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June, 1994 _EJournal_ Volume 4 Number 2 ISSN 1054-1055
There are 886 lines in this issue.
An Electronic Journal concerned with the
implications of electronic networks and texts.
2879 Subscribers in 37 Countries
University at Albany, State University of New York
EJOURNAL@ALBANY.bitnet
CONTENTS: [This is line 20]
A ROLE FOR LIBRARIES IN ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION [ Begins at line 68 ]
by Frank Quinn
Mathematics
Virginia Tech
ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: NEITHER FREE NOR EASY [ Begins at line 417 ]
by Fytton Rowland
Information & Library Studies
Loughborough University of Technology
University Press Announcements: [ Begin at line 542 ]
Electronic Publication at Johns Hopkins: Project Muse
Susanna Pathak
Electronic Publication at MIT
Janet Fisher
Editorial Notes and Comment [ Begin at line 713 ]
This Issue and VPIEJ-L
Electronic Journals and Speed
Library Survey via _EJournal_, December 1992
Fewer Subscribers?
Information about _EJournal_ [ Begins at line 805 ]
About Subscriptions and Back Issues
About Supplements to Previous Texts
About _EJournal_
People [ Begins at line 848 ]
Board of Advisors
Consulting Editors
*******************************************************************************
* This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1994 by *
* _EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its *
* contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and all financial interest is hereby*
* assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts. This notification*
* must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_. *
*******************************************************************************
A ROLE FOR LIBRARIES IN ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION [line 68]
Frank Quinn
Mathematics, Virginia Tech
quinn@math.vt.edu
ABSTRACT: This is a proposal for direct involvement of libraries in
the publication of scholarly journals. The issues discussed are
money, standards, copyright and access, and the roles of
individuals. The goal is a managed transition to electronic
publication which does not sacrifice quality and is within current
budgetary constraints.
THE PROBLEMS
Journal subscription costs have been rising rapidly and have
absorbed all movable resources in many libraries. Subscriptions are
being cancelled, and access to scholars has been reduced. Even so,
shelves are filling rapidly. Knowledge continues to grow, and more
outlets are needed, not fewer. Miraculously, a solution seems at
hand: electronic communication is cheap, fast, and accessible.
Electronic journals seem a wonderful solution: pay less, get more.
Unfortunately serious problems with access, quality control, and
financing have held up development of this medium. The first
experimental offerings by commercial publishers are unattractive in
several ways: they restrict access; some of them shift traditional
library functions (e.g., archiving) to the publishers; and there are
no indications that they will be much cheaper. At the other extreme,
preprint data bases and homebrew journals have sprung up on the
network. These are free, but have problems with stability, quality
control, visibility, and acceptance. It is not at all obvious how
these disparate interests and forces will eventually come together.
One approach to electronic journals is to simply wait and see what
happens. No doubt a satisfactory system will eventually evolve,
much as paper journals evolved. But there are strong motivations
for implementing a consciously designed system, if a satisfactory
one can be found. First, evolution is slow and expensive, and the
library crisis is here now. Second, there are serious concerns that
pressures from preprint databases and electronic journals, on top of
financial problems, will cause a collapse of paper publication
before a replacement is ready. Third, evolution involves trying
different systems and weeding out the ones which don't work. But
the failures will pollute the literature and impose a burden on the
scholarly enterprise at a time when efficiency and effectiveness are
more important than ever. [line 113]
Finally, important features of the current system are simplicity,
credibility, and inertia. Scholars write to high standards and
submit to a relatively rigorous editing and refereeing process
because the options are simple: do that or don't get published; they
are used to the system; and they accept this discipline because they
believe everyone else does, and everybody gains from it. An
unmanaged transition will lose much of this. It will be complex,
will have to earn its own credibility, and will have widely
accessible outlets for substandard work. No doubt some areas will
manage to keep high standards, but many will not, and there will be
a net decline in quality. A key goal in a managed transition is not
just to find a system that works, but also transfer the credibility
and acceptance of the current system to the new one.
THE IDEA
The basic idea is that every research library should publish
electronic scholarly journals. However the terms "publish" and
"journal" need clarification, and "why libraries?" needs an answer.
We give a first pass here, and add detail in the following sections.
First, "publish": this would mean permanently maintaining a file of
reviewed and edited papers, freely accessible over the electronic
network. It would also mean managing the editorial structure (see
"Standards") to maintain standards. It need not involve editorial
work, keyboarding, file formatting, etc. These, to the extent they
are done, could be the responsibility of editors and authors.
Next, "journal": this is a repository for primary scholarly work. In
the beginning it should look like a paper journal, except for
format. Some additions might be made, for instance attaching to
each paper a list of errata, and forward citations approved by the
editor. But at present real experiments with the electronic medium
should be left to the secondary literature, to preserve the
credibility of the process.
This scenario does not address the secondary literature: texts,
review and survey books, encyclopedias, many monographs, etc. The
basic structure for dealing with these does not seem to be in
immediate trouble, so we can afford to let them evolve. Technical
issues such as file standards, formats, and access modes are also
not addressed here. These vary from field to field, and information
should be available from professional societies. [line 157]
Finally, "why libraries?": first, to maintain standards (and
credibility) editors must be accountable to someone. Now they are
usually directly accountable to publishers, and indirectly to
librarians who decide whether or not to subscribe to the journal.
Ideally, publishers would continue in this role, but most are
unlikely to adopt policies which would make this possible (see
"Money"). So it makes sense for librarians to move forward a few
steps in the quality-control chain. The other reason is, to quote
the bank robber, "that's where the money is." Most scholarly
journals are primarily supported by library subscriptions, paid from
monies earmarked for the support of scholarly information needs. It
is not realistic to expect new sources of support, nor is it
realistic to hope that library subscription budgets can be shifted
elsewhere for this. So research libraries are nearly the only
places professionally managed electronic journals can be supported.
STANDARDS
The greatest problem is maintenance of standards of correctness and
quality of exposition. Not only to ensure that the material
published is of good quality, but to provide ways for readers,
authors, and librarians to be assured of this.
The key to quality is, of course, the editor or editorial board.
But it is not satisfactory to rely on the reputation of the editor
as a gauge of quality. Librarians and readers often do not have
information about reputations. There are not enough people with
appropriate reputations who are willing to do editorial work. And
it is unstable: a change of editors might significantly change the
quality of the journal.
For a journal to have a reputation (and existence) separate from
that of the editor, the editor must be accountable to someone. In
this proposal that person would be a librarian. Files for the
journal would be maintained in the library. This would address
important concerns about security and permanence, but the main point
here is that it provides a mechanism for accountability. In an
extreme situation, analogous to the firing of an editor by a
publisher, the librarian could deny write access to the file. [line 197]
In most instances librarians do not have the expertise to monitor
the standards of a journal, or even the qualifications of editors.
Further, they would lack the feedback (and discipline) that
publishers get from subscription levels. There are several ways to
get expert advice, and distribute the responsibility for monitoring.
One is to have a "board of trustees" of recognized experts. The
editor would serve "at the pleasure" of the trustees: they appoint
new editors and would have the authority to remove an editor if
necessary. Trustees would meet periodically--say yearly--for a
report from the editor and to review standards and policy. Since
trustees would not be directly involved in editorial work it should
be much easier to recruit eminent trustees than eminent editors.
And listing the names of trustees as well as editors would allow
readers to use the trustees' reputations as guides to quality of the
journal.
Another possibility for accountability is that a department could
sponsor a journal: "The Wobegone Journal of Irony, published under
the auspices of the Wobegone University Department of Ironical
Studies, G. Kellor editor." Care should be taken to ensure it is
not a vanity journal for the department. Finally, professional
societies might respond to the electronic confusion by establishing
accreditation boards for journals. This would amount to a partial
centralization of the "trustee" function.
There is actually not much new in this. Editors of commercial
journals are accountable to the publisher, and people often use the
publisher as a guide to quality of the journal. Professional
societies usually have committees of de facto trustees to oversee
editors of society journals. The "trustee" mechanism for ensuring
quality and stability is used by universities and major
corporations. And Universities, physicians, and barbers are subject
to accreditation or licensing. The only novelty is the location of
the person to whom the editor would be accountable.
It should be emphasized that the `standards' issues of concern here
are correctness, reliability, and quality of exposition. Importance
or interest are not involved. The first reason for this is that
boring but correct and well-exposed work does not damage the
integrity of the literature, and may eventually be useful to
someone. The other reason is that we already have a satisfactory
way to grade papers according to interest: a large array of journals
with varying degrees of specialization and standards of importance.
Electronic publication should preserve this diversity, and not be
just one huge database. What we largely do not have now
(particularly in the sciences), and don't want to have, are large
numbers of journals which vary significantly in two dimensions:
standards of correctness as well as significance. [line 246]
MONEY
Electronic journals based in libraries would lack most of the
obvious expenses of paper journals: printing, mailing, bookkeeping
costs associated with subscriptions, and publisher profit.
Keyboarding costs can be shifted to authors by requesting submission
in standard file formats, and assessing page charges otherwise.
Copyediting can be abandoned, or reserved for extreme cases. Most
editors and reviewers of scholarly journals are already unpaid. But
some expenses would remain, and there might be new ones. If a
journal has trustees it would be appropriate to at least help pay
their travel expenses to meetings with the editors. A reasonable
guess is that costs could be held to about 20% of the current
levels.
In support of this guess I would like to relate my own experiences
as editor. In 1991-92 expenses charged to my publisher were $1,300
for postage and some secretarial support. Postage costs have
declined since then due to a nearly complete change to electronic
mail. During this time 154 papers were processed, and about 40
accepted for publication. Most authors provided useable electronic
files. Keyboarding services for the remainder were readily
available locally, but I expect offering these services to authors
at cost would have increased the number of author-prepared files to
near 100%. I would have wanted to support the keyboarding of a few
third-world submissions. There was essentially no copyediting: most
rewriting involved technical issues and was done by the author. In
cases of linguistic difficulty it was usually effective to suggest
seeking help from a colleague. This experience leads me to believe
I could have delivered complete electronic files for this journal--
lacking professional polish, to be sure, but completely usable-- for
about $2,000.
Many economies are also available to commercial publishers. We
could stay with publishers and avoid this whole scenario if they
would seriously address the cost and access issues. For example, by
offering scholarly journals electronically, with minimal
restrictions on use, at 25% the current price. Less generous terms
would just continue a process which will lead to the collapse of
commercial journal publication. In some fields this collapse is
nearly certain within ten years, and possible within five. [line 288]
Expenses of library publication must be borne by the publishing
institution. Attempts to shift them to users will meet with the
same problems of access and collection which make commercial
electronic publication unattractive. Shifting expenses to other
departments in the institution would create conflicts of interest,
and might create vanity presses. Also the money isn't there. But
in research libraries these expenses would not be new, or unrelated
to the mission. These costs are already borne through subscription
charges. It will cost more to publish an electronic journal than to
subscribe to a paper one. But the proper perspective is that each
library-published journal saves the community of research libraries
80%. If a small fraction of subscription budgets were diverted to
direct publication, the result would be a huge increase of easily
accessible material. And movement of a small fraction of existing
journals into libraries would even render cancellations unnecessary
for such a diversion.
COPYRIGHT AND ACCESS
Copyrights are currently used primarily to protect the revenue
stream of publishers. Library-based journals could be much more
relaxed about this. It would make sense to allow the copying of
entire articles, with the original citation, in any medium for any
purpose. Other libraries might want to load them into their own
archives, for instance to speed up searches. Any user should be
able to download and print them. The local copy store or library
could download and print copies for the electronically
disadvantaged. They could be included in specialized reprint
collections, and accessible through commercial databases. In short
they should have all the functionality that preprint databases do.
The only remaining functions of copyrights would seem to be to
provide legal recourse in cases of plagiarism, and to avoid having
individual authors imposing restrictions on access.
Commercial publishers who want to retain a journal presence will
also have to relax about access. For instance, back issues over two
or three years old probably should be freely accessible over
networks from any library. There is really not much benefit to
"protecting" back issues, and it would be onerous to libraries and
unattractive to authors and users. The general principle is that
functionality must be as close as possible to that of preprint
databases: they are now the competition. [line 331]
WHAT YOU CAN DO
If you are a librarian: work toward having someone in the library
(with experience and integrity) designated as the "publisher."
Develop (if you do not have) the ability to access electronic
journals and print out copies as needed. Develop the capacity to
securely maintain on-line journal files. Make known your
willingness to take on electronic journals, but insist on visible
quality control through some mechanism like trustees: do not create
a vanity press. Cancel subscriptions to provide resources for this
(this will cause temporary inconvenience, but is easily justified).
And work toward having this accepted in the library community as a
professional responsibility rather than an option. This is a
community problem, and requires a community response: it will go
very slowly if everyone waits for Harvard to do it all.
If you are a commercial publisher: if you can bring yourself to do
it, slash costs and offer journals electronically with the freest
possible access, at 25% of list price. Offer unprofitable or
marginal journals "free to a good home" in a library. And shift
your offerings toward monographs. The end result of this scenario
is that libraries will service their journal needs with a fraction
of the current budget. But a great deal of this budget was
kidnapped from monograph budgets and would return there if freed.
Monograph sales can be expected to increase substantially, and
should be safe well into the next century. In the short run this
scenario offers lower profits than toughing it out until the
collapse. The advantages are control over the transition and a
graceful exit which will minimize damage to the disciplines you
service.
If you are an institutional administrator: encourage your library to
participate vigorously. Encourage your University Press (if you
have one) to transfer its journals to the library. Encourage
subscription cancellations, or provide bridge funding to support
these journals until similar transfers elsewhere generate savings to
pay for them. This transition will help with several very pressing
problems (information access, library budgets and space shortfalls).
Vigorous and concerted action will bring relief rapidly. [line 371]
If you are an editor: encourage your publisher to participate
voluntarily in this transition. Explore the possibility of moving
to a library. You should be prepared to offer a visible
accountability system, for instance by recruiting eminent scholars
or previous editors to serve as trustees. This will substantially
increase the confidence of authors and readers in a smooth
transition.
If you are a scholar: seriously consider publishing your work in a
library-based journal, if you are satisfied an appropriate chain of
accountability is in place. Your work will probably appear more
quickly, and may be far more accessible to most of the profession.
If you are thinking about starting a journal, approach your library
(or someone else's library). But be prepared to address the
accountability issue. And be aware that electronic publication does
not avoid many of the problems of starting a journal. In
particular, gaining acceptance and having an impact still requires
recruiting outstanding papers for the first few issues, and
establishing high standards.
SUMMARY
Change is coming, forced by rising production of knowledge and
falling library budgets, and enabled by electronic communication.
Left to itself the transition will be chaotic and damaging. A
controlled transition has been described which would serve the needs
of scholarship within current budgets and without sacrificing
quality. The major features are a shift of primary journal
publication to research libraries, and concentration of commercial
publishers on texts and monographs.
Frank Quinn
Mathematics
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
quinn@math.vt.edu
[[ This essay in Volume 4 Number 2 of _EJournal_ (June, 1994) is (c) copyright
_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby
assigns any and all financial interest to Frank Quinn. This note must
accompany all copies of this text. ]]
==============================================================================
ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: NEITHER FREE NOR EASY [line 417]
Fytton Rowland, Research Fellow
Department of Information & Library Studies
Loughborough University of Technology
J.F.Rowland@lut.ac.uk
My perspective on questions of publishing, archiving and accessing
electronic journals is that of someone who trained as an
information scientist, has worked for most of the last 25 years for
not-for-profit learned-society publishers, and is now a research
fellow in electronic publishing in a university information &
library studies department. My impression is that much of the
continuing debate actually has little to do with the paper versus
electronic issue. It is in fact quite an old controversy that
predates the computer, and reflects the animosities that often exist
between academics, librarians and publishers -- with the publishers
being, on the whole, the people that everyone else loves to hate.
Academics have long wanted to control their own publication system,
and initially did so. Scholarly journals were edited by academics
in their spare time and published by university presses or learned
societies. If any full-time staff worked on them, they were
relatively low-status people very much in an "editorial assistant"
position. Nor, indeed, did academics hold librarians in very much
higher esteem, and although today academic librarians usually do
formally have academic-related status, they and their skills still
are not always respected by academics. The substantial departmental
library at one of Britain's most prestigious university departments
--the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge-- for example employs no
qualified library staff at all, not even a paraprofessional; the
physicists run it themselves. I believe that there is a romantic
idea that if only academics did the whole job themselves, as they
did in some golden era in the past, then scholarly communication
would be quicker, cheaper and more effective than it is with these
various professional intermediaries --publishers, subscription
agents, librarians-- involved.
Why, then, did the golden age pass away? Was it just because of all
this slow and messy business of putting ink on to paper? I believe
that the major reason why professionals came into the picture was
because of the sheer quantity of scholarly material being published
--that is, because of the growth of the scholarly community
producing papers. A university library of a million volumes has to
have a staff of professional librarians. And while a journal
publishing 15 papers a year could be run on an "amateur" basis, one
publishing 1500 papers a year cannot, regardless of the medium it is
published in. The sheer administrative load of organizing the
input, refereeing, copyediting, formatting, and distribution of that
many documents (including the ones that get rejected, which generate
work too) requires full-time staff. And since these people have to
eat, they need a salary. Contrary to what some participants in
discussions of electronic journals have alleged, it is this area of
"first-copy cost" that is responsible for most of the cover price of
a journal, not the paper, printing, binding and postage costs. Yes,
a purely electronic journal is inherently somewhat cheaper than a
paper one; but not a tiny fraction of the cost. [line 473]
There is also the question of subsidy --an emotive word. I prefer
to put it that the costs of running a high-quality scholarly
communication system have to be covered from somewhere.
Traditionally, one major route by which universities subsidized
scholarly publication was by giving their libraries funds to buy
journals. Controversy arose because commercial publishers, from the
1940s onwards and led by the unlamented Robert Maxwell, realized
that there was scope for making lots of profit here. However,
not-for-profit publishers --university presses and learned
societies-- have a big presence in the scholarly publishing field
and cannot be criticized for excessive profit-taking. The main cost
is simply the pay of the people who do the work. Of course, these
people can be (and in the case of the presently free electronic
journals on the Internet, presumably are) subsidized in a different
way, by the university that originates the journal paying for them.
But for how long? And for how long will the network itself be
entirely free of charge at the point of use to the academic
community, anyway?
Another question --raised by Frank Quinn-- is how much of the work
done by journal staff needs doing at all? Is copyediting necessary?
The existing network journals are of necessity put out in straight
ASCII text for the most part, while paper journals that are being
experimentally offered in dual form (paper and electronic) acquire
their page-image bitmaps by scanning the printed pages. The craft
knowledge of typographers, graphic designers and even the despised
copyeditors is not negligible. They all serve to turn a crude,
possibly unreadable manuscript into a publishable paper. What an
advance it was when Graphical User Interfaces like Windows
replaced purely textual DOS screens --a great increase in
user-friendliness. In the same way, a pleasingly designed and laid
out printed page, written in correct and readable English, is more
user-friendly than a typescript (however scientifically correct) in
poor English. So even if no printed edition is published, I believe
that the requirement for quality will mean that some copyediting and
design work will need to be done by someone. [line 510]
In case it is felt that I am a pure Luddite, let me finally say that
I do believe that the networks have transformed informal academic
communication beyond all recognition, and in particular have
democratized the invisible college. Whereas in the past only those
who actually received the personal letters or phone calls, or who
could afford to attend the international conferences, were admitted
to the invisible college, now anyone anywhere can join discussion
lists or computer conferences or look at bulletin boards. This must
be an improvement. And formal communication should certainly be
quicker, and somewhat cheaper. The additional features available
online, most notably the ability to append open peer commentary to
papers, are very valuable too, and when the supernetworks come along
we will be able to add multimedia features to "papers." But we
should not kid ourselves that this will all happen at no cost and
without specialist staff.
Fytton Rowland
Research Fellow
Department of Information & Library Studies
Loughborough University of Technology
J.F.Rowland@lut.ac.uk
[[ This essay in Volume 4 Number 2 of _EJournal_ (June, 1994) is (c) copyright
_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby
assigns any and all financial interest to Fytton Rowland. This note must
accompany all sopies of this text. ]]
=============================================================================
ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION AT JOHNS HOPKINS: PROJECT MUSE [line 542]
Susanna Pathak
Johns Hopkins
spathak@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
In one of the first joint ventures of its kind, the Johns Hopkins
University Press, the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, and Homewood Academic
Computing have joined forces to launch Project Muse, an initiative that
enables networked electronic access to the Press's scholarly journals.
This collaboration draws the Johns Hopkins University community together
to move scholarly communication into the electronic age and develop an
economic model that addresses rising costs and diminishing budgets.
The first phase of the project, completed in February 1994, is a freely
accessible prototype consisting of current issues of Configurations, MLN
(Modern Language Notes), and ELH (English Literary History). The fully
formatted text of these journals is now available on the Internet via
online access to the library's server (http://muse.mse.jhu.edu). Features
include subject, title, and author indexes; instant hypertext links to
tables of contents, endnotes and illustrations; Boolean searches of text
and tables of contents; and voice and textual annotations. Several
members of the scholarly community at Johns Hopkins have already used this
resource, and one professor describes it as "an intelligent, incredibly
easy system to use . . . an actual research tool."
The prototype is accessed through a networked hypermedia information
retrieval system known as the World Wide Web (WWW). It can be viewed and
searched using any of a number of freely available WWW readers, but runs
optimally under the Mosaic reader developed by the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications. Users of Mosaic can annotate text, record
paths taken during online sessions, download text for printing, and create
"hot lists" of frequently accessed documents. Mosaic readers are
available for a variety of operating systems, including Unix, Mac, and
Windows machines. Users of the prototype may send comments and
suggestions with the online form provided in the prototype or via regular
e-mail (ejournal@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu).
The short-range goals of Project Muse, which the prototype enables us to
achieve, are the creation of an easy-to-use electronic-journal environment
with searching and multimedia features that cannot be duplicated in print,
and the collection of data on amounts and types of usage for an access and
costing model. Long-range goals are to offer reasonably priced electronic
journals to university libraries and to use online technology to make
works of scholarship more widely available within individual university
communities. [line 587]
If funding for capital costs can be raised, the project team aims to mount
about forty of the Press's journals in math, the humanities, and the
social sciences. These issues will appear on a prepublication basis and
will be available electronically a few weeks in advance of the printed
version. Beyond developing a prototype, Project Muse has enabled the
university press, the library, and the computing center to engage in a
meaningful dialogue about the current state of the scholarly communication
process. We believe that this dialogue will not only influence the final
appearance, price, and distribution method of the Press's online journals,
but the shape of scholarly publishing in the information age.
Susanna Pathak
Project Muse Team
Johns Hopkins University Press
spathak@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
==============================================================================
ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION AT MIT [line 607]
Janet H. Fisher
Associate Director for Journals Publishing
MIT Press
Fisher@mitvma.mit.edu
Beginning in late summer 1994 we will begin publishing a
peer-reviewed electronic journal called _Chicago Journal of
Theoretical Computer Science_. With the same attention to
peer-review and editorial quality that the Press applies to its
twenty-eight print journals, we believe this journal will be
important to the scholarly community for several reasons. It
* provides high-quality, backed by a standard publisher
* incorporates the advantages of the electronic medium that scholars
need
* gives librarians an electronic publication purchasable by standard
subscription procedures, accompanied by liberal use-guidelines
consistent with its electronic form of publication; it is available
through vendors
* is committed to inclusion in traditional indexing and abstracting
services
* is committed to archiving by agreement with the MIT Libraries and a
back-up archive
We anticipate publishing 15 articles in the first calendar year (the
equivalent of a standard tri-annual publication); subscriptions
will be available for $125 for institutions and $30 for individuals
for a calendar year period. Subscribers will receive a notice each
time an article is published, and instructions on how to retrieve the
article from the Press's FTP site. Because of the need to transmit
math, graphics, and symbols, articles will be available in LaTeX
source (which is ubiquitous in the field of computer science, and
thus preferred by individuals) and PostScript (which is preferred
by libraries). Hardcopy of articles will be available from MIT
Libraries Document Services Department.
The journal will publish peer reviewed articles describing new and
significant research results in all areas of theoretical computer
science. In addition, articles will have an associated file called
Forward Pointers that will refer to subsequent papers, results,
improvements, etc., that are relevant to it. These Pointers will
change with time as conjectures stated in the paper are settled or
new relevant results are discovered. Insertion of Forward Pointers
will be controlled by the editors. Articles will also have an
associated file of comments which will be unrefereed, unmoderated,
and easily accessible from the article. [line 654]
Subscribers will be allowed unlimited access to the articles
published during the calendar year. In later years, subscribers
will be able to access the file of articles published before the
current subscription year by paying an additional fee above their
subscription fee. We are considering providing electronic copies of
articles to non-subscribers for a per-article fee.
We are publishing this journal without difficult-to-administer
restrictions with the assumption that librarians and individuals
will be willing to pay for what they use. Having paid a
subscription price, we believe libraries should be able to use the
journal in a way that reflects what they currently do with paper
journals and that recognizes the differences inherent in the
electronic medium, such as:
* store articles electronically on a library server and allow the local
community to print or download copies
* print out and store articles on library shelves
* print out articles and allow users to take them from the library
* print out articles and store them on reserve if requested by a professor
* print out articles and share them with other libraries under standard
interlibary loan procedures
* place articles on a campus network for access by local users
* convert articles to another medium (i.e. microfilm/fiche/CD) for storage
Individual subscribers will be able to:
* store articles on their personal computer
* download and retain a paper copy of the article
* convert the files to another program
* perform reasonable format conversions
The journal will be archived by agreement with the MIT Libraries and
Information Systems department. A back-up archive site has been set
as Scholarly Communications Project, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University. Paper copies of individual articles will be
available to non-subscribers from MIT Libraries Document Services. [line 692]
We are anxious to see if a model such as this one is viable. We
believe it has the potential to meet the needs of the scholarly
academic community, librarians, and publishers. Obviously, how it
is received in the market will be the true test. We'll see if
scholars are willing to submit articles to such a publication. We'll
see if enough librarians are willing to buy an electronic journal to
support its cost. (And there are indeed costs.) We'll see if
individuals are willing to support the cost of providing such
publication outlets for their field. (There are no "page" charges
for this journal.)
Janet H. Fisher
Associate Director for Journals Publishing
MIT Press
Fisher@mitvma.mit.edu
===============================================================================
** Editorial Note - This issue and VPIEJ-L [line 713]
The essays and announcements in this issue appeared originally on a
Listserv List about electronic journals based at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and called VPIEJ-L. We think the essays'
mixtures of good sense, lucidity and pertinence to "the implications
of electronic networks and texts" made them apt candidates for an
issue of _EJournal_, and we are grateful to Frank Quinn, Fytton
Rowland, Susanna Pathak, and Janet Fisher for letting us edit and
re-"print" their texts.
==========
** Editorial Comment - Electronic Journals and Speed
When _EJournal_'s first issue was published in March of 1991, one of
our goals was to minimize the time from submission through
peer-review to publication. Our April issue was the best example so
far of how fast we *can* move.
Professor Holland sent us a proposal, with an outline, on 16
December 1993. Two consultants recommended that we encourage
development of the essay. "Eliza..." actually arrived on 25
February, was sent to readers (without authorial identification) on
10 March, and was accepted (with suggestions for revision) on 22
March. That was the slow part of the process.
A revised version arrived on 28 March. 5 messages about details
were exchanged before a formatted version of the issue was sent to
Florida on 31 March, in case Professor Holland had last-minute
copy-editing corrections or other suggestions to make. The "Eliza
Meets the Postmodern" issue was e-mailed on 10 April 1994. That's
114 days from *proposal* to publication.
Three points about the process:
1) Most important: Professor Holland delivered. Our questions were
sometimes answered within an hour; the essay (and revision) arrived
promptly; the text was clean. [line 750]
2) The readers were prompt (and virtually unanimous). Editorial
acceptance wasn't delayed by negotiations, in other words.
3) Several steps of the process happened at a time --during spring
break-- when we in Albany could act and respond swiftly.
Observation: E-mail does indeed speed up the publication process,
but what really matters --still-- is the people involved.
Within a week of distribution we received four responses. One was
almost a "cancel my subscription" snort, one questioned the
thoroughness and reliability of our editorial procedures, one
promised a measured disagreement (since received), and one was a
quick but lengthy inquiry that we hope will become a publishable
response. So we are working on a "Supplement" issue of _EJournal_,
one that will further illustrate response time in the Matrix.
==========
** Editorial Note - Electronic Journals and Libraries
In the December, 1992 issue of _EJournal_ [V2N4], Ms. Meta Reid
conducted a survey about electronic journals and libraries. Of the
respondents who identified themselves, 55 were professors and 19
were students. Librarians numbered 34. And fifty of the
respondents reported that they worked outside "the academy."
I conclude from Ms. Reid's "Results" that electronic journals are
not yet thought to be as respected as paper-based journals, but that
their readers believe they will become more important. The
respondents agree that electronic journals "may be useful in
reducing costs of publishing, storing and making available technical
information."
We were pleased that Ms. Reid chose to ask actual readers of an
electronic journal about the medium, and we're grateful to her for
sharing her "Results."
==========
** Editorial Note - Fewer Subscribers?
Readers may have noticed an apparent drop in the number of
subscribers. The change is ambiguous. We removed more than 400
"nobody home" addresses from our Listserv list after V4N1 was
mailed, and have had many people subscribe since then.
==========
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------------------------ I N F O R M A T I O N --------------------
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About Subscribing and Sending for Back Issues: [l. 805]
In order to: Send to: This message:
Subscribe to _EJournal_: LISTSERV@ALBANY.bitnet SUB EJRNL Your Name
Get Contents/Abstracts
of previous issues: LISTSERV@ALBANY.bitnet GET EJRNL CONTENTS
Get Volume 1 Number 1: LISTSERV@ALBANY.bitnet GET EJRNL V1N1
Send mail to our "office": EJOURNAL@ALBANY.bitnet Your message...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About "Supplements":
_EJournal_ is experimenting with ways of revising, responding to, reworking, or
even retracting the texts we publish. Authors who want to address a subject
already broached --by others or by themselves-- may send texts for us to
consider publishing as a Supplement issue. Proposed supplements will not go
through as thorough an editorial review process as the essays they annotate.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About _EJournal_:
_EJournal_ is an all-electronic, e-mail delivered, peer-reviewed,
academic periodical. We are particularly interested in theory and
practice surrounding the creation, transmission, storage,
interpretation, alteration and replication of electronic "text" -
broadly defined. We are also interested in the broader social,
psychological, literary, economic and pedagogical implications of
computer-mediated networks. The journal's essays are delivered
free to Bitnet/ Internet addressees. Recipients may make
paper copies; _EJournal_ will provide authenticated paper copy from
our read-only archive for use by academic deans or others.
Writers who think their texts might be appreciated by _EJournal_'s audience are
invited to forward files to EJOURNAL@ALBANY.bitnet . If you are wondering
about starting to write a piece for to us, feel free to ask if it sounds
appropriate. There are no "styling" guidelines; we try to be a little more
direct and lively than many paper publications, and considerably less hasty and
ephemeral than most postings to unreviewed electronic spaces. Essays in the
vicinity of 5000 words fit our format well. We read ASCII; we look forward to
experimenting with other transmission and display formats and protocols.
[l. 848]
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Board of Advisors:
Stevan Harnad Princeton University
Dick Lanham University of California at L. A.
Ann Okerson Association of Research Libraries
Joe Raben City University of New York
Bob Scholes Brown University
Harry Whitaker University of Quebec at Montreal
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Consulting Editors - November, 1993
ahrens@alpha.hanover.bitnet John Ahrens Hanover
ap01@liverpool.ac.uk Stephen Clark Liverpool
dabrent@acs.ucalgary.ca Doug Brent Calgary
djb85@albany Don Byrd Albany
donaldson@loyvax Randall Donaldson Loyola College
ds001451@ndsuvm1 Ray Wheeler North Dakota
erdtt@pucal Terry Erdt Purdue-Calumet
fac_askahn@vax1.acs.jmu.edu Arnie Kahn James Madison
folger@watson.ibm.com Davis Foulger IBM - Watson Center
george@gacvax1 G. N. Georgacarakos Gustavus Adolphus
gms@psuvm Gerry Santoro Penn State
nrcgsh@ritvax Norm Coombs RIT
pmsgsl@ritvax Patrick M. Scanlon RIT
r0731@csuohio Nelson Pole Cleveland State
richardj@bond.edu.au Joanna Richardson Bond
ryle@urvax Martin Ryle Richmond
twbatson@gallua Trent Batson Gallaudet
userlcbk@umichum Bill Condon Michigan
wcooper@vm.ucs.ualberta.ca Wes Cooper Alberta
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Editor: Ted Jennings, English, University at Albany
Managing Editor: Chris Funkhouser, English, University at Albany
Editorial Asssociate: Jerry Hanley, emeritus, University at Albany
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
University at Albany Computing Services Center: Ben Chi, Director
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 USA
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