What is an electronic journal? (part 3 of 4)
John Franks
What is and Electronic Journal (Part 3 of 4)
The subnet for my university is divided into further subnets by the
additional digits in the IP address. For example, appropriately
specifying the next three digits designates all those networked
computers in my academic department. And, of course, specifying all
twelve digits (usually) uniquely determines a single computer. This
makes it equally feasible for a publisher to provide access to everyone
who has access to a computer on my departmental subnet, or to everyone
who has access to an individual computer.
The particular client/server software and the NNTP protocol used for
news articles is not appropriate for a scholarly journal, but there are
several alternatives which are generally available without cost. In
particular, the National Science Foundation has funded the Clearing
House for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR), which
will develop and support client/server software using the ISO standard
protocol for electronic text known as Z39.50 (see glossary). There has
also been substantial development of software appropriate for this use
by Universities wanting to create campus wide information servers.
Most notable in this category is the gopher project.
There are many advantages to a scholarly journal distributed in a way
similar to this. The utility to the scholar is much greater when he or
she has direct access to documents. This model would rank quite high
in the scholar support criteria of ease of access and quality of user
interface. If a journal is made available through a standard protocol,
the user should have substantial choice about the interface which he
uses to view or download the data. I routinely use three different
clients to read the UPI news described above, the choice depending on
whether I am using my personal computer at home, or a workstation in my
office. This kind of flexibility is not likely to be possible with the
software or data base models described above.
The mechanism used by gopher or NNTP servers for restricting access to
to certain subnets is much simpler than a password scheme and cheaper
to implement. It is very much cheaper and simpler to maintain than a
model where the publisher must create and support all client software.
There are substantial economies for the publisher who uses standard
software supported by university computing organizations or
organizations like CNIDR. It may seem surprising, but the quality of
the client/server software supporting standard protocols and available
without cost is much higher than what a publisher is likely to develop
and generally of at least as high quality as the average of mass market
commercial software. The level of support for such software is
commensurately high.
In the subnet model the publishers flexibility in charging is somewhat
limited. Subscriptions can be offered to universities, departments, or
individuals, but since the text is now archived by someone other than
the publisher, it is no longer possible to charge for searching or
connect time.
The Subsidized Model
The three electronic journal models described so far, the data base,
the software, and the subnet, differ primarily in the extent and method
of their efforts to *prevent* the contents of an electronic journal
from being read by those who have not paid for it. In the first two of
these models the cost of these efforts will represent a substantial
fraction of the cost of publishing the journal. It is not
inconceivable that the cost of restricting access to the journal will
represent a majority of production costs. These costs, of course, will
be passed on to the subscriber, but there is another less tangible cost
for the subscriber which may be more significant. Experience with the
publishing of software has shown that attempts to prevent unauthorized
use, make the use much harder for the authorized user. This is true to
such an extent that many publishers have abandoned software copy
protection, in response to user demand, and rely instead only on the
protection afforded by copyright. It is quite possible that the
inconvenience resulting from schemes to protect electronic journals
will be even more obtrusive than in software publishing. In
particular, any scheme which requires the user to physically go to a
library and perhaps to enlist the aid of a librarian, or to login and
supply a password *each time* a journal is consulted is unlikely to
find favor among subscribers.
All this is especially ironic since the authors and editor derive no
benefit from the attempts to restrict access. On the contrary, the the
best interests of the authors and editor are served by the widest
possible distribution (even to non-subscribers).
These considerations lead naturally to the consideration of alternative
methods of funding electronic journal production, which would permit
free distribution to any interested user. Electronic journals
currently in existence are mostly of this type, though, as yet, only a
few could be considered true scholarly journals as opposed to newsletters.
A subsidized journal which provides a good example from the point of
view of technical production and distribution, is EFFector
Online, the newsletter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation [3].
This publication, which appears approximately monthly, is available to
any interested party through at least four different electronic
protocols. As issues appear they are posted to the USENET system. In
addition they are made available for anonymous ftp, they are made
available via a gopher server and they are indexed and available to
WAIS clients (see glossary). This shotgun approach to distribution
meets the subscriber needs of easy access and quality user interface
better than any other electronic publication of which I am aware.
Not all of these distribution channels would be appropriate for a
scholarly journal, but until such time as a standard emerges for
browsing and downloading electronic documents, it is a wise choice to
make documents available via a variety of mechanisms. The cost of
duplicating distribution protocols is not high, and is far outweighed
by the benefits to users.
A second electronic publication worthy of mention in this category is
the Ulam Quarterly. This is a refereed mathematics journal
provided primarily in an electronic format. Issues of the journal are
available by anonymous ftp and are ``offered without charge, courtesy
of Palm Beach Atlantic College Mathematics Department with support from
the University of Florida.[4]'' This provides an example of a journal
in this category where certification is handled in the traditional
manner. At present this journal is electronically archived at two
sites and marketing is minimal.
Who might underwrite the costs of electronically publishing a journal
if there are no subscription revenues? There are a number of
possibilities. A professional society might sponsor such a journal and
pay for it out of members' dues. Costs might be provided, at least in
part, by government grants. A journal might be sponsored by a
University, or even a single academic department, as in the case of the
Ulam Quarterly. An important factor is that with effectively
free distribution via the internet, and the fact that authors and
editors are not paid, the cost of producing an electronic journal can
be quite modest.
End of Part 2 of 3
What is an electronic journal? (Part 3 of 3)
AMONG THESE MODELS WHICH WILL EMERGE AS THE DOMINANT ONE?
This is a difficult question to answer. It is not clear what direction
commercial publishers will take. At the moment they seem generally
conservative and uninterested in innovating. But, in addition to
publishers, two other groups, scholars and librarians, will strongly
influence the development of electronic journals.
It is in the interest of scholars, both as producers and consumers of
journal articles, to have the widest possible distribution with the
fewest encumberances. While a scholar's strongest motivation in
selecting a journal for his work will likely be to place it in the most
prestigious journal which will accept it, it seems likely that other
factors being equal he or she will opt to publish in a subsidized
journal where the article's exposure is likely to be greater.
While the interests of librarians may overlap with those of scholars,
they do not coincide. A key issue is the state of libraries' readiness
and willingness to archive electronic journals. On the one hand
librarians have little desire to become computer center managers. On
the other hand they understand that if they only license access to
information that is owned by a publisher then their role as librarian
is diminished. They become little more than a conduit to the publisher
for University funds. For a library to own electronic materials it must
archive them. This in turn requires computing facilities and new
expertise.
It is important to understand that the attitudes of many
library staff members towards electronic publishing, or computing in
general, are influenced by their experience and expertise with the
software and computers they use for Online Public Access Catalogs
(OPACs). These are typically commercial software systems like NOTIS,
which were designed (and often run on computers which were designed) in
an era before personal computers and workstations were widely used.
It is likely that among many librarians there is still an expectation
that systems like NOTIS and the computers on which they run can be
relevant to providing online access to archived electronic journals.
In my opinion, there is very little chance that this expectation can be
realized. Librarians have already come to realize there traditional
OPAC platform cannot provide access to information in CD-Rom format and
that to provide this access it is necessary to acquire separate
computers and even separate local area networks.
Access to electronic journals, provided using modern protocols, will
likewise require new computing facilities and new expertise. It is not
completely impossible to provide access using the old software and/or
hardware, but it will be much less cost effective to do so. Moreover, the
quality of service will be so low that users will find it unacceptable
when compared with similar services provided on modern computers. It
may be possible to teach an old dog new tricks, but it is very much
cheaper to buy a new dog.
Of course libraries will make the transition. But it will likely take
time and in the short run libraries will be ill equipped to archive
electronic journals and provide their patrons with access to them.
This lack is even more dramatic for materials which are more
complicated than ASCII text. For example, in mathematics and some
sciences, it is very common for journal articles to be created in the
TeX text formatting language. The Ulam Quarterly provides its users
with articles in two formats -- the TeX ``source'' which is what the
author prepares, and the Postscript output which is obtained from
processing that source, and is suitable for sending to Postscript
capable printers. Almost no libraries today are prepared to deal
constructively with TeX source. And relatively few are prepared to
handle Postscript on a substantial scale.
End of Part 2 of 3