_______ _______ __ / _____/ /__ __/ / / / /__ / / ____ __ __ __ ___ __ __ ____ / / / ___/ __ / / / __ \ / / / / / //__/ / //_ \ / __ \ / / / /____ / /_/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / / / / / / / / /_/ / / / \_____/ \____/ \____/ \____/ /_/ /_/ /_/ \__/_/ /_/ 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. ========== ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ I N F O R M A T I O N -------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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