under construction Jan. 19, 1998 (GMc)
From a 1988 request by a Virginia Tech faculty member to begin a new scholarly journal and another request to establish a university press, grew the Scholarly Communications Project. It was envisioned that the university could use a rapidly maturing technology base to establish a place where new scholarly works could be published but without the capital outlay that would be required to begin a print-based publishing operation. Since the would-be faculty editors were not necessarily the ones well versed in the technology so an obvious need existed for support services. In addition, there was the need to begin to define or describe these future electronic scholarly works. The SCP would also be a place to experiment with the technology to produce online scholarship in new and developing formats.
The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research originated with the SCP in 1991 as its first ejournal and first electronic-only publication. Lacking a subscriber base or readership upon which to build, it has struggled to attract articles, but not readers. New publications coming in 1998 include Electronic Antiquities and the Journal of pesticide Safety Education.
Dr. Patricia Kelly, professor of curriculum and instruction at Virginia Tech's College of Education, edits ALAN Review with Dr. Robert Small, Dean of the College of Education at Radford University. In July 1995 SCP began providing Internet access to the first of three yearly issues, winter 1994 (vol. 21, no. 2). To the ALAN Review homepage, SCP added and maintains links for the sponsor, the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN, a special-interest group of the National Council of Teachers of English) and the Children's Literature Web.
Throughout 1994 the SCP discussed a cooperative venture with MIT Press editor Janet Fisher, Associate Director for Journals Publishing. As a result, SCP initially mirrored CJTCS (May 1995 to date) and JFLP (February 1996 to date), and later added JCN (______1997 to date) and SNDE (_____ 1997 to date). MIT employs a variety of measures to restrict access, including the honor system (i.e., voluntary payment), file format such as DVI, and most recently passwords specifically for individual subscribers. Virginia Tech, however, has access in exchange for its mirror.
Begun in April 1995 with a call for papers about the use of computers in environmental design education and practice, the Web saw the first issue of the JCAEDE in October 1995. This electronic-only journal is a collaborative effort between the faculty in two of Virginia Tech's colleges, Human Resources and Architecture. The editors are Joan McLain-Kark, Associate Professor of Interior Design, and Bob Schubert, Assistant Dean of Architecture. They noted in their first issue "the multi-media capabilities of the WWW provides exciting opportunities to present computer images and animation." While this journal does not yet include animation the first invited paper, entitled "Computer Applications in Design," contains many beautiful images. This is only the second journal to arrive at SCP fully prepared with HTML (HyperText Markup Language) tags, so providing access is always quick and easy.
With the Internet publication of the first article in 1996, the JCN is the "first fully electronic, peer-reviewed journal in neurology." Each article is published online as it completes the cycle of peer review and editing. Keith H. Chiappa, MD, Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the EEG/EP Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, serves as the editor. The associate editor is Didier Cros, MD, Associate professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and at the FacultŽ de MŽdicine in Marseille, France.
Available since June 1994, JFE extends the definition of an electronic journal. Edited by Dr. Demetri Telionis, the electronic JFEis a variety of things including a source of raw research data used as the basis of papers disseminated in the print journal. In addition, digital video clips of blade-vortex interaction experiments are available. Interactive online discussions of JFE articles encourages fluid engineers to comment on JFE contributions and to post them on electronic bulletin boards. Each review article or editorial has its own bulletin board with a file name BB(year)(page). Anyone can open a bulletin board to review the posted comments or add their own comments. The resources of the JFEare extremely popular.
Dr. Scott Johnson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sent SCP the first diskette in November 1994 and during its first full year of electronic publication (in addition to paper) the JITE averaged more than 52 accesses every day in 1995. Each quarter a new diskette arrives and SCP personnel enter the HTML tags, link citation numbers to the citations, and often link those to the ejournal articles cited. From the first networked issue, vol. 32, no. 1, citations included articles in the Journal of Technology Education.
Originally edited by Dr. Mark Sanders (Technology Education, Virginia Tech), the JTE is now under the direction of Dr. James. LaPorte (Technology Education, Virginia Tech). It is entirely online because Dr. Sanders has been electronically preparing the journal for publication with standard word processing since its first issue in 1989. The SCP easily made the entire run available online, although actual electronic publishing began in the spring of 1992, by converting all the early diskettes to Gopher and subsequently to HTML.JTE has graphics in some issues and these are also a component of the electronic publication., but readers with text-only capabilities have access to the full text of each issue. Beginning with volume six (fall 1994), illustrations were integrated into the article as they are in traditional publications. Prior to then, illustrations are available as separate PostScript files.
Dr. Mark Sanders and the success of the e-JTE have had a major influence on the growth of the Scholarly Communications Project. He has encouraged others in his field of technology education to make their publications and projects available on the Internet. In November 1994, SCP published the first issue of the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education and one year later the first issue of the Journal of Vocational and Technical Education became available through the Project. Virginia Tech faculty participating in the Technology for All Americans project also sought assistance from the SCP. The only outstanding technology education publication not available through the SCP was the Journal of Technology Studies: Epsilon Pi Tau, but its editor contact the SCP on March 27, 1996, and the first issue was available less than a year later. As the editor wrote in the first networked issue, the SCP is the key Internet source for technology education in North America.
The International Honorary for Professions in Technology, Epsilon Pi Tau, sponsors the JTS so that it can provide an "open forum for the exchang of relevant ideas in the field of Technology Studies. The online version has all the text and graphics published in the paper version.
JIAHR was the first electronic journal SCP published (November 1990). Each article is published as it completes the peer-review and editing processes. It is only available via the Internet, entirely avoiding the costs of paper, printing, and postal charges. Initially jointly edited Dr. Mahmood Kahn and now Dr. Eliza Tse from the faculty of Virginia Tech's Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management Department, Dr. Tse assumed full responsibility in 1995. It lacked a network of readers and has had some difficulty attracting authors.
JVTE is edited by Virginia Tech professor of agricultural education. Encouraged by his colleague, Dr. Mark Sanders, editor of the JTE, the first electronic issue, vol. 12, no. (fall 1995) appeared on the World Wide Web in November 1995. An early online editorial describes free Internet access being good for the sponsoring organization, its membership, and those interested in vocational and technical education. The early flurry of accesses (649 times in its first two months) attests to that.
JoYSL is edited by Don Kenney (University Libraries, Virginia Tech) and Linda Wilson (Dept. of Educational Studies, Radford University) for two divisions of the American Library Association: the Association for Library Service to Children and the Young Adult Library Services Association. Beginning with its spring 1995 issue, the tables of contents of this quarterly publication became Internet accessible in March 1995. Nearly 1800 accesses were logged in less that one year.
Another electronic-only publication, technŽ SCP published vol. 1, no. 1-2, in fall 1995. It is edited by Dr. Paul T. Durbin, from the Philosophy Department at the University of Delaware.
Another journal emanating from MIT Press, SNDE is a quarterly publication established "in recognition that advances on statistics and dynamical systems theory may increase our understanding of economic and financial markets."
WILLA became available in paper the fall of 1992 and electronically in October 1996, with the Assembly being part of the National Council of Teachers of English. This publication filled a need to sustain focus on the crucial issues regarding the status and image of women and girls in every educational setting, both inside and outside the classroom."
One of the first print journals to be published both on paper and electronically, SCP provided initial Internet access to Catalystwith its summer 1991 issue. Scanning and OCR (optical character recognition) technology was temporarily employed to extend the electronic archive of back issues to 1989. Founded in 1973, Catalyst online, a journal for community college educators, was edited by Virginia Tech faculty member, Dr. Darrel Clowes, until_________.
By working with the journal's publisher, Edwin Beschler of Birkhauser, Boston, the SCP got the opportunity to experiment in creating yet another variation of an electronic journal. Beschler wanted to provide JMSEC subscribers with an alternative to the traditional scholarly journal but he knew that they still wanted to receive a paper publication. His plan was to mail paid subscribers article abstracts only, but an access code would accompany each article for full-text, online. Articles are available from SCP for volumes four,1994, through _______, but like the MIT Press electronic journals, JMSEC readers must also have the appropriate software to display and print these PostScript files.
JVME became available through the World Wide Web with vol. 21, no. 1 (_____ 1994). This was SCP's first journal received ready for Web access, complete with in-line color graphics and HTML tagged articles. The editor was Dr. Richard Talbot, founding dean of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, who died suddenly, leaving completion of the second and last online issue to his wife, Jane Talbot. Dr. Robert Wilson, Auburn University, is the succeeding editor, and he has not responded to SCP's invitation to continue online publication.Also through Dr. Talbot's early efforts, the FDA Approved Animal Drug Data Base also became available April 1994-August 1997 (?).
Its first simultaneous print and electronic journal, SCP distributed with listserv and provided Internet access to the abstracts of the quarterly Modal Analysis. Subscribers learned about upcoming articles as soon as they were accepted for publication while the editors were associated with Virginia Tech. In December 1993 the paper journal moved to the sponsor's headquarters (Society for Experimental Mechanics, SEM) where abstracts were batched and with increasing infrequency and mailed to SCP for network access. e-Modal Analysis was seen as an early step in helping subscribes become familiar with e-mail and secondarily with Internet publications because in 1993 most members and subscribers did not have Internet access. Even with no new abstracts available in 1995, Modal Analysislogged a 300% increase in Web access over the previous year; the previous year witnessed an increase of over 500% in accesses via Gopher.Modal Analysis, was absorbed by the Journal of Vibration and Control, edited by Dr. Ali Nayfex, Distinguished University Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Virginia Tech.
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