>>
>>>Second, a loss of beauty seems a reasonable price for the
>>>increase in efficiency, and indeed should not be a great
>>>burden. The expectation is that 90-95% of users will read
>>>the summary and go no further. Those who do progress to the
>>>full text will primarily be specialists willing and able to
>>>cope with stylistic differences, as long as the content is
>>>solid.
>>
>>Nonsense. How many bad articles are you willing to read just because
>>they're free?
>
>Are they "bad articles" because they are not pleasingly displayed? I think
I missed your point here.
>
>> Let's not confuse the "beauty" you seem to dismiss so
>>quickly with the basic readability that good copy editors so often provide.
>
>The level of readability could be part of the negotiations between authors
and their editors.
>>
>>>It should be the
>>>responsibility of the author to provide a usable file.
>>
>>I agree. But I don't expect it to happen soon.
>>
>>--Mike Boudreau
>>University of Illinois Press
>>
>May we post this to VPIEJ-L and let others comment?
>
Gail McMillan, Director gailmac@vt.edu
Scholarly Communications Project 703-231-9252
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
</gailmac@vt.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></gailmac@vt.edu></tjacobs@clark.net></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></tjacobs@clark.net></ilya@glosha.nega.msk.su></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></ilabs@eandc.win.net></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></ilabs@eandc.win.net></j.f.rowland@lut.ac.uk></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></j.f.rowland@lut.ac.uk></gailmac@vt.edu></vpiej-l%94072617054616@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></gailmac@vt.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></gailmac@vt.edu></jpowell@vtvm1.bitnet></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></jpowell@vtvm1.bitnet></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></ann@cni.org></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></ann@cni.org></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></cburke@nexus.yorku.ca></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></tjacobs@clark.net></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></tjacobs@clark.net></producer@pipeline.com></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></producer@pipeline.com></ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></b.naylor@soton.ac.uk></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></beyret@hisar.cc.boun.edu.tr></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></beyret@hisar.cc.boun.edu.tr></msokolik@uclink.berkeley.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></msokolik@uclink.berkeley.edu></jmu2m@jefferson.village.virginia.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></david@arch.ping.dk></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></david@arch.ping.dk></ruednbrg@nyuacf.bitnet></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></guedon@ere.umontreal.ca></bob.jansen@ditsydh.syd.dit.csiro.au></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></bob.jansen@ditsydh.syd.dit.csiro.au></m8363@eurokom.ie></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></m8363@eurokom.ie></rentlich@oldal.mannlib.cornell.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></rentlich@oldal.mannlib.cornell.edu></wrt@cornellc></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></rentlich@oldal.mannlib.cornell.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></psgraham@gandalf.rutgers.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></an></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></csundt@oregon.uoregon.edu></csundt@oregon.uoregon.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></csundt@oregon.uoregon.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></an></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu></harnad@princeton.edu></letedge@access.digex.net></harnad@princeton.edu></timbl@www3.cern.ch></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></laws@ai.sri.com></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></laws@ai.sri.com></paul@dis.strath.ac.uk></guedon@ere.umontreal.ca></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></guedon@ere.umontreal.ca></paul@dis.strath.ac.uk></harnad@princeton.edu></vpiej-l@vtvm1.bitnet></harnad@princeton.edu>