+ Page 1 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review Volume 2, Number 1 (1991) ISSN 1048-6542 Editor-In-Chief: Charles W. Bailey, Jr. University of Houston Associate Editors: Columns: Leslie Pearse, OCLC Communications: Dana Rooks, University of Houston Reviews: Mike Ridley, University of Waterloo Editorial Board: Walt Crawford, Research Libraries Group Nancy Evans, Library and Information Technology Association David R. McDonald, Tufts University R. Bruce Miller, University of California, San Diego Paul Evan Peters, Coalition for Networked Information Peter Stone, University of Sussex Published on an irregular basis by the University Libraries, University of Houston. Technical support is provided by the Information Technology Division, University of Houston. Circulation: 2,685 subscribers in 32 countries. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Address: Charles W. Bailey, Jr. University Libraries University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-2091 (713) 749-4241 LIB3@UHUPVM1 Articles are stored as files at LISTSERV@UHUPVM1. To retrieve a file, send the GET command given after the article information to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1. To retrieve the article as an e-mail message instead of a file, add "F=MAIL" to the end of the GET command. Back issues are also stored at LISTSERV@UHUPVM1. To obtain a list of all available files, send the following message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1: INDEX PACS-L. The name of each issue's table of contents file begins with the word "CONTENTS." Note that all of the above e-mail addresses are on BITNET. The list server also has an Internet address: LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU. + Page 2 + CONTENTS SPECIAL SECTION ON NETWORK-BASED ELECTRONIC SERIALS The Electronic Journal: What, Whence, and When? Ann Okerson (pp. 5-24) To retrieve this file: GET OKERSON PRV2N1 Online Journals: Disciplinary Designs for Electronic Scholarship Teresa M. Harrison, Timothy Stephen, and James Winter (pp. 25-38) To retrieve this file: GET HARRISON PRV2N1 Post-Gutenburg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge Stevan Harnad (pp. 39-53) To retrieve this file: GET HARNAD PRV2N1 The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research Lon Savage (pp. 54-66) To retrieve this file: GET SAVAGE PRV2N1 Postmodern Culture: Publishing in the Electronic Medium Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth (pp. 67-76) To retrieve this file: GET AMIRAN PRV2N1 New Horizons in Adult Education: The First Five Years (1987-1991) Jane Hugo and Linda Newell (pp. 77-90) To retrieve this file: GET HUGO PRV2N1 EJournal: An Account of the First Two Years Edward M. Jennings (pp. 91-110) To retrieve this file: GET JENNINGS PRV2N1 The Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues Marcia Tuttle (pp. 111-127) To retrieve this file: GET TUTTLE PRV2N1 + Page 3 + COMMUNICATIONS How to Start and Manage a BITNET LISTSERV Discussion Group: A Beginner's Guide Diane Kovacs, Willard McCarty, and Michael Kovacs (pp. 128-143) To retrieve this file: GET KOVACS PRV2N1 Providing Data Services for Machine-Readable Information in an Academic Library: Some Levels of Service Jim Jacobs (pp. 144-160) To retrieve this file: GET JACOBS PRV2N1 COLUMNS Public-Access Provocations: An Informal Column Depth vs. Breadth: Enhancement and Retrospective Conversion Walt Crawford (pp. 161-163) To retrieve this file: GET CRAWFORD PRV2N1 Recursive Reviews Copyright, Digital Media, and Libraries Martin Halbert (pp. 164-170) To retrieve this file: GET HALBERT PRV2N1 REVIEWS Libraries, Networks and OSI: A Review, with a Report on North American Developments Reviewed by Clifford A. Lynch (pp. 171-176) To retrieve this file: GET LYNCH PRV2N1 + Page 4 + The User's Directory of Computer Networks Reviewed by Dave Cook (pp. 177-181) To retrieve this file: GET COOK PRV2N1 ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 67 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth. "Postmodern Culture: Publishing in the Electronic Medium." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 67-76. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction Postmodern Culture was founded in 1990 by Eyal Amiran, Greg Dawes, Elaine Orr, and John Unsworth at North Carolina State University (professors Dawes and Orr have subsequently stepped down as editors in order to pursue their research projects, though both remain on the editorial board). Postmodern Culture is a peer-reviewed electronic journal which provides an international, interdisciplinary forum for discussions of contemporary literature, theory, and culture. It accepts for consideration both finished essays and working papers, and carries in each issue fiction and/or poetry, book reviews, a popular culture column, and announcements. The journal does not consider essays dealing exclusively with computer hardware or software, unless those essays raise significant aesthetic or theoretical issues. PMC comes out three times a year (September, January, and May) and is free to the public and to libraries via electronic mail. Each issue of Postmodern Culture carries a volume and number designation. The journal is also available on computer diskette and microfiche; it is distributed in a variety of diskette formats (Macintosh 3.5", IBM 5.25", or IBM 3.5"), but no issue will exceed 720 KB of data, the equivalent of one 3.5" or two 5.25" low-density diskettes. The subscription rate for diskette or microfiche is $15/year for individuals, $30/year for institutions (in Canada add $3; elsewhere outside the U.S. add $7). At the present time PMC has about 1,200 subscribers in 17 countries. The journal's ISSN number is 1053-1920. The editorial board for Postmodern Culture includes researchers and writers in African American studies, cultural studies, film, Latin American studies, literature and literary theory, philosophy, sociology, and religion. + Page 68 + The board members' primary responsibilities include reading essays for the journal (approximately four essays a year), inviting submissions, and helping to publicize the existence of the journal. Some have also contributed essays. Members were chosen because of their own performance in their field (or the promise of it--we chose some younger scholars who were highly recommended by their colleagues) and because they offer special knowledge of diverse disciplines, genres, and cultures. The first volume (numbers 1-3) of the journal included essays on Latin American politics, eating disorders and spiritual transcendence, the theory of writing in the hypertext environment, William Gaddis's novel JR, the implications of the postmodern critique of identity for the Afro-American community, the rhetoric of the Persian Gulf War as presented in the New York Times, the politics of Sartre, AIDS and cyborgs, Ishmael Reed's The Terrible Two's, and representations of mass culture, postmodern ethnography, and other subjects. The journal has also published popular culture columns on the televising of the Tour de France, Satanism and the mass media, and female body building, plus fiction by Kathy Acker, a hybrid theoretical-interpretive-poetic work by Susan Howe, a video script by Laura Kipnis, and a number of poems and book reviews. 2.0 Distribution When an issue is published, its table of contents is distributed (using the Revised LISTSERV program) to all of the journal's subscribers. This file contains the journal's masthead, information about subscription and submission, the names of authors published in that issue, and titles, filenames, and abstracts for each item in the issue. Subscribers can then choose to retrieve one essay, several essays, or the whole issue as a package, using a few simple LISTSERV commands (it is not necessary for individual subscribers to have a copy of the LISTSERV program running at their site in order to issue these commands). Essays can be retrieved as files or as mail, and all essays are stored in a file list maintained on the NCSU mainframe, so readers can get copies of material published in back issues at any time. + Page 69 + We have found the LISTSERV program to be an extremely flexible and effective way to publish in this medium. It is widely used, and it is generally familiar to those who already participate in network discussion groups. It is also well-documented, and support for list owners is available both locally (from the postmaster and support staff at one's site) and through an electronic discussion group moderated by Eric Thomas, who wrote the program. LISTSERV lists can be set up in different ways. For instance, one can set up a list so that all mail posted to it is automatically distributed to all subscribers, or so that all mail posted to the list is sent to the list editor for screening and/or compilation. Subscription to the list can be open or restricted, as can access to the names of other subscribers and to any files stored in association with the list. Furthermore, the ability to edit files on the file list can be limited to the editors, permitted to a designated group of readers, or permitted to all readers. List maintenance and list editing can be performed by different people (or by a number of people) at the same site or at different sites, and one can automate certain functions, such as the distribution of a designated set of files for new subscribers. Postmodern Culture is open to public subscription, and its archived files are available for retrieval. Mail cannot be sent directly for distribution to the list. Only the editors post and edit items and maintain the list. 3.0 History Some of our earliest discussion focused on the format in which we might distribute the journal. We considered various analogues and models for what we wanted to do, including interactive software such as electronic bulletin boards (for example, the Electronic College of Theory), hardware- or software-specific journals such as TidBITS (a HyperCard, Macintosh-based journal), and network discussion groups (such as HUMANIST). + Page 70 + We decided that restricting ourselves to the lowest common denominator would increase our accessibility and make us available to a wider pool of subscribers. For these reasons, we settled on ASCII text transmitted by electronic mail as our format. ASCII text can be imported into almost any word processing program, and electronic mail can be delivered free of charge through Internet and BITNET, networks which connect thousands of sites around the world. Our next logistical decision was to set up PMC-Talk, a discussion group which supplements the journal with an open channel for critique, informational exchanges, and the publication of non-juried submissions. Finally, we elected to make the journal available on disk and microfiche, so that libraries which could not devote the hardware to making the journal available in its electronic mail form could still subscribe, and so that individual users who had no access to electronic mail could still have access to us. During the Spring of 1990, we mailed several hundred letters to artists, scholars, and critics in a wide variety of fields. These letters met with a remarkably positive reception, and enabled us to assemble a first-rate editorial board and a very interesting first issue within a period of months. The response to our mailings is a strong indication that many humanists are prepared for the advent of electronic publication, and are eager to learn more about the possibilities of the medium. The response we met with at our own institution has been equally encouraging. We have received financial and technical support from several parts of North Carolina State University (NCSU): the Computing Center, the Humanities Computing Lab, the Social Sciences Computing Lab, the Department of English (which has agreed, for instance, to give course reductions to the editors), the Department of Foreign Languages, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the NCSU Libraries. + Page 71 + 4.0 Standards and the Medium One of the questions we have considered in the course of putting together the first three issues is whether the medium in which we publish is particularly appropriate to a certain kind of essay. Is the "finished" work more appropriate in the print medium, while works in progress, collaborative essays, and interviews are more appropriate for an electronic journal? Or, is there room for both in this medium? Might the common sense of what it is that constitutes a finished work itself be transformed when the journal invites and publishes responses to the essay, and these appear only days after the essay had been published? Postmodern Culture can serve to encourage more experimental scholarly writing. For example, we publish works-in-progress, such as Bell Hooks's investigation of the interrelations and contradictions of African American culture and postmodern theory, which invite discussion and allow scholars to open their work to criticism as they write, so that texts may in fact evolve as collaborative ventures between readers and writers. We have also published works which fall between or outside traditional generic categories, like a video script by Laura Kipnis, which literalizes the metaphor of the body politic, mixing a biographical account of Marx's health problems during the writing of Das Kapital with a discussion of contemporary anorexia and bulimia. We've also had to grapple with some more mundane questions which are nonetheless still quite important, since there is very little in the way of history or tradition to draw on. For example, how should we format the essays published in the journal so that they can be easily imported into whatever word processing software the reader might have? Margins, spacing, the designation of units of text, typographical conventions for underlining, boldfacing, italics, superscript, and subscript (these are not possible with ASCII text), must all be developed and tested with different users before we will know what works, what is clearly readable and understandable, and what users prefer. + Page 72 + There are several other technical questions as well. For example, every issue of the journal will have to navigate the sometimes obscure connections between different networks--particularly between the non-commercial academic networks and the more widely available commercial carriers of electronic mail, such as MCI, AT&T, Sprint, and CompuServe. CompuServe, for example, limits the size of electronic mail transmissions which can be received into individual accounts, and that limit is well below what would be necessary to receive the journal. We are concerned that the journal should be available to non-academic subscribers, so we will be working to make existing connections work and to open new ones. We will also be exploring possibilities for using visual materials, which include faxing graphics to subscribers on request or transmitting through the networks compressed graphics files in commonly used formats. As the networks update their own hardware (especially with the introduction of fiber-optic cables for data transmission), new possibilities in the use of interactive software will also become available. All of this makes it likely that the format and the nature of Postmodern Culture will continue to evolve, even in the immediate future. We have learned from print publication to work around problems and limitations in production and dissemination, but these problems do not pose as serious a threat to electronic publishing. Electronic technology is evolving so quickly--compare current desktop technology with that available ten years ago--that today's problems (e.g., distributing graphics over the nets) will in all likelihood be solved soon. We do not need to develop standards and techniques that accept today's limitations, but to build into our medium a flexibility that will anticipate and accommodate upcoming change. 5.0 The Future of Electronic Serials In order for a publication in electronic media to succeed in serving even the most traditional purposes, such publication obviously needs to be available to the public--to students, to researchers, and to interested readers. + Page 73 + An electronic publication can keep its back issues on a file list (an electronic log of reserved files) where network users may retrieve them, but not everyone has access to the networks, and there is no guarantee that a file list maintained by a given electronic mail account-holder will always be there. If a journal moves to another institution or ceases publication, how will researchers have access to essays published by the journal? In the same way they do for print journals, libraries should provide that access. Many libraries have local area networks and can make electronic publications available to patrons on those networks; many more libraries have online card catalogs, and might use some of those terminals to provide access to electronic texts. It makes sense for libraries to use computer resources to deliver publications which originate as electronic text, since computerized access brings with it powerful capabilities for searching, indexing, and analyzing texts even from remote sites. However, until most libraries have the facilities to present full text online and most readers have the skills to use such services, we feel that it is important for electronic publications to be available in several formats. Electronic publications are likely to proliferate sooner than most now expect. Although electronic text may never replace print, it is likely to dominate where information storage, retrieval, and manipulation are more important than the aesthetic qualities of a printed text. Economic reasons alone will force letters out of their time-honored sanctuary in wood-products and into the electronic ether. It will soon seem as illogical to print archives, data banks, government and business documents, and much scholarly material as it already is to catalog the holdings of large libraries on three-by-five cards. Today, we still produce limited numbers of books whose physical well-being must be guarded at regulated institutions around the world. We must have these objects shipped to us or travel to centers where they are collected. Compare this to a situation where a library would not house a given number of volumes, but would provide access to all books in an international network of libraries. In this scenario, all books would be available to anyone with a library card. Even the aesthetic appeal of electronic text is bound to improve as computer equipment becomes more portable, more sophisticated, and simpler to use. + Page 74 + Such revolutionary flexibility holds dangers too--technological freedom and the control of information may be flip and flop of the same switch. For example, if commercial organizations step into academic electronic publishing, then they may come to limit redistribution of such publication or insist on copyright restrictions that may serve their financial interests but not the interests of the research community. In effect, this is the case with print publication: much of it is determined by the financial interests and possibilities of commercial presses--a condition which seems so inevitable that it is virtually transparent. Highly developed technological flexibility may depend on private-sector support in the long run. The government now subsidizes the networks, but threatens to cut its support by the end of the decade. It is hard to say if and how the financial support and interests of commercial enterprises will affect the contents and availability of electronic serials. The nets now offer an ideal international venue for small-budget, limited-interest discussion groups and serials that may not have had a chance for wide distribution in print, but all this may change if the nets go private. 6.0 Conclusion Electronic publishing needs the encouragement and participation of the profession so that it leads where we want to go. Libraries should take an active role in making electronic publications--journals now, books in all likelihood later--available to their users; universities should recognize scholarly activity in the electronic field and see their support of such developments as wise investments; and the profession should recognize the legitimacy of electronic publications where issues of tenure and promotion are involved. For their part, the publishers of refereed electronic journals--and of other electronic work in the future--should both work to maintain professional credibility and take into account the needs of an audience that is likely to be diverse and large. + Page 75 + Selected Bibliography Bailey, Charles W., Jr. "Intellectual Property Issues." Electronic mail message to the Association of Electronic Scholarly Journals list, 1 January 1991. BITNET, AESJ- L@ALBNYVM1, GET AESJ-L LOG9101 to LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1. Engst, Adam C. "TidBITS#30/Xanadu_text." Electronic mail message to the Machine-Readable Texts list, November 1990. BITNET, GUTENBERG@UIUCVMD, GET GUTNBERG LOG9011 to LISTSERV@UIUCVMD. Herwijnen, Eric van. Practical SGML. Geneva, Switzerland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. Jennings, Ted. "Electronic publishing." Electronic mail message to the Association of Electronic Scholarly Journals list, 30 December 1990. BITNET, AESJ-L@ALBNYVM1, GET AESJ-L LOG9012 TO LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1. Kulikowski, S. "Network Reference and Publication." Electronic mail message to Educational Technology list, October 1990. BITNET, EDTECH@OHSTVMA, GET EDTECH LOG9010 to LISTSERV@OHSTVMA. Lambert, Jill. Scientific and Technical Journals. London: Clive Bingley, 1985. Ulmer, Gregory. "Grammatology Hypertext." Postmodern Culture 1, No. 2 (January 1991). BITNET, GET ULMER 191 PMC-LIST to LISTSERV@NCSUVM. + Page 76 + About the Authors Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth Postmodern Culture Box 8105 North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27695 PMC@NCSUVM ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 177+ ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 177-181. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- LaQuey, Tracy L., ed. The User's Directory of Computer Networks. Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1990. ISBN: 1-55558-047-5. $34.95. Reviewed by Dave Cook. ----------------------------------------------------------------- In the introduction to her book, The User's Directory of Computer Networks, Tracy LaQuey points out that this is not a book to be read from cover to cover, but rather one to be consulted and used as "a central reference guide." The User's Directory of Computer Networks is a directory and, therefore, is primarily useful for finding discrete pieces of information on networks and networking. However, a good deal of it can be read with interest and pleasure, especially by those with an historical interest in computer-mediated communication and computer networks. Sections of it should be read with care to facilitate its use a directory and an information source. The book was influenced by John Quarterman's book The Matrix and by his earlier article on networking distributed on the networks and published in Communications of the ACM in 1986. The LaQuey and Quarterman books are basic works for a reference section on computing, CMCS, and networks. The Directory is itself based on earlier, annual publications and is an updated expansion of the 1989 guide published by the University of Texas at Austin. The earlier editions are still available online and can be consulted by those who wish to check the general outline and approach to the present edition. The address is EMX.UTEXAS.EDU; login anonymous. Use the NET.DIRECTORY for the introductory material and the NET.DIRECTORY/1988.NETBOOK for the several files of the text proper. The Directory is organized in broad sections, each representing a major network system (i.e., BITNET, DECnet Internet, Internet, JANET, and USENET). There are also sections on UUCP, domains, the OSI/x.500 standards, electronic mail, and a list of organizations. The selection criteria were the size and scope of the network listed and, interestingly, the responsiveness of the network contact. + Page 178 + There is no index, but its lack is not as important as might be thought at first glance. The detailed "Contents" section outlines the major networks and lists the subnets associated with them. It is quite easy to find the particular one you're looking for. The "List of Organizations" section is useful both as a list and as a finding aid. The international scope of the Directory is very apparent here. It is a surprise to realize just how many institutions, both academic and commercial, are integral components of these networks and, one assumes, are using them as a standard part of their institutional life. The "List of Organizations" is also a cross-referenced finding aid that can be used to locate the network associated with the institution you are interested in. Brief instructions on how to do this are mentioned in the "Introduction" and should be read first by anyone wanting to make full use of the directory. You are advised to look up your own organization in the "List of Organizations" and to trace its connectivity through the appropriate sections of the book. It's good advice, and it does reveal the practical design of the book and how useful it can be in real situations. The entries give a lot of information in very little space: a description of the equipment, network, and mail addresses; a contact person; and, useful when all else fails, a phone number. Finding a personal address is still not easy; you are left knowing the address of your correspondent, but still guessing at his or her ID. The solution to that problem will have to wait for a phone book to be published rather than a directory of sources. The Directory is not a phone book, but it does take you several steps along--the right-hand side of the address and the syntax are now apparent and the postmaster's ID is listed. Much of the information for the Directory came from the information databases maintained at the individual Network Information Centres. The editor mentions an "accelerated editing process" which means that some of the detail was not checked or verified further. Readers are encouraged to send corrections to the NIC's for their network (the address is provided) and to send corrections, suggestions, or comments to the editor to be used in future editions of the book. In imposing a uniform format on the entries and collecting the data in one large volume, the editor has created one place to look for detailed information and has created a very useful tool for e-mail and network enthusiasts. The consistent format adds considerably to the ease of use of the Directory. + Page 179 + LaQuey also stresses a concept called "Directory Services." That is, the creation of a resource guide that can be used for more than basic address information. The Directory has been designed to help the user to locate resources in the broader sense: contact names, database information, computer resources and the availability of OPAC's and catalogues. Explicit data in these areas is not provided, but the information given will allow the individual researcher to take the initial steps towards locating more information. Art St. George's work on OPAC's and the various "Lists of Lists" for computer conferences on the networks will still be primary sources in this area. The LaQuey book expands their usefulness by detailing and explaining the framework within which they operate. There is another dimension to the Directory that makes it interesting to read as well as informative. Short essays have been included to introduce each of the major sections. The one on BITNET is representative, with lots of technical information written an a non-technical, easy to read style. A brief, historical overview and a detailed geographic map showing the sites and the interconnecting store-and-forward routes gives a useful overview. A description of the general services provided, a list of network information materials and instructions on how to retrieve them, and an explanation of the commands and syntax for IBM and VAX users are useful. An extensive list of BITNET representatives is also included. This introduction is another area where an international dimension to networking is very apparent. EARN, NetNorth, and BITNET form one logical network and the degree of international cooperation that underlies that political fact is striking. The section on the Internet follows the same pattern in combining history (and a glimpse at the future) with descriptions of technical processes providing a non-technical overview. The page on protocol suites gives an explanation of concepts, such as TCP/IP, and it provides a place to look it up when I, once again, forget the details. + Page 180 + These introductory essays are often written by experts--John Quarterman on electronic mail and Eugene Spafford on The USENET and UUCP, for example. Quarterman's article and his idea that electronic mail is the glue that holds networking systems together will be familiar to readers of The Matrix. The brief summary here is appropriate and the explanation of domains and gateways is helpful. One can only agree with the author the "the current mess [mail addressing conventions] is not ideal" and that "A generally accepted addressing syntax is the only real solution." Eugene Spafford writes clearly on USENET and UUCP. Those of us who have absorbed BITNET and Internet procedures as the networking norm will find the idea of no central authority and no backbone structure a bit mystifying. The apparent anarchy of no (or very few) rules for members or participants does have a charm of its own. The processes are so complex and the scale is so vast, that the wonder is that the system works at all. The User's Directory of Computer Networks is useful, of course, in the reference section of any library or academic department concerned with local, national, or international networking. It should also be useful for non-academic users. For example, managers of large, national bulletin board systems who incorporate network mail and conferences into their services. Computer enthusiasts looking for help with the next step in their development of personal knowledge and skills will also find the Directory a great help. + Page 181 + About the Author Dave Cook McMaster University Library Hamilton, Ontario, Canada COOKD@MCMASTER ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Dave Cook. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 161 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 161-163. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Provocations: An Informal Column ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Depth vs. Breadth: Enhancement and Retrospective Conversion" by Walt Crawford 'Way back in 1987, I wrote: "Most patrons will use only one catalog, particularly if they find any results. Adding more material to the online catalog is more important than adding more information to existing records. Budgetary realities suggest that libraries can either include more items in online catalogs or enhance the contents of some items, but probably not both" [1]. I don't believe the budgetary realities have changed all that much since 1987; if anything, they've grown worse. The miracle cure for retrospective conversion has proved as elusive as other miracle cures: doing it right takes time and money, period. The same goes for any miraculous means of enhancing access (e.g., adding chapter titles, tables of contents, or back-of-book index entries to OPAC records). Thus, the easy answer to the question, "if we knew 20 years ago what we needed to do to improve subject access, why haven't we done it" is that it doesn't--and shouldn't--have first priority. If It Isn't in the Catalog, It Isn't in the Collection That's the simplest statement of one problem, but it's at most a very slight exaggeration. If you don't agree with that premise, then there's nothing more to say: we're living in different worlds. + Page 162 + Is it more important to have in-depth access to a small part of the collection, rather than normal bibliographic access to all of it? Some people apparently think so. Some of the most dogged advocates of enhanced access have suggested eliminating all subject access for materials more than 10 years old--and possibly taking 20-year-old materials out of the catalog altogether. So much for retrospective conversion--and you can save big bucks by shutting down preservation departments as well! To be fair to these advocates, I think they're trying to solve a different problem--the fact that precision goes down as recall goes up, and at some point lack of precision makes recall worthless--but the effect is the same: they're proposing something akin to discarding older materials in the interest of better access to the new. I'm a bit suspicious of the idea that every discipline (or, for that matter, any discipline) reinvents itself every decade. Perhaps that's because my degree is in rhetoric, but even cellular physicists might be a tad uncomfortable with the idea that nothing published prior to 1981 is worth reading. Let's not talk about where that leaves librarianship; at least all those who have never read Ranganathan, Cutter, or Dewey would no longer be bashful about it. If we're not willing to off the old books, then we must grant them the respect they're due, which means inclusion in the online catalog. Once that's completed, and once we're sure that new materials will get into the online catalog promptly, then we can and should spend more time enhancing certain categories of records. The USMARC format already provides good storage mechanisms for some such enhancements; all it takes is time and money. Meanwhile, I find it hard to fault real-world libraries for their current priorities: putting it all into the online catalog at current levels of access, rather than giving some material (who chooses?) special treatment while leaving other material out altogether. That's responsible librarianship. Notes Walt Crawford, Patron Access: Issues for Online Catalogs (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1987), 21. + Page 163 + About the Author Walt Crawford The Research Libraries Group, Inc. 1200 Villa Street Mountain View CA 94041-1100 BR.WCC@RLG.BITNET ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Walt Crawford. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 164 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 164-170. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Recursive Reviews ----------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright, Digital Media, and Libraries by Martin Halbert Running a branch library devoted to computational materials, I am frequently amazed at patrons' lack of understanding of copyright issues. One patron, an otherwise very intelligent research scientist, was baffled concerning the restrictions inherent in checking software out of the library. The magnitude of his misunderstanding came home to me when he asked if our restrictions meant that he didn't need to bring his own disks to copy the software onto. He thought, in all honesty, I finally realized, that copying the software was what checking out software was all about. After a very long discussion with him about copyright and why it is illegal to copy software, he went away somewhat shocked, but at least informed. While most librarians have a better understanding of the concept of copyright than my patron, how many of us have really thought about all the ramifications of copyright and new digital media technologies? Librarians are ostensibly supposed to be experts on the proper use of the collections of information they administer. This month's column is devoted to a brief bibliography on the subject of copyright and digital media. I know that I had never considered many of the issues raised in the sources reviewed below, so I think they will be of interest to all librarians who have added any kind of digital media (e.g., software and CD-ROM databases) to their collections. + Page 165 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Intellectual Property Rights in an Age of Electronics and Information. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1986. OTA-CIT-302. ----------------------------------------------------------------- This 1986 report by the Office of Technology Assessment is the best existing review and discussion of how new technological developments have impacted the concept of intellectual property in the United States. Many discussions of the topic begin with a review of this source (see below), which is justifiable considering its quality. The 300-page report concisely covers the conceptual framework and goals of intellectual property rights, how current laws have tried to accommodate technological change, enforcement issues, and the role of the federal government as a regulator. The conclusion of the report is that the new technologies, especially functional works like software, have rendered the existing concepts and implementations of domestic intellectual property law obsolete. An entirely new approach to the issue of what constitutes intellectual property and how to regulate it will have to be developed by congress. The OTA report raises profoundly troubling issues for librarians and the entire information industry. ----------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Computer Software and Intellectual Property--Background Paper. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1990. OTA-BP-CIT-61 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Drawing on the 1986 OTA report and others, this OTA background paper further analyzes software issues. It goes into greater detail concerning questions peculiar to software, such as addressing the following questions. Can an interface be copyrighted? Can the concept of an algorithm be unambiguously defined? Patented? Is a neural net to be considered a software system or a hardware system? The paper includes a few developments which happened after the 1986 OTA report, but fundamentally the paper only raises questions and provides a context for discussing the problem. Real answers may be a long way off. + Page 166 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- Duggan, Mary Kay. "Copyright of Electronic Information: Issues and Questions." Online 15, no. 3 (May 1991): 20-26. (ISSN 0146-5422) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Because developments in the law have lagged so far behind technological developments, many issues of copyright and digital media are being resolved in practice, if not in legal fact. Duggan discusses emerging views about what constitutes "fair use" of electronic information sources. She concludes that while some consensus is developing about use of search results from CD-ROM and dial-up databases, little agreement has yet been reached about LAN and WAN access to databases and other network information sources. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Garret, John R. "Text to Screen Revisited: Copyright in the Electronic Age." Online 15, no. 2 (March 1991): 22-24. (ISSN 0146-5422) ---------------------------------------------------------------- John Garret is the director of market development at the Copyright Clearance Center. Taking a very different view from most of the other sources reviewed in this column, he maintains that current copyright laws are perfectly capable of dealing with the new electronic environment. He calls into question many of the assumptions about computer systems and monetary funding that (he claims) underlie the move to overhaul the copyright system. He describes a variety of small-scale pilot projects that the Copyright Clearance Center has undertaken in conjunction with publishers and researchers "to provide owner-authorized, text-based information electronically for internal use to various sets of users, and to determine what they use, when they use it, why, how often, and to what end." He further claims: "For these pilots, and for other, larger-scale programs that will be developed in the future, existing copyright law provides a perfectly adequate context for the development and elaboration of systems to manage computer-based text." + Page 167 + While one has to wonder whether Mr. Garret is unbiased in this matter given his position, he does make a convincing argument for the limited case of electronic access to text-only databases. However, his points do not address the larger issues raised in the OTA intellectual property studies. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander, Adrian W., and Julie S. Alexander. "Intellectual Property Rights and the 'Sacred Engine': Scholarly Publishing in the Electronic Age." In Advances in Library Resource Sharing, ed. Jennifer Cargill and Diane J. Graves, 176-192. Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1990. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Adrian and Julie Alexander give a fine overview of the 1986 OTA report, as well as a conference on intellectual property rights held in 1987 by the Network Advisory Committee of the Library of Congress. They conclude with a broad discussion of the potential for electronic publishing for the scholarly research and publication process, which echoes many of the themes discussed at recent meetings of the Coalition for Networked Information. They maintain, as some CNI speakers have, that electronic publishing represents an opportunity for universities to recapture their intellectual property from the expensive and fruitless cycle of sale back and forth to publishers. They also point out that publishers want to capture this potential publication medium as well. + Page 168 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- Shuman, Bruce A., and Joseph J. Mika. "Copyrighted Software and Infringement by Libraries." Library and Archival Security 9, no. 1 (1989): 29-36. (ISSN 0196-0075) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Shuman and Mika provide a good overview of the current state of software piracy and copyright infringement, with a few additional comments that describe the situation of libraries which circulate software. They are quite critical of the practice of "shrink-wrap" licensing which many vendors have taken up. This is the familiar tactic of pasting a license agreement with many restrictions on the outside of a shrink-wrapped software package, with a statement to the effect of "if you open this package, you thereby agree to this license." They describe the many problems involved in trying to police the use of software by library patrons, and state that: "Librarians will continue to find themselves between copyright holders and license-vendors, eager to recover the money they feel entitled to, and patrons (and sometimes library employees) who wish to 'liberate' programs, whether out of simple greed, a love of the challenge, altruism, or a 'Robin Hood' complex." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Denning, Dorothy E. "The United States vs. Craig Neidorf." Communications of the ACM 34, no. 3 (March 1991): 24-32. (ISSN 0001-0782) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, I would like to conclude this column with an example of the kinds of troubling legal actions that are surely brewing on the horizon. The March 1991 Communications of the ACM was partly devoted to a debate concerning electronic publishing, constitutional rights, and hackers. The article by Dorothy Denning was a description of the trial of Craig Neidorf, a pre-law student at the University of Missouri. Neidorf was charged by a federal grand jury with wire fraud, computer fraud, and interstate transportation of stolen property. + Page 169 + All this because he published a document (containing what turned out to be public domain information) in an electronic journal he edited. The electronic journal was called "Phrack," a contraction of the terms "Phreak" (the act of breaking into telecommunications systems) and "Hack" (the act of breaking into computer systems). The document in question concerned the E911 system of Southwestern Bell, and it contained only information that was already in the public domain. The charges against Neidorf were dropped when this was brought up during the trial, but Neidorf was left with all his court costs, amounting to $100,000. Now, regardless of what one thinks of Neidorf or the ethics of hacking, the fact that the U.S. government can bankrupt an individual (or institution!) by making groundless accusations of publishing "secret" electronic documents bears attention! Neidorf's case may potentially mark the beginning of entirely new types of censorship revolving around electronic media. Denning's article points out that currently the government can seize all computer equipment and files of an individual or organization, and hold them for months. This kind of search and seizure (again on mistaken grounds) devastated one small company called Steve Jackson Games. Denning discusses this incident as well, and it is chilling to imagine happening by accident to one's own organization. Problems of copyright and the new digital media are only now beginning to surface, but they have been inherent in the new technologies since at least the sixties. Libraries and society as a whole will increasingly have to face these issues, either in legislation by a forward-looking congress, or more likely in painful court trials like the United States vs. Neidorf. + Page 170 + About the Author Martin Halbert Automation and Reference Librarian Fondren Library Rice University Houston, TX 77251-1892 HALBERT@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Martin Halbert. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 39 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Harnad, Stevan. "Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 39-53. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 The Evolution of Human Communication and Cognition There have been three revolutions in the history of human thought, and we are on the threshold of a fourth. The first took place hundreds of thousands of years ago when language first emerged in hominid evolution and the members of our species became inclined--in response to some adaptive pressures whose nature is still just the subject of vague conjecture [1]--to trade amongst themselves in propositions that had truth value. There is no question but that this change was revolutionary, because we thereby became the first--and so far the only--species able and willing to describe and explain the world we live in. It remains a mystery--to me at any rate--why our anthropoid cousins, the apes, who certainly seem smart enough, do not share this inclination of ours. At any rate, this divergence between our two respective species was a milestone in human communication and cognition, making it possible for culture to develop and be passed on by oral tradition. That momentous adaptation seems to have had a neurological basis. Injuries to certain areas of the left side of the brain--Wernicke's area and Broca's area, to be exact--result in language-specific deficits in speaking and understanding [2, 3]. So whatever the evolutionary changes underlying language were, they were imprinted as permanent modifications of our neural hardware. The second cognitive revolution was the advent of writing, tens of thousands of years ago. Spoken language had already allowed the oral codification of thought; written language now made it possible to preserve the code independent of any speaker/hearer. It became, if you like, an implementation-independent code. No one knows for sure whether there was any corresponding change in our cerebral hardware. There is nominally a region in the left frontal lobe--Exner's area--that is dubbed the "writing center," and there are certainly specific neurological problems associated with "dyslexia" or reading disorder. But all of this neurology is complicated and ill-understood, and no "pure" alexia (inability to read), without any other associated visual or motor problems, has been found. So it is more likely, I think, that writing and reading were cognitive and motor skills that we acquired without any organic evolutionary change in our brains; they were merely learned adaptations of the same hardware we had all along. + Page 40 + No precise starting point can be assigned to either science or literature. The former began with the first true proposition about the world and the latter either with the first such true proposition that was also formulated elegantly, or perhaps with the first untrue proposition. In either case, the oral tradition was already equipped to produce both science and literature, although perhaps science, being a little too constrained by the limits of memory and accuracy in the word-of-mouth medium, was the greater beneficiary of the advent of writing, with the incomparably greater reliability and systematization it conferred in preserving the words, and hence the thoughts, of others. But there were constraints on writing too. For whereas spoken language conformed well to both the transmitting and receiving powers of human thinkers (perhaps as a reflection of its specific dedicated neurology), writing was somewhat out of synch with thought. It was slow. And worse than that, it had a much more limited scope, for whereas a spoken proposition could be heard by several people, even by multitudes, a written one could only be read by one at a time. This could be done serially by limitless numbers of readers, of course, and this was the real strength of writing, but it was purchased at the price of becoming a much less interactive medium of communication than speech. The form and style of written discourse accordingly adapted to this lapidary new medium--again, not neurologically, but consciously and by convention--constraining the writer to be more precise in some respects, but also allowing him more freedom to redraft and reformulate his text in composing it. In becoming less interactive, writing also became less spontaneous than speech, more deliberate, and more systematic. One might also say it became less social and more solipsistic, although its ultimate social reach became much larger, limited only by the slow pace of copyists in providing the text to disseminate. The third revolution took place in our own millennium. With the invention of moveable type and the printing press, the laborious hand-copying of texts became obsolete, and both the tempo and the scope of the written word increased enormously. Texts could be distributed so much more quickly and widely that again the style of communication underwent qualitative changes. If the transition from the oral tradition to the written word made communication more reflective and solitary than direct speech, print restored an interactive element, at least among scholars, and, if the scholarly "periodical" was not born with the advent of printing, it certainly came into its own. Scholarship could now be the collective, cumulative, and interactive enterprise it had always been destined to be. Evolution had given us the cognitive wherewithal and technology had given us the vehicle. + Page 41 + Of course, there had already been a prominent exception to the impersonal trend set in motion by writing, namely, private letters. These made it possible for people to communicate even when they were separated by great distances, although again the pace of the communication was much slower and less interactive than live conversation, and it continued to be so, even after the advent of print. Many minor and major technological changes followed, but none, I think, qualify as revolutionary. The means of transportation improved, so the written word could be circulated more quickly and more widely. The typewriter (and eventually the word processor) made it much easier to generate and modify one's texts. Photocopying made it possible to duplicate, and desktop publishing to print, even texts that weren't worth duplicating and printing. And the telephone all but did in the art of letter writing altogether, probably because it restored the natural tempo of spoken communication to which the brain is constitutionally adapted. Of course, phoning had the disadvantage of not leaving a permanent record, but for that there were tape recorders, and so on. The reason I single out as revolutionary only speech, writing, and print in this panorama of media transformations that shaped how we communicate is that I think only those three had a qualitative effect on how we think. In a nutshell, speech made it possible to make propositions, hand-writing made it possible to preserve them speaker-independently, and print made it possible to preserve them hand-writer-independently. All three had a dramatic effect on how we thought as well as on how we expressed our thoughts, so arguably they had an equally dramatic effect on what we thought. The rest of the technological developments were only quantitative refinements of the media created by speech, writing, and print. The purist might, with some justification, even hold that print was just a quantitative refinement of writing, but let's argue about that another time: the historic evidence for the impact of print is considerable. + Page 42 + The two factors mediating the qualitative effects were speed and scale. Speech slowed thought down, but to a rate for which the brain made specific organic adaptations. Our average speaking rate is a biological parameter; it is a natural tempo. Hand-writing slowed it down still further, but here the adaptations were strategic and stylistic rather than neurological. In writing, the brain was underutilized. Evidence for this comes from the fact that when the typewriter and the word processor allowed the pace of writing to pick up again, we were quite ready to return to a tempo closer to our natural one for speech. On the other hand, the constraints of the written medium are substantive, and they affect both form and content, as anyone who has tried to use raw transcripts of spontaneous speech can attest. What is acceptable and understandable in spoken form is unlikely to be acceptable and understandable in written form, and vice versa. In a sense, there are only three communication media as far as our brains are concerned: the nonverbal medium in which we push, pull, mime and gesticulate [4]; and two verbal media--the natural one, consisting of oral speech (and perhaps sign language), and the unnatural one, consisting of written speech. Two features conspire to make writing unnatural. One is the constraint it puts on the speed with which it allows thoughts to be expressed (and hence also on the speed with which they can be formulated), and the other is the constraint it puts on the interaction of speaking thinkers--and hence again on the tempo of their interdigitating thoughts, both collaborative and competitive. Oral speech not only matches the natural speed of thought more closely, it also conforms to the natural tempo of interpersonal discourse. In comparison, written dialogue has always been hopelessly slow: the difference between "real-time" dialogue and off-line correspondence. Hopeless, that is, until the fourth cognitive revolution, which is just about to take place with the advent of "electronic skywriting." + Page 43 + 2.0 Scholarly Skywriting: A Personal Glimpse of the Potential Panorama I must now turn from impressionistic history to personal anecdote. My own skyward odyssey in the newest communication medium, the airwaves of electronic telecommunication networks, had its roots in a long-standing personal penchant for scholarly letter-writing (to the point of once being cited in print as "personal communication, pp. 14-20"). These days few share my epistolary bent, which is dismissed as a doomed anachronism. Scholars don't have the time. Inquiry is racing forward much too rapidly for such genteel dawdling--forward toward, among other things, due credit in print for one's every minute effort. So I too had to resign myself to the slower turnaround but surer rewards of conventional scholarly publication. In fact, a decade and a half ago I founded a scholarly journal in the conventional print medium, though Behavioral & Brain Sciences (BBS) is hardly a conventional journal. 2.1 Behavioral and Brain Sciences Modelled on Current Anthropology (CA, which was founded by the anthropologist Sol Tax, who in turn modelled it on the extreme participatory democratic practices of the native North American peoples he studied), BBS's unique feature is "creative disagreement" [5]. Specializing in important and influential ideas and findings in the biobehavioral sciences, BBS, after a round of particularly rigorous peer review (involving five to eight referees representing the multiple areas that candidate manuscripts must impinge upon), offers to the authors of accepted papers the service of "open peer commentary." Their manuscript is circulated to specialists across disciplines and around the world, each invited to submit 1,000-word commentaries that discuss, criticize, amplify, and supplement the work reported in the target article, which is then published along with the commentaries (often twenty or more) and the author's formal response to them [6]. BBS's open peer commentary service has evidently been found valuable by the world biobehavioral science community, because already in its fourth year its "impact factor" (citation ratio) had become one of the highest in its field [7, 8]. + Page 44 + 2.2 Limitations of Print Journals Like other print journals, BBS is prisoner to the temporal, geographic, and (shall we call them) "internoetic" constraints of the conventional paper publication medium. In that medium, new ideas and findings are written up and then submitted for peer review [9, 10]. The refereeing may take anywhere from three weeks to three months. Then the author revises in response to the peer evaluation and recommendations, and when the article is finally accepted, it again takes from three to nine months or more before the published version appears (perhaps earlier, when circulated informally in preprint form). That's not the end of the wait, however, but merely the beginning, for now the author must wait until his peers actually read and respond in some way to his work, incorporating it into their theory, doing further experiments, or otherwise exploring the ramifications of his contribution. After all, that's why creative scholars publish-- not to put another line on their resumes, but to collaborate with their peers in expanding our collective body of knowledge. It usually takes several years, however, before the literature responds to an author's contribution (if it responds at all) and by that time the author, more likely than not, is thinking about something else. So a potentially vital spiral of peer interactions, had it taken place in "real" cognitive time, never materializes, and countless ideas are instead doomed to remain stillborn. The culprit is again the factor of tempo: the fact that the written medium is hopelessly out of synch with the thinking mechanism and the organic potential it would have for rapid interaction if only there were a medium that could support the requisite rounds of feedback, in tempo giusto! Hopeless, as noted earlier, until the forthcoming fourth cognitive revolution makes it possible to restore scholarly communication to a tempo much closer to the brain's natural potential while still retaining the rigor, discipline, and permanence of the refereed written medium. + Page 45 + 2.3 Discussion Groups on the Net I will try to illustrate with an account of my own first (unrefereed) glimpse of the Platonic world of scholarly skywriting. Most of the world's universities and research institutions are linked together by various international electronic networks such as BITNET and Internet (called, collectively, the "Net"). Electronic mail ("e-mail") can be sent via the Net, usually within minutes, to London, Budapest, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, lately even Minsk. But the feature that has the most remarkable potential is multiple reciprocal e-mail: electronic discussion groups in which every message is immediately disseminated to all members. These groups first formed themselves anarchically, on various networks, the biggest of them called USENET, and were devoted partly to technical discussion about computers and information, the technologies that had built the Net, and otherwise to "flaming": free-for-all back and forth messages by anyone, on any topic under the sun. Next, discussion groups devoted to specific topics (e.g., computers, politics, language, culture, and sex) began to form, and these in turn split into "unmoderated" and "moderated" groups. Anyone with an e-mail address whose institution was connected to USENET could post to an unmoderated group, and the message would automatically be sent to everyone who was "subscribed" to the group. It was because most of the unmoderated groups were quite chaotic that the moderated groups were formed. In these, all submissions had to be channeled through a "moderator," but this was usually someone with no special qualifications or expertise, so the quality of the information on the moderated groups was still very uneven, and, with a few exceptions (principally technical discussions about computing itself), these groups were mostly havens for uninformed students and dilettantes rather than respectable scholarly forums for learned specialists in the subject matter under discussion, a subject matter that by now ranged across the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. + Page 46 + This was the status quo on the Net--a communication medium with revolutionary intellectual potential being used mostly as a global graffiti board (in all fields other than computing itself)--when I first sampled the skyways several years ago in a large (unmoderated) USENET group called "comp.ai" (devoted to the topic of artificial intelligence, a subfield of my own specialty, cognitive science). I had heard that there was a lot of ongoing discussion on comp.ai about something that had appeared in BBS--Searle's "Chinese Room Argument" [11]. The content of that discussion is not relevant here. Suffice it to say that about a profound and complex topic a great deal of nonsense was being posted on comp.ai by people who knew very little (mostly students and computer programmers). This initial demography, and the unscholarly level of discussion that prevailed because of it, was and still is one of the principal obstacles to the Net's realizing its real potential. For what true scholar would condescend to join these innocents in serious scholarly discussion, and in such an anarchic medium! Well, draw your own conclusions, but that did not stop me. Whether it was my partiality for letter-writing or for creative disagreement, I decided to test out the airways, but consciously applying self-imposed constraints, since the medium would not provide them for me. My postings to comp.ai would be conscientiously thought out and carefully written, as if they were for a serious refereed journal, with a sophisticated scholarly readership--for posterity, in fact. Hardest of all, I would treat the contributions of my interlocutors as if they had been serious and scholarly ones too, and when these were uninformed or in error, I would endeavor to correct them in a dignified and respectful way that would be informative and instructive to all, solemnly trying to correct the Nth instance of the same egregious mistake with a Nth new aspect or dimension of the problem under discussion, always with the objective of advancing the ideas for all skygazers. Indeed, critical to my efforts at sobriety and self-discipline was maintaining for myself a conscious fantasy that, silent among the thousands of eyes trained skyward, were my peers, and not just the rookies I was jousting with. + Page 47 + Lest it be thought that this was all just some sort of altruistic exhibition, however, let me hasten to report that I found myself by far the greatest beneficiary of this exercise. For the remarkable fact is that even under these primitive demographic conditions my own ideas profited enormously from the skywriting interactions. The problem under discussion (and it only became evident to me during the discussion just what that problem was) I dubbed, in the course of the skywriting, "the symbol grounding problem," and it has since generated not only a series of (alas, conventional, ground-based) papers [12, 13, 14], but also a cottage industry in the form of a theme for workshops and symposia [15], and soon, no doubt, dissertations. All this as a consequence of aerobatics with mere rookies. "So what would it have been like," I then asked myself, "if the best minds in the field were on the Net, skywriting away with the rest of us?" 2.4 Psycoloquy When I founded BBS fifteen years ago, I had been inspired by the remarkable potential of "open peer commentary" as revealed through an article by Gordon Hewes [16] in Sol Tax's commentary journal, CA. That article was on the origin of language, a topic that had been under an informal moratorium (as breeding only idle conjectures) imposed by the Paris Societe Linguistique a century earlier. Hewes and his animated commentators across disciplines so piqued my own interest in the topic that I: (1) co-organized an international conference under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences [17] (a conference that effectively put an end to the moratorium on the topic and went on to spawn an uninhibited series of language-origins conferences, e.g., Raffler-Engel et al. [18]); and (2) I founded BBS, convinced that Sol Tax's "CA Comment" principle could be generalized beyond its discipline of origin. A decade and half later my own rewarding experience with electronic skywriting has convinced me that this newest medium's unique potential to support and sustain open peer commentary must now be made generally available too, so I have founded Psycoloquy, a BBS of the air, unfettered by the temporal and spatial constraints of the earthbound print medium. + Page 48 + Originally initiated in 1985 by Bob Morecock of the University of Houston as an electronic bulletin board called the "BITNET Psychology Newsletter," Psycoloquy was transformed in 1989 into a refereed electronic journal (ISSN Number 1055-0143). It is now sponsored on an experimental basis by the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association. I am Co-Editor for scientific contributions, and the Co-Editor for clinical, applied and professional contributions is Perry London, Dean of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. One of Psycoloquy's principal scholarly objectives is to implement peer review on the Net in psychology and its related fields (cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral biology, linguistics, and philosophy). All contributions are refereed by a member of Psycoloquy's Editorial Board (currently 50 members and growing), but the idea is not just to implement a conventional journal in electronic form. Psycoloquy is explicitly devoted to scholarly skywriting, the radically new form of communication made possible by the Net, in which authors post to Psycoloquy a brief report of current ideas and findings on which they wish to elicit feedback from fellow specialists as well as experts from related disciplines the world over. The refereeing of each original posting and each item of peer feedback on it is to be done very quickly, sometimes within a few hours of receipt, so as to maintain the momentum and interactive quality of this unique medium, just as if each contribution were being written in the sky, for all peers to see and append to. Skywriting promises to restore the speed of scholarly communication to a rate much closer to the speed of thought, while adding to it a global scope and an interactive dimension that are without precedent in human communication, all conducted through the discipline of the written medium, monitored by peer review, and permanently archived for future reference. Scholarly skywriting in Psycoloquy is intended especially for that prepublication "pilot" stage of scientific inquiry in which peer communication and feedback are still critically shaping the final intellectual outcome. That formative stage is where the Net's speed, scope, and interactive capabilities offer the possibility of a phase transition in the evolution of knowledge, one in which we break free from the earthbound inertia that has encumbered human inquiry until now, soaring at last to the skyborn speeds to which our minds were organically destined [19]. + Page 49 + Psycoloquy appears in two forms. Its USENET version, called "sci.psychology.digest," is "gatewayed" to the Net from Princeton. Its BITNET version, formerly stored at Tulane University and archived at the University of Houston, is now at Princeton too. The BITNET version currently has around 2,500 individual subscribers and redistribution lists. The USENET version (which is transmitted to sites rather than individuals, and hence is not directly monitored for number of subscribers) may well be reaching an order of magnitude more readers. Psycoloquy is fully international, with subscribers in the Americas, Europe, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, the Middle and Far East, and growing parts of the third world (where electronic journals promise to be a godsend for the libraries and scholars who have hitherto been information deprived because of currency restrictions and budget limitations). Subscription to Psycoloquy is free. To subscribe, anyone with a login on any of the networks can send the following one line e- mail message to LISTSERV@PUCC.BITNET: "SUB PSYC First Name Last Name" (omitting quotes and substituting your own first and last name). The message must originate from the e-mail address at which you wish to receive Psycoloquy. Subsequent postings are sent to PSYC@PUCC.BITNET or to PSYC@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU. Psycoloquy currently appears about once a month, but we are prepared to publish it much more frequently as the submission rate and demand increase. Back issues of Psycoloquy are archived at Princeton, and they can be retrieved from any Internet e-mail address directly by a simple procedure called "anonymous FTP." Princeton also has a service called "BITFTP" that allows issues to be retrieved indirectly from BITNET by e-mail (other services exist, for example, for JANET subscribers in the United Kingdom). Soon, with the help of an experimental searchable database provided by Bellcore and some collaborative efforts with the American Mathematical Society, it should be possible not only to retrieve items, but to do interactive full-text searches of the Psycoloquy archive from both BITNET and Internet. + Page 50 + 3.0 After the Revolution This fourth revolution has not yet taken place. Some of the impediments have already been noted: (1) the current demography of the Net and the stereotype it has created of the medium as not suitable for serious scholarly communication; (2) the ingrained habits of a scholarly community adapted to the paper medium for centuries; (3) the foot-dragging of the paper publishing industry, with all its interests vested in the ground-based technology; and (4) many prima facie doubts and objections (e.g., about quality, academic credit, and security), all of which are easily and decisively answerable [20], even though they keep getting raised again and again. (An attempt to lay to rest these prima facie objections once and for all is in preparation [21].) It is a foregone conclusion that the revolution will come. My selfish concern is with getting it underway while I am still compos mentis and in a position to partake of its intellectual benefits! Allies in hastening its coming will be the libraries, whose budgets are overburdened with the expenses associated with the print medium; learned societies, whose primary motivation is to get carefully refereed scholarly information disseminated to the peer community as quickly and fully as possible; and the scholarly community itself, who will surely realize that it is they, not the publishers who merely give it the imprimatur, who are the controllers of the quality of the scholarly literature through peer review--not to mention that they are also the creators of the literature itself. (A strategic pro-revolutionary alliance may be in order.) But the most important factor in hastening the onset of the fourth cognitive revolution will surely be the unique capabilities of the medium itself. Electronic journals should not and will not be mere clones of paper journals, ghosts in another medium. What we need, and what Psycoloquy will endeavor to help provide, are some dazzling demonstrations of the unique power of scholarly skywriting. I am convinced that once scholars have experienced it, they will become addicted for life, as I did. And once word gets out that there are some remarkable things happening in this medium, things that cannot be duplicated by any other means, these conditions will represent to the scholarly community an "offer they cannot refuse." We are then poised for a lightning-fast phase transition, again a unique feature of the scale and scope of this medium, one that will forever leave the land-based technology far behind, as scholarship is launched at last into the post-Gutenberg galaxy. + Page 51 + Notes 1. S. Harnad, H. D. Steklis, and J. B. Lancaster, eds., Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1976): 280. 2. S. Harnad, R. W. Doty, L. Goldstein, J. Jaynes, and G. Krauthamer, eds., Lateralization in the Nervous System (New York: Academic Press, 1977). 3. G. A. Ojemann, "Brain Organization for Language From the Perspective of Electrical Stimulation Mapping," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6, no. 2 (1983): 189-230. 4. P. Greenfield, "Language, Tools, and Brain: The Development and Evolution of Hierarchically Organized Sequential Behavior," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14, no. 4 (1991), in press. 5. S. Harnad, "Creative Disagreement," The Sciences 19 (1979): 18-20. 6. S. Harnad, ed., Peer Commentary on Peer Review: A Case Study in Scientific Quality Control (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 7. S. Harnad, "Commentaries, Opinions and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge," American Psychologist 39, no. 12 (1984): 1497-1498. 8. R. A. Drake, "Citations to Articles and Commentaries: A Reanalysis," American Psychologist 41, no. 13 (1986): 324-325. 9. S. Harnad, "Rational Disagreement in Peer Review," Science, Technology, and Human Values 10, no. 3 (1985): 55-62. 10. S. Harnad, review of A Different Balance: Editorial Peer Review, by Stephen Lock, in Nature 322 (3 July 1986): 24-25. 11. J. R. Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Programs," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 3 (1980): 417-457. 12. S. Harnad, "The Symbol Grounding Problem," Physica D 42 (1990): 335-346. + Page 52 + 13. S. Harnad, "Other Bodies, Other Minds: A Machine Incarnation of an Old Philosophical Problem," Minds and Machines 1, no. 1 (1991): 43-54. 14. S. Harnad, "Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling Cognition," in A. Clarke and R. Lutz, eds., Connectionism in Context (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992), in press. 15. S. Harnad, S. J. Hanson, and J. Lubin, "Categorical Perception and the Evolution of Supervised Learning in Neural Nets" (Presented at American Association for Artificial Intelligence Symposium on Symbol Grounding: Problems and Practice, Stanford University, March 1991). 16. G. W. Hewes, "Primate Communication and the Gestural Origin of Language," Current Anthropology 14, no. 1/2 (1973): 5-12. 17. S. Harnad, H. D. Steklis, and J. B. Lancaster, eds., Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech, 280. 18. V. von Raffler-Engel, J. Wind, and A. Jonker, eds., Studies in Language Origins, Volume II: Papers from the 3rd International Meeting of the Language Origins Society (Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 1991). 19. S. Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 342-344. 20. Ibid. 21. S. Harnad, "Prima Facie Arguments Against Electronic Journals: Replies," College and Research Libraries (1992), forthcoming. + Page 53 + About the Author Stevan Harnad Department of Psychology Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 HARNAD@PRINCETON.EDU ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Stevan Harnad. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 25 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Harrison, Teresa M., Timothy Stephen, and James Winter. "Online Journals: Disciplinary Designs for Electronic Scholarship." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 25-38. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction The decade of the 80's has witnessed the advent of a revolution in scholarly communication. The explosive growth of wide-area academic computer networking using BITNET/EARN, Internet, and an extensive array of regional networks has brought us beyond the point of asking whether the networks will be used for scholarly communication. The important questions now center around how computer-mediated scholarly communication will take place. Increasingly, speculation has focused upon the ability of electronic media to replace paper as the primary delivery medium for scholarly journals. A prima facie case for the desirability of online or electronic scholarly journals seems already to exist. Advocates have based their cases on the advantages of computer networking and electronic media over print publication, such as the speed of dissemination, the relatively low costs of production and dissemination, and the ability to make more scholarship available than before [1]. Noting that publishers receive the economic benefits of research produced at public expense, Okerson has suggested that an electronic publishing component within the National Research and Education Network would enable scholarship to remain financially accessible to the public [2]. Other arguments have been based upon the ways that electronic publication might improve the practice of scholarship within academic disciplines. For example, advocates have described the superior possibilities for information retrieval that may be achieved when scholarly articles are interconnected in flexible databases [3, 4]. Yavarkovsky [5] and Lyman [6] have suggested that electronic publication can facilitate certain types of scholarship that generate products better represented in graphics, or in three-dimensional, animated, or moving visual representations. Other researchers have argued that electronic journals might be aimed at facilitating informal communication processes through which original ideas are generated and refined and preliminary information about research is disseminated [7, 8, 9]. + Page 26 + Although the future of electronic journals seems promising, their adoption by scholars will not be determined solely by the number of technical innovations or by the medium's ability to tip the scales in a comparison of costs and benefits with print media. The decade of the 90's will no doubt witness many attempts to introduce models for electronic academic journals. Whether these journals succeed or fail will depend on the extent to which a particular journal's design is consistent with the social practices of the discipline it serves and the extent to which it reflects the discipline's needs for information and communication. If this is true, it follows that no single journal model will serve as a prototype for all disciplines. Instead, designers of electronic journals would do well to understand how their particular disciplines' social practices may block or delay the acceptance of an electronic journal. The journal must be designed and introduced in a way that overcomes these hurdles, while offering an approach to "publication" that improves the discipline's ability to satisfy information and communication needs. In this article, we describe the approach we have taken in the design of the Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication (EJC/REC, ISSN 1183-5656). We begin by noting differences between disciplines that argue for a variety of approaches in electronic journals. Then, we focus on the considerations that were most important to us in planning the development of EJC/REC, and we describe how we have attempted to address them. Our strategy has centered upon the idea of introducing EJC/REC within the context of an electronic service known as Comserve--a broader disciplinary project whose aim is to promote the use of electronic media in communication scholarship. Finally, we call attention to challenges that designers of electronic journals will face in attempting to institutionalize the medium within the academy. + Page 27 + 2.0 Disciplinary Differences in the Design of Online Journals Electronic media makes feasible a dazzling array of innovations with the potential to transform the nature of scholarly communication. Developers are eager to incorporate these features into the design of electronic journals. However, these innovations will not be equally attractive in all disciplines. Although journals in the sciences, humanities, and the social sciences appear to be fairly similar, there are systematic differences in the kind of information they include and the way that information is presented [10]. These variations in journal design and presentation reflect more fundamental distinctions across the disciplines in journal publication processes, the way that journals are used, and the types of contributions journal articles represent. Those planning to develop electronic journals must be sensitive to these differences. 2.1 Electronic Archives Some of the most radically innovative proposals for online publications have focused on the improvements in information retrieval that can be obtained when journals and their contents are interconnected in archival databases. Designers of these "electronic archives" (the category "journal" no longer seems apt) plan to incorporate certain characteristics of traditional journals such as editorial boards and peer review, but use technology to transcend the limitations of print. Their aim is to create information retrieval features that enable users to access a single article as well as a body of literature that is relevant to it, to place comments and rebuttals to specific articles within the archive, and to generate instructions that will identify additions to the system that are of interest to particular users [11, 12, 13]. + Page 28 + One would expect such a model to be attractive in the natural and applied sciences where scholars often pursue particular questions systematically within established theoretical programs. Research such as this, occurring in fields like medicine, engineering, physics, and biology, is often supported by large grants or contracts. In such contexts, new knowledge accumulates rapidly and supersedes existing knowledge; scholarly credibility depends upon the ability to portray one's work as integral within this stream. However, this type of process is barely evident within most humanities and social science disciplines. Further, we question whether the economic resources devoted to disciplinary inquiry will be sufficient for the construction and use of such elaborate information retrieval capabilities. 2.2 Non-Traditional Electronic Journals It has also been popular to suggest that, instead of replacing traditional journals, online publications might address other aspects of scholarly communication. For example, online journals might be used to disseminate brief summaries of research and information about research in progress [14], to engage in more limited exchanges of information [15], or, more ambitiously, to support and institutionalize informal scholarly communication activities that typically take place in interpersonal contexts [16]. Informal scholarly communication, which is regarded as important for generating ideas and communicating information about ongoing research, takes place at conferences, at colloquia or symposia, and through correspondence. It is typically restricted to small numbers of individuals. Electronic media would enable these activities to take place on an ongoing basis with greater levels of participation. Some of these proposals spring from fears about whether electronic journals will command the credibility of traditional print publications. For example, Turoff and Hiltz's focus on developing electronic alternatives to traditional journals was motivated by their discovery that scholars were reluctant to place their work in the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES)-maintained journal [17]. They surmised that this reluctance was due to perceptions that articles in this journal would have a smaller chance of being cited by others. + Page 29 + In the natural and applied sciences, where informal communication is the scholar's primary means of keeping up to date on research advances, computer-mediated information exchanges may be valued, though it is not clear if electronic journals that carry out such functions will ever command the same prestige as traditional publications. Peer review and broader network access to these journals would surely help to overcome some of their limitations. However, what is true of one discipline may not be true of others. In many humanities and social science disciplines, informal communication may play a greater role in generating ideas than disseminating information about research in progress, and journal article publication is itself viewed as a less important contribution to knowledge than publication of a book [18]. In such disciplines, electronic journals may never achieve the credibility of print. Indeed, Katzen's suggestion that scholarly communication functions are likely to be split between electronic and print media seems to proceed from the assumption that humanities scholars will find it very hard to break their allegiance to print [19]. Electronic journals are viewed as impermanent, less satisfying to read, and it is feared their contents will change as the journals are disseminated. Therefore, these journals may be suitable for reflecting what is transient in scholarship; what is permanent and authoritative should be preserved in print. We do not doubt that electronic media will stimulate the development of new forms of scholarly discourse; however, we were reluctant to introduce both a new genre and a new medium of journal publication. Historically, the journal article evolved as a genre of scholarly discourse from the first published scientific communication, which consisted of letters sent to the editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [20]. In the same way, we expect that new genres of electronic scholarly discourse across the disciplines will evolve after the medium in which they appear has acquired the imprimatur of scholarly legitimacy. + Page 30 + 3.0 The Design and Introduction of EJC/REC One might expect that those who study human communication would be the first to embrace the advantages of new communication technologies. However, while there are many communication scholars who are interested in communication technologies, there are many others who have little experience in computing and who are just as likely as other scholars to question the viability of new publication systems. Any new serial is going to face issues of permanence (will it still exist in three years?), accessibility (will it get into the hands of other scholars?), and credibility (will articles be peer reviewed and cited by others?). It was apparent that the new medium would make it more difficult to provide the usual assurances. Further, we recognized that the medium posed challenges not experienced in print publication that would have to be overcome. Thus, before any of the advantages of online journals could be realized, we believed that it was necessary to overcome the obstacles presented by the medium. 3.1 Comserve: An Electronic Publisher One of the first decisions made was to offer EJC/REC under the auspices of Comserve. Comserve is an electronic information and discussion resource that, since 1986, has used national and global computer networks to provide disciplinary services to communication scholars and students. Individuals interact with Comserve using accounts on local mainframe computers that are linked to BITNET, Internet, or any network connected to them. Comserve functions as a software robot with its own network address, watching for and taking action on commands that users send to it. + Page 31 + Comserve's primary purpose is to promote the use of electronic networking and computer-mediated communication in the service of communication scholarship. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at no charge to users, Comserve offers four basic types of resources: (1) An interactive "white pages"--an electronic directory of names, electronic mail addresses, and research interests of individuals in the discipline. (2) Electronic indexes to disciplinary journals that can be searched for bibliographic citations. (3) A database of over 1,000 files containing research, teaching, and other professionally useful information. (4) A suite of 20 online conferences addressing research, teaching, and professional topics in communication studies. By associating the publication of EJC/REC with Comserve we hoped to dispel some of the inevitable doubts about the permanence of the journal. When the first issue of EJC/REC was published, Comserve was entering its fifth year of operation, making it one of the oldest disciplinary services on the networks. Comserve had received financial support from several of the discipline's professional organizations as well as from many individual departments of communication throughout North America, thus indicating that it had achieved some measure of recognition and visibility within the discipline. + Page 32 + Furthermore, by associating EJC/REC with Comserve, we hoped to provide some assurances about EJC/REC's accessibility. Users have generally found it easy to learn how to access Comserve's resources, as indicated by the speed of diffusion among students and faculty. Over 20,000 individuals from nearly every major academic institution in the United States, Canada, and Mexico (as well as in 35 other countries) have sent over 250,000 commands to Comserve. Approximately 4,500 individuals maintain subscriptions to one or more of Comserve's electronic conferences. In the same way that many scholarly associations act as publishers of their own disciplinary journals, Comserve acts as an electronic "publisher" for EJC/REC. As an electronic disciplinary forum, Comserve offers an array of incentives for faculty and students in communication studies to learn how to use computer-mediated communication for scholarly discourse. The services described above fall within the realm of informal scholarly communication. EJC/REC, a mechanism for formal scholarly communication, complements these efforts to institutionalize the use of electronic communication within the field. Together, Comserve and EJC/REC are helping to create an electronic community of scholars. Within such a community, we believed that an electronic journal has a significant chance to develop disciplinary stature. 3.2 EJC/REC: Form and Content In its first year of publication, EJC/REC has delivered two issues and is in the process of producing its third. Technically, subscriptions are managed automatically through a special electronic conference devoted to the journal that is managed by Comserve. Interested individuals may subscribe to the journal by sending the following command on the first line in the body of an electronic mail message to COMSERVE@RPIECS (BITNET) or COMSERVE@VM.ECS.RPI.EDU (Internet): SUBSCRIBE EJCREC First_Name Last_Name (Example: SUBSCRIBE EJCREC Mary Smith) + Page 33 + The journal's 320 subscribers automatically receive the journal's table of contents, abstracts for each article in the issue, and the names of files containing each article in the issue. Files are named by author and volume/issue number. Those interested may then request files containing desired articles by sending the appropriate command to Comserve (at either of the addresses noted above). For example: SEND MCKEOWN V1N190 refers to an article by Bruce McKeown of Westmont College entitled "Q Methodology, Communication, and the Behavioral Text," appearing in volume 1, number 1 of EJC/REC in 1990. Articles appearing in back issues will continue to be available through Comserve and may be requested at any time. All articles are in ASCII format. With respect to editorial policies, EJC/REC seeks to be broadly representative of the field of communication studies and invites submissions related to the study of communication theory, research, practice, and policy. Manuscripts reporting original research, methodologies relevant to the study of human communication, critical syntheses of research, and theoretical and philosophical perspectives on communication are encouraged. Manuscripts are reviewed by relevant individuals within a thirty- member editorial board consisting of scholars representing diverse interests in the field from Europe, Canada, and the United States. To establish a credible publication history, attract readership, and encourage submissions, we have devoted initial issues of EJC/REC, edited by scholars with established reputations, to special topics within the communication field. Thus, the first issue addressed the topic of "Q Methodology and Communication: Theory and Applications" and was edited by Irvin Goldman of the University of Windsor and Steven Brown of Kent State University. Goldman and Brown, acknowledged heirs to the scholarly legacy of psychologist and communication theorist William Stephenson, who invented Q methodology, identified noted scholars in the area, invited contributions to the issue, and supervised the reviewing process. + Page 34 + Since EJC/REC originates in Canada, there have been efforts to create a journal that is bilingual in certain aspects of its presentation and in some of its focuses. Editorial duties are distributed between James Winter of the University of Windsor (English-speaking editor) and Claude Martin of the University of Montreal (French-speaking editor). Articles may appear in English or French. Although articles will not always be translated into both languages, messages from special issue editors, article titles, and article abstracts are presented in French as well as in English. 4.0 EJC/REC: In the Future We recognize that we have not resolved all doubts about the permanence, accessibility, and credibility of EJC/REC. Ultimately, these doubts can only be resolved, and the journal's future assured, when EJC/REC is incorporated within the recognized body of scholarly knowledge. This means ensuring that the journal is readily available through university and college libraries. Although libraries may currently subscribe to issues of EJC/REC distributed through the network, we plan to improve availability by distributing the journal to libraries on diskettes (at well below current costs for print journals) as soon as a full volume becomes available. We are also exploring possibilities for including the journal in standard citation services and other secondary bibliographic resources in the humanities and social sciences. Finally, one important hurdle we, and other designers of electronic journals, must attempt to address is the onerous experience of reading an online journal. It is necessary to display the contents of online or electronic journals in ASCII format because there are few word processing systems compatible with the many different kinds of computing equipment that can be used to display text. As most already know, reading large quantities of text on video display terminals is not a comfortable way of consuming scholarship. Many editors of online journals are resigned to the fact that their readers will download articles of interest and print them in order to read them. Thus, the electronic medium is viewed as suitable for delivering, but not for experiencing, text. + Page 35 + We are impressed by the results of an experiment conducted by Standera that assessed reader responses to a journal appearing in five different formats, including an electronic version read on a video display terminal [21]. He concluded that before readers will be willing to change their preferences for print: "Designers (of electronic publishing systems) must provide improved legibility, easy browsing, more friendly procedures, ready availability of indexes, portability, and less fatigue" [22]. Some improvements in legibility will occur with advances in video display technology. But needed now, or in the very near future, are more fundamental improvements in the reader's ability to "handle" or manipulate text. The allegiance to print is in great measure an unwillingness to give up advantages conferred by the materiality of paper. Until they can do with electronic text what they currently do with text on paper, scholars will retain their devotion to print and resist converting to electronic media. Notes 1. Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress Report," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 33 (July 1982): 195-202. 2. Anne Okerson, "Incentives and Disincentives in Research and Educational Communication," EDUCOM Review 25 (Fall 1990): 15. 3. William Gardner, "The Electronic Archive: Scientific Publishing for the 1990s," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 333-341. 4. Sharon J. Rogers and Charlene S. Hurt, "How Scholarly Communication Should Work in the 21st Century," Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 October 1989, A56. 5. Jerome Yavarkovsky, "A University-Based Electronic Publishing Network," EDUCOM Review 25 (Fall 1990): 14-20. + Page 36 + 6. Peter Lyman, "The Library of the (Not-So-Distant) Future," Change 23 (January/February 1991): 34-41. 7. Stevan Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 342-344. 8. D. J. Pullinger, "Chit-Chat to Electronic Journals: Computer Conferencing Supports Scientific Communication," IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications PC 29 (March 1986): 23-29. 9. B. Shackel, "The BLEND System: Programme for the Study of Some 'Electronic Journals'," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 34 (January 1983): 22-30. 10. May F. Katzen, "The Changing Appearance of Research Journals in Science and Technology: An Analysis and a Case Study," in Development of Science Publishing in Europe, ed. A. J. Meadows (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1980), 177-214. 11. A. Bookstein and M. J. O'Donnell, "A Scholarly Electronic Journal on the Internet: The Chicago Journal of Computer Science" (Paper presented at the Association of Research Libraries Conference for Refereed Academic Publishing Projects, Raleigh, North Carolina, 8 October 1990.) 12. Lynn Kellar, "Functional Overview of the Electronic Science Journal." (Paper presented at the Association of Research Libraries Conference for Refereed Academic Publishing Projects, Raleigh, North Carolina, 8 October 1990.) 13. Gardner, "The Electronic Archive: Scientific Publishing for the 1990s," 333-341. 14. May Katzen, "Electronic Publishing in the Humanities," Scholarly Publishing 18 (October 1986): 5-16. 15. Turoff and Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress Report," 195-202. 16. Stevan Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," 342-344. + Page 37 + 17. Turoff and Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress Report," 195-202. 18. Blaise Cronin, "Invisible Colleges and Information Transfer: A Review and Commentary with Particular Reference to the Social Sciences," Journal of Documentation 38 (September 1982): 212-236. 19. Katzen, "Electronic Publishing in the Humanities," 5-16. 20. Katzen, "The Changing Appearance of Research Journals in Science and Technology," 177-214. 21. O. L. Standera, "Electronic Publishing: Some Notes on Reader Response and Costs," Scholarly Publishing 16 (July 1985): 291-305. 22. Ibid., 299. About the Authors: Teresa M. Harrison and Timothy D. Stephen Co-Directors, Comserve Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY 12180 James Winter Editor, Electronic Journal of Communication University of Windsor Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4 + Page 38 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Teresa M. Harrison, Timothy D. Stephen, and James Winter. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 77 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hugo, Jane and Linda Newell. "New Horizons in Adult Education: The First Five Years (1987-1991)." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 77-90. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Overview of the Journal's History The Syracuse University Kellogg Project began in 1986 with a mission to provide broader access to the university's adult education materials and to facilitate the exchange of information and learning using the very latest technologies where possible. In the fall of 1987 the Project initiated an electronic journal, New Horizons in Adult Education. The electronic journal, as initially conceived, was to (a) provide a means of disseminating, via computer, current thinking within the field of adult education; (b) develop new avenues for connecting adult educators worldwide; and (c) generate dialogue among researchers and practitioners. It was decided from the onset that the journal would be student run [1]. This clear statement of the purpose and direction of New Horizons glosses over the serendipity and the hard work that was the process out of which New Horizons emerged. The graduate student who took on the job of initiating the journal, Michael Ehringhaus, set about the task of clarifying the purpose and structure of the journal, identifying students to serve on its editorial board, gaining a command of the technology that would be required to support such an effort, and establishing publication procedures. Each of these formative activities consisted of many decisions, all of which had consequences that the student editor had to consider for this innovative venture. 1.1 Clarifying the Purpose and Structure of the Journal At the time New Horizons started, there were few templates to follow other than those offered by traditional, print journals. Kellogg Project staff interested in the journal concept discussed what the journal should look like, not in terms of its visual appearance, but rather in terms of the locus of control, who would publish it, and what relationship the journal might have to the field of adult education [2]. + Page 78 + Some wanted a radical journal that would serve to rattle the established views of academic adult education. Others suggested something more like a bulletin board. Using electronic mail (e- mail) communication networks, the student editor extended this conversation to other students and faculty in the field of adult education. The ensuing dialogue brought forth several issues. The consensus was that the journal should be student-run, yet remain open to all for refereed publication. In addition, students, many of whom already felt marginal within the field of adult education, recommended that the journal not increase this feeling by positioning itself in opposition to the field at large (e.g., being a "radical" journal) or by being a student-only publication. It would be important that contributing to New Horizons be perceived by the field as something that would benefit both student authors, who were being initiated into the publication process, and seasoned professional writers. In other words, the journal needed to have credibility with academic adult educators. Concern over these issues led the editor to define the journal in these ways: (1) The journal would be student-run with graduate students serving as editors and on the editorial board. As such, it would serve as a unique learning environment for students. It would be a chance to blend the technological skills that must be developed to obtain computer proficiency with an added opportunity to learn more about the theoretical and practical aspects of adult education. (2) The journal would use a double-blind review process to adjudicate articles. (3) The journal would consider submissions on a range of adult education topics (research based or not) from academics, students, or practitioners outside of academic settings. + Page 79 + Since the fundamental purpose of the journal was to expand the boundaries of what electronic information was available to adult educators and to develop new avenues for connecting adult educators worldwide, part of clarifying the purpose and setting the structure had to deal with financial issues. Would the journal be free or not? The decision was made to make it free, and it would be distributed via a BITNET list server. Unfortunately, while the Kellogg Project and Syracuse University could absorb the costs related to managing, assembling, and disseminating the journal, they could not control the policies in place at other sites accessing BITNET or related networks. For example, educators in New Zealand and Australia were charged per page by those controlling the electronic traffic at their end of the transmission. The Kellogg Project could not absorb those costs. The result was two-fold. First, prohibitive costs on the receiving end eliminated some readers. Second, the editor and editorial board had to grapple with the question of producing paper copies of the journal. In the end, the desire to disseminate the ideas presented in the journal superseded the desire to have a purely electronic journal. In cases where the reader's context made access to the journal impossible or costly, the editors printed copies from mainframe files and mailed them out. 1.2 Identifying Students to Serve on the Board The first editor of the journal selected graduate students to serve on the editorial board. In order to be eligible for the editorial board, students needed to be able to use mainframe communication networks. Journal discussion, decision making, and article reviews were to be done electronically over BITNET. "To take advantage of the medium," wrote the first editor, board members "must have a fairly sophisticated knowledge of their mainframe computer and how to manipulate lengthy electronic files" [3]. + Page 80 + The names of potential board members came from the early e-mail discussions about the structure of the journal. In 1986, finding graduate students with either network access and experience or with a willingness to learn and institutional support for network access was difficult. For example, a member of the original board had to share a mainframe account with a professor in her department, and another woman who wanted to be on the board could not participate because her institution did not have the computer support services to assist her. Following the leads that his sometimes serendipitous e-mail turned up, the editor garnered the names of enough students from around the United States and Canada to constitute the initial editorial board, which had seven members. Many of them had limited technical sophistication when they started, but acquired skill as they participated. Electronic mail played a key role in the journal's development: E-Mail has been used to exchange information about technical problems, set up editorial board meetings at national conferences, discuss various topics, get feedback on the journal, and survey the board for their views concerning the operation, management, and substance of New Horizons [4]. A by-product of this national and international interchange was that people began talking about the journal, giving the journal some visibility and publicizing its existence and purpose. One unanticipated challenge underlying both issues discussed thus far was the founders' naivete about how much formative work was involved in getting an electronic journal started. This was clearly brought home as the New Horizons editor and editorial board learned to use the technology and developed the journal's infrastructure. + Page 81 + 1.3 Gaining Command of the Technology Getting the journal into an accessible form on the network was like "nailing jelly to a tree," according to the Kellogg Project network specialist Dan Vertrees [5], who assisted the editor in identifying and solving technical problems. When they began, there were few tools to do it with and little communication with the technical experts who had the tools. However, Kellogg Project staff established a vital liaison between themselves and the campus computer network services. This liaison was responsible for breaking electronic logjams having to do with collecting, moving, formatting, uploading, and downloading files; insuring adequate mainframe space for journal activities; and working with different computer systems. Because electronic communication is rapid, there is an accompanying myth that anything connected with such communication would be rapid. Surely, putting out an electronic journal would be a streamlined, fast process! This expectation exemplified the naivete surrounding the development phase of the journal. As the founding editor commented in a recent conversation: Push a button and it's [the journal] in Australia, [or] in Vancouver. We can disseminate instantly. We can receive instantly. [However], the actual process of electronic formatting doesn't fit the myth of the speed of an electronic product [6]. Gaining command of the technology involved not only learning which communication packages to use and which commands did what, it also involved formative tasks such as training others, experimenting with the technology at each phase of publication, exploring the consequences of doing file transfers instead of using e-mail, and helping board members, authors, and readers grapple with technical problems on their end of the process. A spirit of playfulness and adventure were key qualities the editor brought to this aspect of the journal's development. + Page 82 + 1.4 Establishing Publication Procedures and an Editorial Policy It was not the intention of the Kellogg Project to clone a print journal. However, those involved with shaping the journal wrestled with the pros and cons of taking advantage of electronic publishing while at the same time keeping recognizable formats that were the boundaries set by print journals. There were few models to follow for developing an electronic journal in an academic context where credibility, equitable access, and bibliographic retrieval are important. "It was too early in electronic journaling," noted Dan Vertrees, "to push too many of the boundaries because people were just beginning" [7]. Most of the journal's policies and procedures evolved over time from discussions with people in the field of adult education, computer technology, and library science. For instance, the editor did not set a publication frequency because it wasn't known how long the entire publication process (from submission to final publication) would take using e-mail and mainframe-PC communication. In addition, as a student-run journal read mainly by those in academic settings, it became apparent that New Horizons' publication cycle needed to mesh with the academic calendar, taking into account things like exam periods, vacations, and the special demands of the beginning and end of semesters. After a little over a year's experience with the journal, a formal editorial policy was codified. The editorial policy guidelines, published in the third issue (Fall 1989) of New Horizons, were designed to be as encompassing of "high tech" and "low tech" options as possible in order to highlight the journal's overall commitment to access. The following areas were addressed within this policy statement: (1) Purpose of the Journal New Horizons in Adult Education was founded to enhance international dialogue within the field of adult education. (2) Nature of the Publication Categories of acceptable submission forms were broadly defined to include research articles, thought pieces, book reviews, point/counter-point articles, case studies, and invitational columns written by graduate students, professors, and practitioners involved in adult education and allied areas. + Page 83 + (3) Manuscript Submission Requirements New Horizons in Adult Education would accept articles in a variety of formats including computer disk (ASCII files), e- mail, fax, and paper copy. Submissions could be sent to an electronic address or by regular mail to the journal's office. There were no explicit length limitations, although authors were informed that the editorial board reviewers would evaluate each piece to determine if the subject and substance warranted the length. Authors were also advised to use written text explanations of concepts and data rather than diagrams or graphics; simple tabular data, when necessary to article content, could be included. (4) Submission Style While the electronic medium would not accommodate strict adherence to the rules governing manuscript style and references outlined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), APA was the preferred style of New Horizons and was recommended as a model for manuscript preparation. 2.0 A General Description of New Horizons As one of the first electronic journals distributed via computer networks, New Horizons had to blaze the trail and establish a variety of editorial and operational procedures that were appropriate for the new electronic medium. 2.1 Frequency of Publication, Scope, and Content Since its inception, five issues of the journal have been "published" or distributed across AEDNET (the Adult Education Network). AEDNET, an electronic network sponsored by the Syracuse University Kellogg Project, is a VM/CMS-based list server, networked to BITNET, CSNET, Internet, NSFNET, and NYSERNet. Several participants also connect to AEDNET via FidoNet and CompuServe. In 1991, a biannual publication policy with Fall and Spring issues corresponding to the academic year was instituted in response to an increase in the number of submissions to the journal. + Page 84 + The manuscript acceptance rate for this journal has been 32%. Article submissions have been both theoretical and practical in focus, and they cover many fields of inquiry. The complex mosaic of submissions to date share common threads of interest to education scholars, practitioners, and students alike who are concerned with topics relevant to the field of adult education. For example, past issues have carried articles on adult development, propaganda and adult education, feminist research methodology, functional literacy in Nigeria, women and literacy in Tanzania, physical learning environments, adult education in Nicaragua, and a comparison of computer and audio teleconferencing. 2.2 Reader Access The editorial staff of New Horizons has attempted to facilitate access in two ways. First, the journal is sent out free of charge to over 400 adult educators in ten countries, including Australia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, through AOLIN (Australian Open Learning Information Network), another 95 individual participants as well as the members of seven organizations have access to AEDNET. Back issues of the journal, in both electronic and paper form, are available free of charge. Although most back-issue requests have been for paper copies, there is an increasing demand for electronic copies. Second, since the Kellogg Project was concerned about access for readers who were not on the network, it approached the ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. New Horizons has been indexed and abstracted by ERIC. To further enhance bibliographic access, an ISSN number has recently been applied for. + Page 85 + In his recent editorial on a journal readership survey conducted over AEDNET, Ehringhaus [8] highlighted the concerns regarding access to the technology that were expressed by respondents to an e-mail questionnaire: Network access is not pervasive throughout the world or within those areas of institutions in which adult education departments are housed. Some readers of New Horizons, for example, have to share computer accounts with colleagues while other readers find it next to impossible to gain the necessary institutional support (both technical and training) to engage in the level of mainframe communications necessary to interact with AEDNET, in general, or with New Horizons, in particular. Any publication distributed via an electronic network is, therefore, limited in its readership to those who have means and institutional support necessary to log on and use the system. It is issues of equity and access such as this, which the editorial staff of New Horizons has tried to consider from a number of possible angles, that will remain a challenge to electronic journal publication in the future. 2.3 The Editors and the Editorial Board New Horizons has been edited and published by a total of five graduate students from Syracuse University: (1) Michael Ehringhaus, 1987-1990; (2) Jane Hugo, 1989-1990; (3) Linda Newell, 1989-1991; (4) Joan Durant, 1990-1991; and (5) Mary Beth Hinton, 1990-1991. Also, David Price of the University of Missouri-Columbia left his position on the editorial board in 1990-1991 to join the editorial staff. The editorial board, which was initially comprised of seven graduate students from across the United States and Canada, has now grown to fourteen members. The editorial board members represent a wide range of disciplinary interests within the field of adult education. Like the editors, they are nontraditional students who bring many years of adult education theory and practice to their position. Selection criteria for the editorial board include graduate student status (once a board member completes his or her degree, she/he is no longer eligible to participate as a reviewer) and access to a personal computer and mainframe account. + Page 86 + New Horizons offers a unique informal learning opportunity for the graduate students who volunteer to serve on the editorial board. Although most of the editorial board members are graduate students in adult education, two board members have been from related disciplines. 2.4 The Editorial Dynamics A series of snapshots of the editorial responsibilities would include the following activities as the major operational components. 2.4.1 Requests for Information Staff must respond to ongoing written, electronic, and telephone requests for information about the journal. 2.4.2 Promotional Materials Promotional materials such as letters, calls for manuscripts, newspaper articles, and newsletter articles must be prepared on a regular basis. 2.4.3 Communication with the Editorial Board The editors must engage in frequent e-mail communication with editorial board members to provide information updates on the receipt of new submissions and the status of work-in-progress. 2.4.4 Article Submission Authors can send articles to either the journal's e-mail address, HORIZONS@SUVM, or to its regular mail address: New Horizons in Adult Education, Syracuse University Kellogg Project, 310 Lyman Hall, 108 College Place, Syracuse, New York 13244-4160. (After August 1991 when the Syracuse University Kellogg Project ends, the electronic mail address for New Horizons will remain the same; however, its regular mail address will change to New Horizons in Adult Education, Department of Adult Education, 350 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, New York 13244-2340.) + Page 87 + Once submitted articles are received, staff create office files for all submissions, including author's original paper or electronic disk copy, duplicate editorial copies, and copies of all correspondence with the author. An article submission checklist has been prepared to capture the sequential details of this process. 2.4.5 Article Annotations Staff prepare brief annotations of each article for use by the editors and the editorial board. Such documents give the editorial board members a more detailed picture of what the submission is all about than a title alone could provide. 2.4.6 Preparation of Electronic Review Documents Articles submitted in an electronic format need to have identifying materials removed (e.g., author's name and institutional affiliation) from the original electronic file, which requires the creation of duplicate files on each submission. Electronic copies are requested for all submissions; however, depending upon the location and resources of the author, exceptions are made, and some documents are keyed by staff. 2.4.7 Review Cycle Based on interest, expertise, and time constraints, board members select articles to review. An electronic article review form facilitates the review process. This form consists of three sections. The first part asks for criterion ratings (on a scale of 1 to 4) on importance of the problem/subject of the article, the adequacy of background information, the clarity of purpose, the adequacy of literature reviewed, the soundness of the methodological approaches, the adequacy of the findings presented, how well-supported the inferences and conclusions are, and how well-organized and well-written the article is. + Page 88 + The second section calls for a narrative assessment of the article's strengths and weaknesses as well as details on any problems that must be resolved for the article to be acceptable for publication. The final section asks the reviewer to provide an overall recommendation for subsequent action to the editors: accept with minor revisions, accept with major revisions, or reject. Reviewers are requested to complete their critiques within two weeks. Detailed written summaries of the reviewers' comments are then drafted, and a letter is sent out--either via regular mail or by electronic mail--informing the author of the decision. If accepted, the article's publication status is conditional pending a careful review to make certain that the requirements for acceptance have been met. This part of the process, from receipt of a submission through the editorial board review, was originally envisioned to take about six weeks. It often takes much longer and it is dependent upon a number of factors. It is the unwritten policy of this journal to make every possible effort to accommodate the needs of the editorial board and of the authors themselves. It has been observed by the editors that this flexibility serves to encourage both new and experienced authors to consider New Horizons as an avenue for the dissemination of their writing. The goal has been to have four reviewers for each submission. However, this ideal has often proved to be problematic; occasionally, guest reviewers have been selected when a submission falls outside the range of interest and/or professional opinion of the editorial board. 2.4.8 Publication of a Completed Issue This is the most time consuming aspect of the entire process, although it has been completely done via electronic means. Assistance from campus and Kellogg Project computer support services is invaluable at this stage. Many hours are spent on each individual article--with five articles per issue on an average--to assure that the format meets APA style and that the finished product, once deemed ready for to be sent out over AEDNET, is able to be received by computer systems of all kinds. + Page 89 + Since many users are uncertain as to how to go about receiving an electronic file, issue files are not sent. Rather, an explanatory cover letter precedes the journal which is distributed as an e-mail message. If future issues consist of more than about 30 pages, the editors will need to decide on an alternative distribution strategy, such as sending the journal out in two parts or as two separate e-mail messages. 3.0 Conclusion As one of the major components of the Syracuse University Kellogg Project, New Horizons has served as an effective means of linking a dispersed community of adult education scholars, practitioners, and students throughout the world. During our first five years, the editorial team has attempted to capitalize on the benefits of the electronic medium, while at the same time learning to accept the new and often idiosyncratic nature of this communication channel. When the Kellogg Project grant at Syracuse University ends in August 1991, New Horizons will assume a new home base in the Adult Education Department at Syracuse. The editorship will also change helm at that time, and a new team will continue to learn to negotiate the peaks and valleys of the world of electronic publishing. Notes 1. Michael Ehringhaus, The Electronic Journal: Promises and Predicaments, Syracuse University Technical Report No. 3. (Syracuse, NY: School of Education, Syracuse University, 1990), 3-4, ERIC, ED 316732. 2. Michael Ehringhaus, personal communication, March 1991. 3. Michael Ehringhaus, The Electronic Journal: Promises and Predicaments, 4. 4. Ibid. 5. Dan Vertrees, personal communication, March 1991. + Page 90 + 6. Michael Ehringhaus, personal communication, March 1991. 7. Dan Vertrees, personal communication, March 1991. 8. Michael Ehringhaus, "New Horizons in Adult Education: A Readership Survey Report," New Horizons in Adult Education 3 (Fall 1989): 14. About the Authors Jane Hugo and Linda Newell New Horizons in Adult Education Syracuse University Kellogg Project 310 Lyman Hall 108 College Place Syracuse, New York 13244-4160 (315) 443-3421 Linda Newell: LTNEWELL@SUVM.BITNET ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Jane Hugo and Linda Newell. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 144 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Jacobs, Jim. "Providing Data Services for Machine-Readable Information in an Academic Library: Some Levels of Service." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 144- 160. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction Many libraries are facing two trends that are moving them closer to providing services for electronic information products: (1) information in electronic formats is becoming more plentiful, diverse, and obtainable; and (2) a growing number of library users want--and demand--access to information in electronic formats. One need not look far to find examples of these trends. The proliferation of CD-ROM's in the U.S. government depository program is a good example [1]. Other examples include the availability of electronic journals [2] on floppy disk and through electronic mail delivery, commercially available databases of images and maps, and the wide variety of numeric data files available on computer tape from all levels of government, private vendors, and data archives such as the Inter- University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) [3]. Similarly, faculty and students are quite likely today to have easy access to personal computers or powerful workstation-class machines and to feel more comfortable with information in electronic form. As a result, many library users already prefer to have the information they require in a machine-readable format, rather than in paper form. How can libraries deal with these products and the demands for service that go with them? To address this, I will list some examples of different kinds of services that a user of electronic information might consider important and that a library might consider offering [4]. + Page 145 + The four lists are "Levels of General Data Services," "Levels of Computing Services," "Levels of Library Data Services," "Levels of Reference Data Services." (For the purposes of this paper, I have defined "data service" as any kind of service for electronic information.) The lists focus on academic support services, especially library services, for nonbibliographic electronic information products, which I will refer to as "machine-readable information" [5] or "data files." I specifically exclude bibliographic information products in this discussion for two reasons. First, there is ample literature on dealing with electronic bibliographic information in libraries. Second, although many libraries now have experience dealing with bibliographic files (e.g., online public catalogs, bibliographic CD-ROM databases, and online bibliographic vendors such as Dialog and BRS), nonbibliographic data products provide different challenges. Examples of the kinds of products which fall into the nonbibliographic category of machine-readable information include the following: (1) numeric data such as census information, results of survey research, and economic time-series; (2) cartographic data such as census TIGER files; (3) image data such as photographs and satellite images; (4) and textual data such as the full texts of literary works. Three assumptions or themes underlie these lists. First, most libraries can provide some kind of service for electronic information without attempting to provide complete service for all conceivable combinations of users and electronic products. Second, libraries should not avoid dealing with these data resources because of their formats. Third, it is not necessary, and probably not desirable, for a library to attempt to provide "full service" for machine-readable information on its own. Different campus units (e.g., computer center, survey research centers, and academic departments) might each provide some services which complement those provided by the library and each other. Together, these units may be able to provide better service than any single unit could individually. It is important to analyze one's local academic and computing environment in order to best fit the services into that context [6]. + Page 146 + There is one important caveat before we begin looking at levels of service. Although the discussion is intended to be "generic," it is important to remember that every situation is different. The examples used here are just that--examples. They are not intended to be prescriptions for service or suggestions for strategies to follow. Rather, They are reference points that may be used to reflect on one's own situation. 2.0 Levels of General Data Service What kinds of services might a user of machine-readable information expect? What kinds of services might an organization (not necessarily a library) provide? The following is a list of six levels of service which attempt to answer these questions. Although these levels are not intended to be prescriptive, levels one through three are basic services that should be provided if a campus is to have any level of data services at all. The primary purpose of this list is to help identify what services are already being provided and to help select those services that the library might provide. The levels are listed somewhat hierarchically. Higher levels tend to be more complex or require more staff; they often build on services provided at lower levels. 2.1 Level One: Pre-Acquisition Services There are several things which need to be done before any machine-readable information is acquired. These include (1) receiving requests for data; (2) helping users identify which data files are required; and (3) identifying different sources, formats, and costs of data. On campuses where survey data are important, there should be an ICPSR membership. That membership requires annual funding and a person to serve as the ICPSR Official Representative to process all requests for data and handle communications with the Consortium. That person should also promote ICPSR membership and services on campus. + Page 147 + 2.2 Level Two: Data Acquisition Services Once a campus has made a decision to acquire data files someone must insure that they are compatible with local hardware and software and that orders are placed accurately. Next, tapes and other media as well as codebooks or documentation for the machine-readable information must be received and processed. Records of orders placed and received must be kept and bills must be paid. Finally, someone must notify the requester that the data files have been received and provide for physical access to computer tapes (or other medium), codebooks, and technical specifications needed by users to access the data files on their storage medium. 2.3 Level Three: Data Access Services It is important that all authorized data users can easily learn what data files are locally available and how to gain access to those files. Some kind of list or catalog of available data files must be provided, along with the codebooks and technical documentation that will allow authorized users to gain access to these files. 2.4 Level Four: Basic Data Advisory Services Once data files have been acquired, are users "on their own" or will there be consulting services available? Data consultation or advisory services would require staff who are familiar with the contents and structure of studies, can refer users to particular studies, help users interpret codebooks, and explain how data files are laid out on the storage medium. 2.5 Level Five: Data Analysis Advisory Services Another level of advisory or consultation service would involve staff familiar with statistics, statistical software, and particular academic disciplines. These staff members could advise users on appropriate statistical procedures, help users choose appropriate statistical software, write statistical programs, interpret results, debug statistical programs, and debug analytical procedures. + Page 148 + 2.6 Level Six: Comprehensive Data Analysis Services This level of service would do everything for the user. Staff would analyze data as requested and deliver finished output to users requesting analytical products such as charts, graphs, measures of significance, and cross-tabulations of variables. It should be noted that, although this is a rare service to find in an academic setting, it is not unknown. As is true of all these levels of service, some users will expect such service. It is only prudent to anticipate user requests for service and have a clear policy delineating those services that can and cannot be provided. 3.0 Levels of Computing Services Providing services for machine-readable information does not have to include providing computing services, but users of machine- readable information must use computers and providers of data services should be aware of whom is providing computing services for those users. In these days of smaller, faster, less expensive computers, it is increasingly common for individual users to have adequate computing power on his or her desktop. Libraries interested in equal access to information should question whether the fact that many people have their own computers changes the library's commitment to those who do not. Even if users have their own computers, they must somehow obtain data files they want in formats compatible with their machines and then manage to load them physically into their machines. These processes require some level of computing service on the campus. In general, there are four basic computing resources, in addition to human resources, that must be provided in each of the levels listed below. These resources are hardware, software, computer "cycles" (i.e., the computer actually performing a task), and delivery or storage medium. The primary issue is who will provide these services. + Page 149 + 3.1 Level One: Data Storage Services Obviously, data files must be stored somewhere on some medium. Will the data files be online or will they require loading or mounting? If stored "offline," who provides the service of loading the files into a host computer? Is a proper storage environment for the chosen medium provided? Will backup copies of files be made? Will someone check whether the files were received in the format ordered and that they were received accurately without errors? 3.2 Level Two: Copying and Subsetting Services Will users be able to copy data files, either whole files or parts of files, to their own account, machine, or disks/tapes? Who will provide instructions for how to do this? Who will provide the hardware, software, and computer cycles for this work? Will the user move data across a network or within a single machine? This kind of service fits nicely into a traditional library model. For instance, much like a user checks out a book or copies an article from a journal, he or she might copy data of interest from a CD-ROM onto a floppy disk and take it home. With the drop in prices of CD-ROM drives, some users may have their own drives and libraries may want to consider checking out CD-ROM disks. What the user does with the data and what computer resources he or she uses might be of no more concern to the library than whether a user reads a book under a tree on the campus commons or at a desk in a dorm room. 3.3 Level Three: Data Retrieval Services Some data files will be used simply to retrieve a quick fact, a table, a single image, or a brief excerpt of text. Again, who will provide the instruction and computer resources for this service? Many libraries may find it convenient and possible to provide this sort of service for some products distributed on CD- ROM, and it is certainly manageable because no single patron uses any one machine for very long. + Page 150 + Unfortunately, there are many other complicating issues. Here are some example issues. Is there common software available for all files that are needed to answer users' questions or must library staff learn multiple software products in order to help patrons? Are data files documented sufficiently so that users understand the meaning of the answer they have retrieved? Are librarians sufficiently familiar with the data files on hand to refer library users to the right files in an accurate and efficient manner? 3.4 Level Four: Data Analysis Services One important reason for distributing information in machine- readable format is so that the raw data can be analyzed. Whether this involves performing statistical analysis on a complex census file, overlaying cartographic data over satellite images, or finding word frequencies in a text file, users want data in machine-readable form so that they can manipulate them. A simple analysis might be no more than creating and sorting a list of counties with high per capita income. A more complex analysis might involve performing an advanced statistical procedure on a data file of many variables and thousands of observations. Even simple analysis may take quite some time on a personal computer. Advanced analysis may simply be inappropriate on any but large mini- or mainframe computers. Any kind of analysis will require appropriate software (e.g., statistical, textual, or geographic software). While libraries might want to provide computers for some kinds of analysis, they may have to develop policies defining appropriate use. Libraries considering providing analytical computing services should realize that they are, in effect, considering becoming a computing center. 4.0 Levels of Library Data Services Let's explore the kinds of data services that a library might provide. This list may serve as one possible application of the more general levels listed above. The numbering of these levels does not necessarily correspond to the "Levels of General Data Service" listing. This section serves as an example of how different organizational situations are different and require their own solutions. + Page 151 + 4.1 Level One: Passive Referral Services The lowest possible level of service (other than no service at all) may already be in place; however, minor service enhancements may be desirable. This level of service can be provided by a knowledgeable reference staff equipped with an adequate supply of printed materials and access to appropriate online databases that list sources of and collections of machine-readable information. No additional staff or separate service center is required, although some staff training and some additional reference tools may be needed. At this level of service, staff determine whether a certain kind of information exists in machine-readable form, where it can be obtained, and how much it costs. This level of service is passive in that it does not actively seek patrons or users of machine-readable information, but simply responds to questions by referring patrons to vendors or other collections. Normal online bibliographic searches for library users could be broadened to include databases that list machine-readable information (e.g., ERIC, RLIN, NTIS, and ICPSR Guide). The service could be further enhanced by adding "codebooks" (i.e., descriptions of the contents of machine-readable data files) to the general collection of books. These codebooks would aid researchers in identifying useful data files, and they would often provide actual useful data themselves, such as frequencies of response to individual questions. 4.2 Level Two: Active Education and Referral Services This level adds the education of users and promotion of services to level one activities. It is the active counterpart to level one. Level two aspires to make users, and potential users, of the library aware both of the existence of information in machine-readable form and of the services which the library can provide in identifying such products. Education and promotion may be in the form of user instruction classes and seminars, special workshops on "new" sources of information for particular subjects, informal contacts between librarians and faculty, and newsletters. + Page 152 + 4.3 Level Three: Data Cataloging Services On campuses where there are already machine-readable information collections outside the library, level three is a very important and fairly easy step to take to improve data services. There may be a collection of data files on campus in a computer center, data archive, social science research center, or even a department or faculty office, but these data files are not accessible to all potential users because there is no central listing of them. The library might offer to catalog the data files or the codebooks, or both, and add those cataloging records to its online or card catalog. If there is no current easy access to the code book collection, the library might also offer to house and maintain it, or the library might choose to buy copies for its collection, adding yet another access point. 4.4 Level Four: Data Acquisition Services This level involves the addition of machine-readable information to the library collections. Although this may not seem to be an immediate prospect, libraries that are government depositories are already having to decide whether or not to accept machine- readable depository items. Decisions will have to be made as to: (1) which media will be collected (e.g., tape, floppy disks, compact disks, and video disks); (2) which formats will be collected (e.g., for tapes: what densities, number of tracks, and character modes); (3) what level and kind of cataloging or other bibliographic access will be provided; (4) where machine-readable information will be stored; (5) what criteria will be used to select and acquire machine-readable information; (6) what kind of access will be available; and (7) who will have access. It would be wise to write a formal collection development policy statement for machine-readable information in order to both address these issues within the library and to communicate to faculty and other users how much, or how little, the library can do. + Page 153 + 4.5 Level Five: Data Consultation Services Deciding to acquire data files raises the question of what other kinds of services will be provided for the information acquired. Data consultation services can be offered when there is machine- readable information on campus, whether it is acquired by the library or by another agency on campus. These services also can be offered on widely differing levels. 4.6 Level Six: Archival Services It is fairly easy to buy a few data files on tape and, in one way or another, add them to the library collections. However, it will take much more effort and time to archive campus machine- readable information. This level of service might well be omitted as it is not a necessary prerequisite to higher levels of service. This level could be seen as an extension of level three or level four services. As an extension of level three services, archiving data files would mean assuming responsibility for a large collection of data files all at once. This is unlikely to happen unless there is currently no formal location for the collection. For example, it is only informally housed in a faculty office. As an extension of level four services, archiving data files would involve storing and making accessible files acquired or produced by individuals on campus. Just as in a traditional archive, it is very important to have a clear statement of what you will accept and what you will not. Documentation, or the lack of it, can be a particularly sensitive issue when evaluating locally produced data files. + Page 154 + 4.7 Level Seven: Data Analysis Services Not every library will want to provide all levels of service, but data analysis services may be the least likely to be offered. In general, libraries do not offer this kind of service even for printed materials with the exception of "ready reference" questions. The more complex the question, the less likely most libraries are to provide answers. The obvious example of this service orientation in terms of printed materials are medical and legal questions, which for ethical and legal reasons are virtually never answered. Another example is that few libraries answer questions which involve interpretation of tables of statistics. To continue the analogy with printed sources, data service at level five would be comparable to helping someone locate the appropriate volume of the printed census, the appropriate table in that volume, and the appropriate explanations of how the data were collected and how they are presented, but would leave the user to read, interpret, and choose which numbers actually answer his or her questions. By contrast, level seven service would take a question or a precise request for data analysis from a user and provide that user with an answer to the question or a customized product of data analysis. This would require all the sophistication of the other levels, plus a more experienced staff and more staff time than any other level. 5.0 Levels of Reference Data Services Assuming you have some data files and you want to provide some sort of reference service for those files, where do you start? Or, more appropriately, where do you stop? Here are some examples of levels of reference service. Once again, these examples, which are based on an academic library context, are meant to help guide your thought and help you plan within your own context. They are not meant to be definitive guidelines. + Page 155 + 5.1 Level One: Data File Identification Services If someone asks "Do you have the PSID?" [7], your reference desk staff should be able to understand the question, find out if the PSID is on campus, and, if it is, where it is, who has access to it, and what the access procedures are. Also, in a case like this one, you'd want to be able to identify which parts of PSID you have and if they are in some special format or not. Adding catalog records for your data file holdings to your online or card catalog can accomplish most of this. However, general awareness of data files is also necessary. Special guides that list your local holdings and guides explaining how to access data files would also help. Such guides might be created by the library, the computer center, a research center on campus, or a combination of such organizations. 5.2 Level Two: Basic Data File Recommendation Services If a patron asks "Do you have some statistics on income?", you could, if you had cataloged machine-readable information, search your catalog by subject and find National Longitudinal Survey, Current Population Survey, the Census of Population and Housing, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and numerous other entries. But how helpful is that? A more useful service might provide at least some guidance on the differences among these files. Reference staff should know the difference between aggregate data and micro-data [8], and they should comprehend to difference between cross-sectional and longitudinal studies [9]. They should understand what a panel study [10] is and be comfortable talking with users about sample size, choice of sample, level of observation (e.g., household and individual), geographic detail, and so forth [11]. + Page 156 + 5.3 Level Three: Advanced Data File Recommendation Services Providing service for large data files is somewhat like providing service for a collection of manuscripts. Typically, a data file will record information on dozens, or even hundreds, of topics; and, typically, few of these topics are indexed in traditional library catalogs. Just as an archivist may remember a letter from an ex-slave buried in the papers of an Ohio school teacher, a data archivist may remember that a particular poll asked a question about day care availability for single parents. Such familiarity, which comes from reading codebooks as data files are acquired and from working closely with data users as they use data files, increases the access points to a collection. 5.4 Level Four: Data File Use Advisory Services Data archivists learn about limitations of data files and hear about their problems by working with users and data and by talking with other librarians. An example of a data file limitation is data that are stored in a special format and require a specific piece of software for access. Researchers who use a data file will be well aware of some problems associated with it, but other problems will not be so well known. As librarians acquire this kind of knowledge, they can help users by sharing it with them. For example, several problems with the content of U.S. foreign trade data were discussed at a recent meeting of the Association of Public Data Users: (1) for several years, foreign trade data had a "carryover" problem (data reported for one month actually included trade from earlier months); (2) the change to the Harmonized system of classifying industries makes it very hard to compare current data with older data; (3) exports are not counted as carefully as imports; (4) aggregate figures are revised, but industry level figures are not [12]. It is apparent how this information, not all of which is documented, would be very helpful to a user of U.S. foreign trade data. + Page 157 + 5.5 Level Five: Data Extraction Services When librarians help novice or occasional data file users to obtain subsets from large data files, their familiarity with how particular data files are organized and arranged is important. Even if computer or programming assistance is not provided, it is helpful to understand the different data structures so that you can help the user identify if the needed data need is available and if they will be easy to extract. For example, each record in the Citibase database is a time series; therefore, it is very easy to extract time series from Citibase [13]. In other data files, time series data may be available, but it may be embedded in variables, with each record consisting of an observation for a person or a household. Extracting a time series from such a data file would be a much more difficult process. 6.0 Conclusion Nonbibliographic machine-readable data files provide many challenges for libraries and their campuses. Many of these challenges can be met by combining the resources and skills of different units on campus in order to provide a coherent service. The key to providing such a service is analyzing local resources and needs and making wise choices among a wide range of possible services. Libraries have an important role to play in the provision of data services, and they can provide many data services with little or no change to staffing or other resource allocations. Librarians interested in more information about machine-readable information and data services should investigate membership in the ICPSR, IASSIST [14], and APDU. + Page 158 + Notes 1. Depository Library Council, Subcommittee on Electronic Distribution, "Preliminary Report, March 9, 1988," Administrative Notes 9, no. 8 (May 1988): 20-26; and U.S. Government Printing Office, GPO Special Survey 89-300 (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1989). 2. Ron Eisner, "Publishers Work Toward Starting Reputable Online Science Journals," The Scientist 5 (4 March 1991): 4-5. 3. For a list of studies available from ICPSR, see the annual publication: Guide to Resources and Services. 4. Earlier examples of lists of levels of service appear in the following sources: Howard D. White, "Libraries and Access to Social Science Data," in Reader in Machine-Readable Social Data, ed. Howard D. White (Englewood, Co. Information Handling Services, 1977), 175-194; Laine G. M. Ruus, "The University of British Columbia Data Library: An Overview," Library Trends 30 (Winter 1982): 397-406; Edward P. Bartkus, "Use of Numeric Databases in Reference and Information Services," Drexel Library Quarterly 18 (Summer-Fall 1982): 205-219; JoAnn Dionne, "Why Librarians Need to Know About Numeric Databases," in Numeric Databases, ed. Ching-chih Chen and Peter Hernon (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1984), 237-246; and Ann S. Gray and Sue A. Dodd, "The Roles of Libraries and Information Centers in Providing Access to Numeric Databases," in Numeric Databases, ed. Ching-chih Chen and Peter Hernon (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1984), 247-262. The lists presented here are derived from these earlier works, personal experience, and numerous communications with other librarians attempting to deal with these issues. 5. An excellent overview of nonbibliographic databases is provided in: RASD/MARS Committee on Nonbibliographic Databases and Data Files, "Information Sheet I: What Are Nonbibliographic Databases," RQ 26 (Spring 1987): 280-284. + Page 159 + 6. Diane Geraci, "Categorizing Your Local Environment" (Paper presented at Management of Machine-Readable Social Science Information Workshop, ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research, Ann Arbor, MI, August 1990). 7. James N. Morgan, "Panel Study of Income Dynamics" (Ann Arbor, MI: Survey Research Center, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1989). (Computer file) 8. Aggregate data are those which have been created by combining values for a number of individual observations into a larger unit. An example would be census data files which contain values that are totals for geographic areas such as blocks and counties, without the values for each individual respondent to the census. Micro-data are those which contain values for individual respondents. 9. Cross sectional data provide observations on a group sample at a particular point in time. Longitudinal studies are studies across time. 10. A panel study interviews the same group of individuals (the "panel") several times over a period of months or years. 11. A good source of definitions of survey research concepts is P. McC. Miller and M. J. Wilson, A Dictionary of Social Science Methods (Chichester, England: John Wiley and Sons, 1983). 12. The Association of Public Data Users (APDU) is an organization of users, producers, and distributors of federal, state, and local government statistical data. The executive director is Susan Anderson, Princeton University Computing Center, 87 Prospect Ave., Princeton, NY 08544. 13. Citibase: Citibank Economic Database (New York: Citibank). (Computer file) 14. IASSIST: The International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology. + Page 160 + About the Author Jim Jacobs Data Services Librarian University of California, San Diego Central University Library, 0175-R 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 JAJACOBS@UCSD.EDU ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Jim Jacobs. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 91 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Jennings, Edward M. "EJournal: An Account of the First Two Years." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 91-110. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction As I write these first paragraphs of EJournal's autobiography, it is the morning after the first issue hit the "newsstands." Yesterday, I uploaded the mailing list to the list server from my personal account on SUNY Albany's VAX. Then I finished the unexpected task of deleting 283 copies of the subscription confirmation message that was sent to recipients. Ready at last, I e-mailed the fourth "final" version of the 421-line issue to the list server for network distribution. Then came the catch: I was not privileged to send anything to the list from that account. So, it wasn't until I had gone through one more file transfer and the deletion of a "wrong-address" header that EJournal 1.1 went off into the "matrix." Yesterday's episode is typical of the last two years: one adjustment of expectations after another. This essay will fill in some of the twists and turns along EJournal's short journey. It will be a kind of editorial autobiography, and I will finish up with a rationalized interpretation of the response to the mid- March 1991 mailing. Near the top of EJournal's front page is the line: "An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications of electronic networks and texts." My interest in paperless texts goes back to an experimental course in 1985. In it, we almost abandoned the classroom in favor of writing to each other from terminals. My awareness of larger networks began when Frank Madden, of SUNY's Westchester Community College, introduced me to an Exxon- sponsored project out of New York Institute of Technology. Michael Spitzer had convinced several people interested in using computers to help students figure out how to write more confidently. In the spring of 1989, after Michael's funding had dried up and Fred Kemp started MegaByte University (MBU) on BITNET, several intriguing issues began to pop up with some frequency. Let's turn the clock back, then, to Spring 1989. + Page 92 + 2.0 Initial Issues One set of issues had to do with the academic sociology of networks, lists, and bulletin boards as a medium--the fascination they held for some people, and the nagging we felt as we wasted our time in extended and stimulating, but professionally unproductive conversations. Another set had to do with the peculiarities of the discourse itself. We all had some inkling, I think, that writing is different when you have to scroll it instead of flip codex pages. It is more like talking when you know the names of almost everyone who will read what you type, but have never met most of the group. I think it was Michael Cohen who likened the environment to a large party where friends, acquaintances, and strangers mingle, and where most of the conversations are familiar enough to be easy to join, yet just strange enough so you don't feel obliged to chime in. One fine day, as narrators blithely say, I wondered if it would make sense to try distributing some sort of "journal" over the network. MBU had tried putting some texts into its archives. Most of them had been donated by their authors after presentations at meetings. When I downloaded and scanned them, though, they felt longer than I wanted to read. I wanted a place where some of the intriguing ideas that streamed across my screen every week could be packaged so they would be eligible for publication credit within the accounting system of higher education. I wanted something less stodgy than the familiar pseudo-permanence of paper journals, but less quick-triggered than the bright snippets on MBU and less scattered than the stream of observations on HUMANIST. Joe Raben, one of the first people to whom I mentioned the idea, thought it might work. This brings us to the fall of 1989. + Page 93 + 3.0 The First Steps The ideas sketched above were about all we had in mind when we sent a notice to five BITNET lists in the fall of 1989: Electronic texts in the humanities are not yet generally considered academic "publications." They are not likely to be taken seriously in the course of deliberations about tenure and promotion. This can be attributed, in part, to a latent, unchallenged premise--a default assumption--that ideas aren't quite real until they have been printed and bound and received in the mail. Another factor may be computer networks' reputation for informality. Perhaps most restraining, though, is awareness of how pushy it would be to put forward "ideas" whose merit remained unacknowledged by one's peers. But an edited and refereed "paperless" journal, one devoted to electronic texts and the implications of the medium, would stand a good chance of acquiring legitimacy even if (and perhaps because) it appeared principally on-line. What's more, network communications ought to permit speedy exchange of submitted texts; reading, critiquing, revising and distributing ought to happen faster than with paperbound media. We are proposing such a project. 3.1 Assembling the Staff Several happy accidents happened between the first dream and the drafting of those paragraphs. The proprietors of SUNY Albany's Computing Services Center, who had helped me with my paperless writing experiments over the years, asked good questions about what such a journal might accomplish. I asked Kelly Kreiger, among others, about finding someone who might help me, probably an undergraduate with an interest in both writing and computers, and she put me in touch with Allison Goldberg, who, it turned out, had written an Honors Seminar paper with me the spring before about computers and privacy. Allison thought the project might be fun, and a few extra credits would help her finish her degree program ahead of schedule. I was delighted. Dave Redding, Director of Undergraduate Studies in English, was willing to let her register for an independent study. + Page 94 + Don Byrd and Steve North thought an all-electronic journal sounded like a good idea. Steve inquired whether I had asked the Council of Editors of Learned Journals if they knew of anything like what we were doing. My question to Evelyn Hinz, then the Council's President, was answered with an invitation to speak informally at their December session in Washington at the Modern Language Association meeting. Nervously working on that talk and on some parallel speculations for Alan Purves' Center for Writing and Literacy at Albany, I began to wonder about broadening the journal's purpose (this happened as we were drafting and distributing the announcement quoted above). 3.2 The Journal's Focus At first, the journal was supposed to address the ways that computers affect writing. The focus was to be on texts, discourse, language and rhetoric, and the reciprocities of creating and interpreting. I even asked a few people what they would think of the neologisms "Techst" or "Alternatext" as possible titles for the journal. But, the tentative procedures already implied a somewhat broader range of interests. "Our principal subject is what happens when computer networks supplement paper and sound as channels for distributing 'texts'," we had said. I had begun to wonder if electronic networks were going to have the same effect on culture as writing and printing. Keeping records, creating long fictions, and going to libraries had transformed "oral" cultures, or so it appeared. Would the new medium for capturing and spreading information prove comparable in its effects on "literate" cultures? Perhaps electronic journals would be the appropriate places to analyze and exhort the Third Wave in the way that printed journals served, and would continue to serve, the Second Wave. + Page 95 + 3.3 The First Announcement The first preliminary draft announcement called "Credo1.Net" went to a half dozen people, whose BITNET addresses I had handy, on September 20, 1989. By early October, we had received enough curious responses to keep us going. I began drafting journal procedures on the 12th. Allison sent the two-screen announcement to Fred Kemp's MBU, LITERARY, Willard McCarty's HUMANIST, Rob Royar's On-Line Composition Digest, Malcolm Hayward's EDITOR list, and probably to others via links and nodes unfathomable even by network experts. No mailing lists, no brochures, no paper, no printer, and no directly measurable costs were involved. We had responses from 40 or 50 people, including two outspoken skeptics. Most said they'd like to learn more; a few offered to help. So, we sent out those preliminary ideas about procedures. 3.4 Preliminary Journal Policies Perhaps the most noteworthy procedure, besides our intent to conduct business electronically and keep essays brief, was the three-tier distribution sequence. Abstracts were to go to subscribers frequently, a table of contents of accumulated titles would go to a wider list occasionally, and everyone would download what they wanted from a file server whenever they wanted to. Although we now send the full text of each article to all subscribers, we intend to carry out the plan of having several "tiers" of announcement and access. Two other paragraphs, about money and ownership, from those proposed procedures deserve to be noted: We want to avoid charging for the sharing of what we think we have learned about matters we are all investigating. We all support BITNET, and we'll all share the load of reviewing, and I will feel better about being an editor if everyone knows that we're bootstrapping together in a low- overhead operation. It may be necessary to discuss fund raising at some moment in the future, but for now it's all free. + Page 96 + Ownership: we will do nothing about copyright, permissions, first-refusals, or other paraphernalia of intellectual possessiveness. We're operating in the domain of search, not re-search. 3.5 The Review Process The idea of sharing the load of reviewing was predicated on the formation of a group that would carry out the anonymous review of submissions. Here's our invitation to become an editor, which was the last part of the proposed procedures sent to the group that responded to the preliminary announcement: We would like to develop a list of co-editors or an editorial board or an advisory board, or all of the above. If you have ideas about people who might be invited to be on that sort of list (yourselves included), please send names to us. I don't know how we'll make up panels without insulting someone, sooner or later, but we'll try. Several people replied that they'd be willing to review submissions in their specialties--history, philosophy, whatever--or even in computer and network topics. We had heard from one person in Finland, one in Italy, and two or three in England. There was some question about whether "promulgate" should replace "publish" in our vocabulary, because publishing was associated with printing, mailing, and handling. Cooler heads prevailed. By the end of December, I was ready to add two footnotes to our procedures: (1) we could not deal with niceties of typography and format, even underlining, at least in the beginning; and (2) contributors would control, and be responsible for, final copy. I really hoped I could avoid proofreading. + Page 97 + 3.6 The Idea Takes Shape As we began 1990, there were two ways to look at what had happened so far. The idea of an electronic journal had begun to acquire support and even something of an international audience in just a few months. On the other hand, given the efficiencies of the medium we were celebrating so noisily, it seemed to have taken us a ridiculously long time just to find a few people willing to listen seriously to our ideas. [As I draft this, it is almost 48 hours since Issue 1.1 was sent out. I have not logged in to find out what happened. I may well have done so by the time I resume work on this text; I will try to keep a straight face and not let knowledge of the reaction affect the story of 1990, the intervening year that both flashed by and dragged along in the meantime.] 4.0 Down To Business The second semester of 1990-91 seems almost empty. I spent a long time writing up a justification for "support for a periodical" from the university. My answers to the university form's set questions turned into essays because I had to explain, in what seemed like a dozen different ways, why those questions were not pertinent to an electronic publication. I was seeking assurance that the university would underwrite a part-time position, probably for a graduate student who could step into Allison's shoes. So, when I learned that there wouldn't be any real money for the project, even if the committee found us deserving, I thanked Bill Dumbleton, English Department Chair, and Dona Parker, Associate Dean, for the indirect support they said they could help us with, and set that application aside. We also started talking with Kelly Kreiger Hoffman about using the list server for distributing and archiving the journal. We thrashed our way through some uncertainties about why we would be unlike a printed journal, accumulated a group of consulting editors, signed on several Advisory Board members, and reviewed our first submission. Maybe the semester wasn't as empty as it seemed. + Page 98 + Arranging the list was almost as foolish as it was forehanded. We locked ourselves into the subtitle "An Electronic Journal for Humanists" in one unexpected instant when a network expert, hands poised over the keyboard, turned suddenly and asked: "Wha'd'ya wanna call it?" But we really thought we might have an issue to distribute before too long, so we wanted to have the mechanisms in place. Then I forgot about the arrangements. At the end of January I asked John Slatin at the University of Texas, Austin and Stuart Moulthrop at Yale (since gone to UT Austin) if they'd be interested in collaborating on a piece for EJournal about hypertext. I had something of a run-in on one network list with a person who felt strongly that electronic journals could not, would not, and, perhaps, should not work. The major objection was that originality, copyright, and ownership could not be controlled on the network, and that the world would virtually come to an end if they were not controlled. My sketchy notes show that Stevan Harnad (editor of Psycoloquy) jumped in to defend electronic media, and that Harry Whitaker told me, rather eloquently, to stand my ground. I immediately asked Harry to join the Board of Advisors. He lived in the world of cognitive science and, like Joe Raben, had edited "real" scholarly journals (Brain and Cognition as well as Brain and Language). I hoped that his presence would symbolize our interest in reaching outside the realm of literary theory and he would help us learn to edit responsibly. 4.1 The Board of Advisors I will outline the process of putting together our Board of Advisors because it illustrates serendipity and one way that e- mail has spoiled me. + Page 99 + Joe Raben, founding editor of Computers and the Humanities, had said he'd be willing to help out. I wrote Arthur Danto in early February; he had helped me with a project in the seventies, and was probing the blinkspace between art and artifice, between medium and backdrop. In mid-month, I found courage and time to ask Bob Scholes and Dick Lanham if they would lend us their imaginations and reputations. Dick's insistence that the nature of "text" had been irreversibly changed when pixels met ASCII was part of EJournal's heritage, as was Bob's experiment with computers in a poetry course in the mid-seventies. Dick sent e-mail back at once, agreeing to be on the Board. Arthur scrawled a nice note saying that he felt unqualified because he had never used and probably never would use the technology. Bob answered positively, some time later, by regular mail. I finally remembered, in March, to ask Joe Raben about actually using his name on the masthead. Sigh of relief; he said we could. I had started out in the fall of 1989 hoping simply to enlist people who would be recognized by professors of English; people whose established reputations would validate EJournal's claim to be as good a place to be published as most other refereed journals in the humanities. By mid-winter, the journal was already respectable, from that point of view, and thanks to Harry Whitaker's willingness was on its way to bringing the networks and electronic texts within their purported scope. By this time, I was also aware of how dependent I had become on electronic mail for getting everything done. Some tasks that should have been done months ago still get postponed because they require paper, envelopes, and postage. An aside about the name "EJournal." The closest thing to a disagreement with a Board member was my not heeding Joe Raben's advice to assign an academically resplendent title like "Studies in the Relationship . . ." or some such deliberately heavy phrasing. I had wanted a title as far from print-associated locutions as I could get, which meant avoiding "journal," "studies," and "review." But, I realized eventually that journal implied day-by-day-record, which seemed appropriate for adventures in new fields. + Page 100 + When "Techst" was greeted with the scorn it deserved, I slipped into "e-journal," short for electronic journal, in notes and some conversations. Then, when Joe suggested a weightier name, I realized that I had come to like the abbreviation, which seemed to suit the directness and informality of the network. I was also fully aware that some literary periodicals are known better by their initials than by their formal titles. 4.2 Editorial Procedures Our actual editorial procedures had not been worked out when the first essay arrived to be considered. We were committed to anonymity and to using e-mail, so I stripped names and affiliations from the essay and sent it to a distribution list made up of people who had answered the call for volunteers. I asked them to think about what they would like EJournal to become. I don't remember specifying any criteria. Within a week I had received plenty of responses. The consensus seemed to be that the essay was interesting and well constructed; however, the subject might be too narrow for our presumed audience. I broke the news to the author. This process seems to me one of the great strengths of the electronic journal format. Not only can we be fast, but we can look at every submission as a committee of the whole, reading it from the perspectives of different academic disciplines as well as in terms of our own experience in the network labyrinth. The senior editor merely decides what to send out for review, sifts the panel's responses, and communicates consensus to the authors. This procedure is also something of a happy accident. EJournal has never held a meeting to discuss and decide editorial policy. In retrospect, the idea of settling on a definitive editorial policy looks almost silly, like an exercise in compromise that may have been useful in times when recording was dominated by paper. It implies permanence, the kind of congealed consistency characteristic of print-dominated culture. However, in the matrix, with its heritage of lists and bulletin boards, both the integrity of the journal and its evolving relevance seem best served by the delegation of editorial judgment to independent readers. + Page 101 + 4.3 Highs and Lows By the end of March 1990, Allison and Kelly had shepherded the journal past several milestones. We had a Board of Advisors, we had a panel of Consulting Editors, we had been through our first review, and we had stuck our toes into the lake of "list servering." I had asked people to write essays about hypertext and about a "hyperversity," a prophesied environment for education in the coming cyberspace era. All of this was encouraging. Then, however, Kelly confirmed that she would be leaving the university, and I worried about what would happen if I couldn't find people to answer my questions and look after the actual e- mail and network connections. There had been some nasty noise on the line between my 8088 machine at home and the VAX on campus, and I had gotten into a flurry of activity with a campus committee charged with discussing "Educational Technology." Allison had real jobs lined up for the fall. Even if the Vice President's committee was to endorse the idea of the journal, there would be no money available to support any kind of student assistance. There were some discouraging moments. EJournal sat there waiting for something to happen. Kelly arranged for Bob Pfeiffer, her successor as electronic Postmaster, to guide us into the maze of list servers and file servers. As she moved into the position of Head Consultant in our computer center, Allison persuaded Ron Bangel to think about following her as Managing Editor (Acting) of the journal. He agreed to consider enrolling for several credits of independent study. The idea of an electronic journal had taken on potential form thanks to Allison and Kelly, and the momentum of their efforts carried us into the fall semester. + Page 102 + 5.0 Year Two Begins As the first year was Allison Goldberg's, the second year was Ron Bangel's. An English major, he had also run the university's "Open Line" through the Caucus software on the VAX. Besides looking after much of the correspondence that was beginning to trickle in, Ron prodded me into arranging a totally separate account for the journal, one that he and I could share. Once we got there, he found out that I was still confusing two kinds of indexing locators, the file name and the directory the file was stored in. Having been conditioned by DOS to keep the filenames short, I had kept assigning almost indecipherably short names. Ron designed nests of subdirectories and taught me to use long, thorough, and systematic filenames. He set up a directory-tree display called "Swing" (a program from the files of the local ACM chapter) so we could navigate our multiplying directories and subdirectories pictorially. And he started keeping a log of what we were doing so that the technical details of our procedures wouldn't be forgotten as they became semi-automatic. Meanwhile, EJournal's mission was expanding. I didn't realize it while the change was taking place--indeed, new implications keep popping up--but a call from Ann Okerson in late summer helped us see that EJournal was one of a few electronic publications that were trying to be "scholarly" or "academic" by virtue of an editorial process more elaborate than the screening of postings to a BITNET list. Ann pointed out that librarians had long been worried about the rising cost of serial publications, and they were wondering if experiments like EJournal might become one route toward holding down escalating costs. 5.1 The Questions Emerge It had been easy for me to vow that EJournal would be free. Early statements of BITNET policy had frowned on activity that might involve filthy lucre, and I had smiled at the thought that the Net might let us revive motives from seventeenth-century England. As I saw it, Bacon's Solomon's House and the fledgling Royal Society had assumed that discoveries should be shared and that those who found or made new knowledge were more or less obliged to give it away. + Page 103 + Even though electronic distribution does indeed involve real costs, it is cheaper than using paper, printers, and postage. More significant, perhaps, is the appearance of freedom in the eyes of the academic practitioner. I had not stopped to think, though, that seventeenth-century scientists set about sharing knowledge before copyright and patent laws controlled the ownership of intellectual property. In short, money raised its ugly head. Who does own what we make public? Who can get possession of it, and how? How will discipline-sponsored electronic journals "compete" with the codex journals in their fields? In this context, I am just now recognizing some of the ways that EJournal is slightly different from most other electronic publications. We have no tight disciplinary or departmental or program allegiance. We have gone outside the literature-writing realm to scan and report and speculate about a phenomenon that is hostage to no academic specialty. Ann Okerson's call, then, prompted another round of pondering our still-inchoate purpose, and led to two specific developments: (1) participation in an October 1990 meeting at North Carolina State University of a group she dubbed the Association of Electronic Scholarly Journals, and (2) her acceptance of an invitation to be one of our Advisors. 5.2 Two Articles are Submitted Back at the keyboard and screen, we accepted our first piece. We used the procedures from the spring before, and got a different range of replies from the panelists. Some said, as I recall, "Sure, this is just what we want, even though it's less formal [read 'pompous'?] than most 'scholarship'." Some said "It seems a little hasty-drafty." And some thought it could be OK with the addition of a couple of acknowledgments of precedents for parts of some of the ideas. + Page 104 + I tried to articulate for the author a summary of the positive responses, and asked for swift revision so that we could get a first issue out. One of the reviewers was inspired to send in an essay that took off from the original piece. We were excited because we had imagined trying to trigger miniature chain reactions to our essays. This type of interchange would be more stimulating than stale "snail mail" controversies that arrive quarterly. Both essays are still sitting in their subdirectories. Electronic networks move texts fast once they are ready, but they can't speed the writing and revising process all by themselves. Ron and I exchanged ideas for a masthead. I needed something to put on paper in order to apply to the Library of Congress for an ISSN, and he made sure that it would meet the needs of screen- scroll technology. We didn't want to pollute the channels and mailboxes with wasteful "black space," and we wanted to let readers proceed through an issue without having to find their way backwards to information that had slipped away. We were ready to add another layer of consultation. Having checked our efforts at on-screen design with the advisors, then with the panel of consulting editors, we were ready to send an announcement to the list of interested "subscribers" who had signed on since the preliminary mailing of a year before. Our first mass mailing, so to speak, went to that group, and also to managers of several closed lists. We sent it, in a shotgun blast, straight to all members of some open lists as well. The several screens included the cover page, the staff, and the latest version of our evolving statement of purpose. The first response was a howl about our breach of propriety; we had somehow threatened to clog the circuits of the matrix by using such a long distribution list instead of a BITNET file server. And there was enough overlap among lists, we were lectured, so that some people were getting more than one copy. Our Computing Services Center Director, Ben Chi, told me not to worry. We might have touched the edge of naughty behavior, but shouldn't feel ashamed. He estimated that the announcement might have gotten to some 7,000 mailboxes. + Page 105 + At this point we felt committed. There was (1) an "accepted" essay awaiting revision, (2) a set of editorial procedures that seemed to have worked, (3) commitments to work on two more essays and a review, and (4) enough responses to the late-fall announcement to build our pre-publication subscriber list all the way to 300. Besides, we had been assigned an ISSN (1054-1055) because we had promised to begin publishing in January. But plenty could go wrong. I lost one contributor's address and almost refused what became our first article. In our eagerness to be all-electronic, we fouled up our list server's mailing list. These last few anecdotes bring us up to the first issue. 6.0 The First Issue By spring 1991, the widely broadcast announcement had brought inquiries about proposed essays. Several seemed feasible, some seemed a bit celebratory rather than ruminative, and one struck me as a possibility. I set up a subdirectory for it, removed its mail header, added a headnote for the panel of consulting editors, and sent it off to the group. The return messages were not enthusiastic. The piece seemed somewhat stale, and it probably would be redundant for most of our readers. I went back to the subdirectory to recapture the author's address. No name. There was an address, but it was cryptic; I had expunged the name more thoroughly than I should have in the course of making the piece anonymous. There were some anxious hours while I tracked through notes, logs, and who-where techniques to make a match I could be confident would not embarrass the journal. I am determined, after that episode, to be sloppy in the direction of redundant records. And I dread discovering the next inadvertent error. Someone will be mystified, frustrated, or hurt (or all three), and we might not even know that anything happened. I am finding electronic files harder to keep track of than even sloppy paper folders. I hold on to more pieces, it seems, but have more trouble finding them, in spite of Ron's valiant struggle towards orderliness. + Page 106 + I have reason to remember one particularly crisp note which arrived at the end of December. It proposed yet another electronic journal, this one for the purpose of getting into print research ideas that had not been funded. Or so it appeared. I dashed off a "thanks but no thanks note," explaining that the proposed journal sounded almost like a repository for rejects. I'm happy to say that my insult was forgiven. The author, Robert Lindsay, took me to task for not reading carefully, but accepted responsibility for having left some implications out of his brief inquiry. The proposal he submitted, when fleshed out and contextualized, became the first issue of the journal. It seemed to strike the editors as the kind of piece we should be offering. It was a sensible way to make use of the novel opportunities opening up on the network. 6.1 Distribution Decisions While the panelists were pondering the article about "Electronic Journals of Proposed Research," Ron was preparing an efficient mailing list. We couldn't just e-mail to the 300 ID's with a distribution list; that would threaten to clog the network even more than our redundant announcement had done in November. A BITNET list server was the obvious answer [1]. We uncovered the list server niche set up almost a year earlier; all we had to do was learn how to use it. I had already learned a few tricks from starting up a closed list in the fall, so this venture looked easy. I deciphered enough of the Parisian handbook, with Bob Pfeiffer's help, to customize the message that subscribers would receive. We made my personal VAX account the "owner," so that the EJOURNAL@ALBNYVMS editorial account wouldn't trip over itself in communicating with EJRNL@ALBNYVM1 (the list). Bob told us to ship the mailing list to him when we were ready, and he would install it himself. We sent it over. + Page 107 + Meanwhile, approving notes were arriving from the editorial panel. We set to preparing the texts to accompany the journal's departments: supplements, letters, and reviews. The idea of supplements has to do with recantations, objections, endorsements, or whatever might deserve to be appended to an essay or article already published in EJournal. The supplement seems like a reasonable compromise between the permanent, frozen text of the printed medium, and the indeterminate, perpetually adjusted "con-text of electronic polylog." (Thanks to MBU and, I think, John Slatin, for that post-dialogic term.) Whether supplements will replace letters of indignation or approbation we can't predict. We imagine that a letters section will permit debate while issues are still warm, but it may be that anything slower than instant e-mail feedback will lag too long to suit the network community. Mindful of the mailbox-clog problem, we had decided to devote each issue to one substantial essay. Also aware of the importance of easy citation, but fretful about clutter and conscious of the ways that techniques for electronic text- searching have been developing, we decided to announce only the number of lines in each section of the issue. Since an electronic publication needn't wait for, or rush to meet, a quarterly or monthly schedule, I decided to identify each issue with a volume number, based on a calendar year, and an accompanying (serial) issue number, along with the month and year of actual publication. The March 1991 "edition" is Volume 1, Issue 1. 6.2 The First Issue is Published After the issue layout was prepared, text was copy-edited and checked by the author, subscription information was tested for comprehensibility as well as accuracy, and a dummy issue was sent back and forth to verify arrival appearance, we were ready. It was at this point we learned that we'd sent a bad mailing list to be installed on the list server. + Page 108 + In order to be all-electronic, we had put only the e-mail address of the recent subscribers into our mailing list, not the users' names. Because the list server requires a "real" name as well, Bob Pfeiffer sent them back to us after he had arduously checked out the validity of every address on our list. Ron made up some "real names," I inserted some that I remembered. I dropped by Bob's office to say that we were ready to send out EJournal 1.1. He said he was leaving for a month's vacation that afternoon. Flustered, I shipped over the updated list. He squeezed its installation into his countdown schedule, and the first issue was ready to go out that evening. However, as I mentioned at the beginning, the ownership question tripped me up; I couldn't broadcast to the list from the account where the laid-out issue was sitting. Once again, an assumption about how easy it would be was optimistic. Again, the fix turned out to be easier than we deserved. 7.0 Conclusion Released in April 1991, EJournal 1.1 seems to have been received reasonably well. We have a small e-mail folder of congratulations. No one has complained. Many more people have subscribed than have asked to be dropped from the list. On the other hand, we haven't been flooded with submissions or other editorial correspondence. At the beginning of this essay I promised "a rationalized interpretation of the response" to the first issue. There isn't much to interpret, but several matters have come into focus. Essentially, I am increasingly aware of EJournal's precarious position. First, we have broken from several paper-based conventions, which leaves us without much in the way of a conventional constituency. At the same time, we don't yet know if networkers generally, even those whose home base is in the humanities or social sciences, are interested in a conveyance that is even a tiny bit slower than lists, newsletters, and personal e-mail. + Page 109 + Second, we are not a version of an existing print-oriented journal. Nor do we represent a professional society or an existing academic field. The number of subscribers, approaching 350, suggests that we may have a constituency, but the paucity of submissions may imply that there are more observers of the journal than participants in its mission. Or there may simply be many more participants in network activities than there are observers of its implications. Third, there has been an inversion of difficulties. For two years, it looked as if getting started would be hard. Thanks to the support and sympathy of many wonderful people, though, that has turned out to be relatively easy, although not speedy. The hard part is going to be bootstrapping the reciprocal needs of those writers and readers for whom the network itself, the cyberspace matrix, constitutes a "field" to be explored. Notes 1. To subscribe to EJournal, send the following message to LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1: SUB EJRNL Subscriber's Name. Submissions and all editorial correspondence should be addressed to our "office": EJOURNAL@ALBNYVMS. + Page 110 + About the Author Edward M. Jennings Department of English State University of New York at Albany Albany, NY 12222 EJOURNAL@ALBNYVMS ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Edward M. Jennings. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 128 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Kovacs, Diane, Willard McCarty, and Michael Kovacs. "How to Start and Manage a BITNET LISTSERV Discussion Group: A Beginner's Guide." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 128-143. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction The following article only attempts to outline the major steps you must take in establishing a LISTSERV discussion group. It assumes that if you are in any doubt you will be able to obtain help on demand from an expert in your local computer center or from an experienced colleague. The expert may be called the "postmaster," the "LISTSERV owner," or something similar. If you are fortunate enough to find a helpful expert, cultivate him or her. The discussion lists LSTOWN-L@INDYCMS and ARACHNET@UOTTAWA are designed specifically to provide list owners with access to LISTSERV experts and experienced list owners (see Appendix A). The following also assumes that you will be in charge of the group (i.e., you will both manage or supervise the daily operations and be responsible for its success). LISTSERV groups, particularly those that are moderated, require someone who is attentive (if not devoted) to these operations and an adept editor. Note that the mechanical and the intellectual tasks required by an electronic discussion group cannot be cleanly separated; the editor/owner should be willing and able to undertake both. Keep organizational matters as simple as possible, and as loose as possible, at least until you have a sure grasp of what your group is all about. As editor/owner, you will certainly have influence, but much will be determined by the membership as a whole. In electronic communications, "vox populi vox Dei" is as good an initial motto as you can have. At the same time, total license communicates lack of attention and concern, even lack of wit. The experts, such as we have them, agree that a successful group requires an active, though not dictatorial, editorial persona. + Page 129 + At some point, you may want to use your discussion list as a distribution mode for an electronic journal, or you may decide to edit your discussion to the extent that it is actually an electronic journal. This option requires a serious time commitment on your part and detailed knowledge of your local mailer/editor software. If the tasks presented below seem daunting, take courage from the fact that many novices have gone before you and survived (like the authors of this document) not only to tell the tale, but also to recommend the journey to others with enthusiasm. Editing a discussion group (or what one of us likes to call an "electronic seminar") can be a highly fulfilling experience. Many of us think that we are witnessing, and may influence, the development of a new medium with considerable promise for all disciplines. The newness of the medium provides many opportunities for the exercise of the imagination. Now for the practical matters. 2.0 The Steps to Start Determine that there is a need for a discussion list in an area you are interested in (see Appendix B). There are several thousand discussion groups already established. One of them may already be fulfilling the need that you perceive. 2.1 Determine Your Time Commitment Decide that you can commit 20-30 hours per week for the first week or two in list planning and set up. Determine that you can commit two to eight hours per week for list maintenance thereafter. Two hours per week is the minimum you will spend in maintaining an unmoderated list. You can expect to spend as much as eight hours per week maintaining an active edited list. 2.2 Learn About E-Mail and Editor Software You will also need to be familiar with the mailer and editing software of your personal e-mail account. You must commit sufficient time to learning how your e-mail mailer/editor works. + Page 130 + You can run a discussion list from almost any kind of mainframe/operating system combination (e.g., VAX/VMS, UNIX, IBM/VM/CMS, and IBM/MVS). However, there are problems unique to using each system. The LISTSERV software runs only on IBM mainframes running VM/CMS on the BITNET. If your e-mail account is on the BITNET, simple familiarity with your mailer/editor is sufficient. You will run your discussion list from your own e- mail account in interaction with the LISTSERV software running on an IBM machine. For other combinations consult with your LISTSERV owner, LSTOWN-L, or ARACHNET colleagues. 2.3 Find a LISTSERV Site Locate a computer site running LISTSERV software (see Appendix C). Your own site, or one quite close to you, is highly preferable. At the start, you will need to have many conversations via e-mail, telephone, or in person with your LISTSERV owner (the person responsible for maintaining the LISTSERV you will be using). 2.4 Read the Documentation Send the command INFO LISTSERV to the LISTSERV at that site. Retrieve the documentation files and read them. This documentation may not be easy to understand, but you will profit from a broad familiarity with it (see Appendix D). 2.5 Subscribe to a List for List Owners/Editors Consider subscribing to LSTOWN-L@INDYCMS (technical help for owners of LISTSERV groups) and ARACHNET@UOTTAWA (editorial help for owners/editors of LISTSERV groups and electronic serials), which you may join before your group is actually in operation. You may also want to join an active, well-run group, such as HUNANIST@BROWNVM or PACS-L@UHUPVM1. + Page 131 + 2.6 Arrange to Use a LISTSERV Contact the LISTSERV owner at the chosen site and ask permission to use the software and disk space for archives and files. Many, if not most, sites will give you the processing time and disk space free of charge. Dependence on operating grants or being subject to other forms of supervision is to be avoided if at all possible. If your site does not have LISTSERV, but does have an IBM mainframe running VM/SP with a Columbia Mailer and it is connected to the BITNET, then you may want to ask your computer center to acquire the LISTSERV software. The software is available from Eric Thomas (ERIC@SEARN), the author of the package. While the software is free, your computer services will need to commit a small amount of time and personnel for set up and maintenance. 2.7 Set Up the List You will need to decide on or articulate the following issues related to setting up the list (see Appendix E for the parameters used in setting up LISTSERV lists). 2.7.1 Name the Group It is conventional to have all names end in "-L" (as in "Ethics- L") to denote a list, but as many or more groups break with this convention as hold to it. Time spent on choosing a good name is time well spent. Be sure to check with your LISTSERV owner to see if the name is already in use. 2.7.2 Determine the Purpose of the Group It is a good idea to have a purpose in mind, although you should be prepared to expand or modify your original intentions, as we suggested above. 2.7.3 Identify Potential Members For whom is the list designed? For some lists, potential members will have to be sought (e.g., through notices in professional journals or announcements at conferences). + Page 132 + 2.7.4 Choose the Subscription Method Should members be able to subscribe themselves or be subscribed only by you? Open subscription allows people to come and go freely as they wish, without bothering you. Closed or "reviewed" subscription allows you to decide whom to admit or, perhaps more significantly, to ask potential members for information and to have a reasonable chance of getting it. You might, for example, ask for a statement of interests or professional biography, which can then be circulated to the membership and so help forge a community. 2.7.5 Set the Scope of Discussion What kinds of questions and topics do you want to be entertained? In general, it is far better to have the scope quite widely defined, so as not to put many restrictions in place at the beginning. 2.7.6 Decide Whether to Moderate the Group Should the group be moderated or unmoderated? The role of the moderator more or less combines the duties of editing a newsletter or journal with leading a seminar. The advantages of a moderated group are chiefly focus and coherence. These benefits can be of prime importance in a very active group, but moderation takes care and time. An unmoderated group is completely subject to the vicissitudes of its members, but it requires almost no attention once it has been established. If your group has a very specific focus (such as a particular piece of software) you will not feel the need of a moderator as keenly. 2.7.7 Regulate the Source of and Access to Messages Do you want the group to be open to messages from non- subscribers? Do you want non-subscribers to be able to read the contributions from members of your group? + Page 133 + 2.7.8 Establish Services Will your LISTSERV owner allow computer space to run a file server? How will you use the file server, and to what extent? If your group is to be primarily conversational, you may not need the file server for anything other than the monthly logbooks automatically kept by LISTSERV. If your group is primarily concerned with distributing stable information, you will need a sufficient allotment of storage space. Beware of offering your members too much personal attention, as this can consume much of your time. 2.7.9 Get Editorial Help Do you want to set up an editorial board or its equivalent? Can you get others to help you (e.g., assist in long-range editing tasks)? 2.7.10 Write an Introductory Document Write a brief instructional document to introduce new members to your group. This document should contain a concise description of the group based on the decisions you have made. It should also provide elementary instructions on how to use LISTSERV (e.g., to order files from the server). You may also want to articulate your editorial policies. Even if the group is unmoderated, you may have to intervene occasionally to guide discussion around an offensive or otherwise difficult topic, and, on such occasions, it is useful to have a statement of policy to refer to. (ARACHNET provides examples of such documents.) Distribution of the instructional document can be done automatically by LISTSERV. Ask your LISTSERV owner to help you alter the DEFAULT $MAILFORM so that instead of the standard "Your subscription . . ." memo, the LISTSERV will distribute your instructional document to each new subscriber as they subscribe. Talk to your LISTSERV owner and experienced list owners to learn what other functions can be automated. + Page 134 + 2.7.11 Establish Error Handling Procedures Who will handle errors? Will your LISTSERV owner have time? With the help of LSTOWN-L, it is possible for you to cope with errors yourself. Error handling is discussed below. 2.8 Get the LISTSERV Owner to Set Up the List Ask the LISTSERV owner to set up your list. Then you should test it. 2.9 Announce the List Send an announcement of your new list to NEW-LIST@NDSUVM1 and to ARACHNET@UOTTAWA. If your group touches on computing in the humanities and you wish it to attract general attention, you should also send an announcement to HUMANIST@BROWNVM. If your group is related to any other existing discussions you may want to forward copies of your announcement to them. 3.0 Daily List Maintenance The following briefly outlines what tasks you can expect to perform. Of course, different styles of management lead to different amounts and kinds of work. This work will be much easier if you have a computer and modem at home, since by nature it is easily done in bits and pieces during odd moments. 3.1 Monitoring Contributions The unmoderated list will need monitoring for inappropriate postings and network problems every other day or so. Although you cannot recall an offensive posting that has already been circulated, you can and should respond directly to anyone who makes such a posting (posting directly to the list about such problems is considered bad etiquette, unless it is a general problem). A light touch is better than a heavy hand, but list owners/editors must occasionally take decisive action. + Page 135 + The moderated list may need attention daily, depending on the amount of activity. Contributions may simply be passed on to your LISTSERV software without modification, or you can use digesting and other software to clean up messages (e.g., to remove verbose message-headers) and to package messages loosely by subject. Digesting and other helpful software can be obtained from colleagues, such as those on ARACHNET. Depending on how your list is set up, you may need to monitor and respond to requests for subscription and to distribute the introductory document to new members. These tasks may be done every other day or so. 3.2 Dealing with Errors You will need to monitor and respond to errors arising from addressing problems and misbehaving software. There are three kinds of errors: (a) for "reviewed" subscriptions, errors you make when you give LISTSERV the addresses of new members; (b) for subscriptions made by members themselves (e.g., illegal node ID's sent by software at the user's site); and (c) for other sorts of network failures. Whatever the cause, an incorrect address will usually be rejected by network software (rather than simply dropped), and the offending message will be returned (usually to you, the list owner). In the beginning, you will doubtless need help from a network expert. The worst consequence of such errors is a "network loop," in which messages are echoed back and forth between LISTSERV and mail software elsewhere on the network. As a result, members can get deluged by junk mail rather quickly. Note that loops and other causes of junk mail are much less likely in moderated groups, since the editor is always there to act as a filter. Loops can still occur in a moderated group because of local mailer problems, in which case your subscribers will need to talk with their local computer services people. + Page 136 + 4.0 Conclusion Even as we write, new uses for computer mediated communications are being developed. The possibilities are only limited by the imagination and confidence of the people who use the machines. The LISTSERV software provides the opportunity for motivated and enthusiastic people with minimal technical skills to imagine and create new vehicles for communication. Appendix A. Useful E-Mail Addresses ERIC@SEARN--Eric Thomas, the author of the LISTSERV software. NEW-LIST@NDSUVM1--A list for the announcement of new lists. LSTOWN-L@INDYCMS--A list for the sharing of information between LISTSERV list owners. HELP-NET@TEMPLEVM--A list for the discussion of common e-mail problems. ARACHNET@UOTTAWA--A list for owners of academic discussion lists and editors of electronic serials. Appendix B. How to Obtain a List of Discussion Lists To obtain a list of all BITNET LISTSERV lists with a short description of each list, send the command "LIST GLOBAL" to any LISTSERV address (e.g., LISTSERV@BITNIC). To obtain the "List of Lists" (a comprehensive list of discussion lists that are available on the BITNET, Internet, and UUCPnet), first and foremost, be sure that you have sufficient disk space on the computer account that you will be requesting it from since the list requires approximately a megabyte of space! To have the parts of the file sent to you (it is broken into 11 parts to facilitate sending it over the BITNET), send a message or mail to LISTSERV@NDSUVM1 with the command "GET INTEREST PACKAGE NEW- LIST." + Page 137 + Appendix C. How to Locate a LISTSERV Site Copy the following text and send it to LISTSERV@PSUVM (or NDSUVM, KENTVM, or another LISTSERV site with the PEERS database). Leave the subject line blank. Substitute your state for the word "State" in the search. // Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * Search State in Peers sendback print all /* You will be sent a file called DATABASE OUTPUT. This file will contain information on all the sites running LISTSERV software in the state you searched with. This information will include the name and e-mail address of the person responsible for the LISTSERV. If your state yields no results, try adjacent states. It is also possible to search the PEERS (or other) Database interactively. To obtain the LDBASE software which will allow interactive searching issue the following commands. For VM/SP CMS systems: TELL LISTSERV AT node GET LDBASE EXEC TELL LISTSERV AT node GET LSVIUCV MODULE The command to start the user interface is simply "LDBASE" to access your "home" server, or "LDBASE node" to access the LISTSERV server at another node. For VAX/VMS systems: SEND LISTSERV@node GET LDBASE COM + Page 138 + The command to start the user interface is "@LDBASE." This will install the required files in your directory and display more detailed instructions about the program. Other systems may not presently access the database in interactive mode. The Exec is self-documented, and it will ask you for the user ID and node ID of the server you wish to access, after which it will try to establish a network connection to that server's database. This may fail if a line is down or if interactive database access has been disabled at the installation you are trying to reach. Appendix D. Some Useful LISTSERV Documentation To get any of the files described below, send the command "INFO topic" to any LISTSERV, where "topic" is the word in the Topic column of Table 1 below. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Table 1. INFO Topics ---------------------------------------------------------------- Topic Filename/Filetype Description PResent (LISTPRES MEMO) Presentation of LISTSERV for new users GENintro (LISTSERV MEMO) General information about Revised LISTSERV REFcard (LISTSERV REFCARD) Command reference card KEYwords (LISTKEYW MEMO) Description of list header keywords FILEs (LISTFILE MEMO) Description of the file-server functions COORDinat (LISTCOOR MEMO) Information about LISTSERV Coordination DATABASE (LISTDB MEMO) Description of the database functions ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 139 + Appendix E. Some LISTSERV List Options The characteristics of a LISTSERV list are set in the LIST file (e.g., the file for GOVDOC-L is GOVDOC-L LIST). The options available are described in the KEYWORDS memo available from any LISTSERV (see Appendix D). Some options mentioned in this article are described below. Sender=[Public,Editor] If "Sender=Editor," all mail sent to the list address will be forwarded to the person addressed in the Editor field, who can then forward the mail back to the list if the posting meets approval. Editor=[e-mail address of editor] If "Sender=Editor," this field is required. Only mail sent from this address will be posted to the list. All other mail sent to the list address will be forwarded to this address. Subscription=[By_owner,Open,Closed] If "Sub=By_owner," all subscription requests will be forwarded to the first address in the "Owner=" field (and the attempted subscriber will be so notified). If "Sub=Public," anyone will be able to subscribe to the list. If "Sub=Closed," no one will be able to subscribe to the list, though any of the list owners will be able to add new subscribers. + Page 140 + Ack=[Yes,No,Msg] Defines the default value of the "Ack/NoAck" distribution option for new subscribers. Subscribers will still be able to change the option with the SET command. If "Ack=Yes," messages will be sent when the user's mail file is being processed. Additionally, a short acknowledgment with statistical information on the mailing will be sent. This is the default. If "Ack=Msg," messages will be sent when the user's mail file is being processed. Statistical information will also be sent via messages, but no acknowledgment mail will be sent. If "Ack=No," a single message, but no acknowledgment mail nor statistics will be sent when your mail file is being processed. Errors-To=[Postmaster,Owner,e-mail address] Defines the person or list of persons that are to receive rejected mail for the list. The default value is "Postmaster," and it is recommended that the owners change it to "Owners" or "Owners,Postmaster" as soon as they become familiar with LISTSERV and the different types of e-mail errors. Default-options=Repro Putting this field in defines the default value of the Repro/NoRepro distribution option of your list to "Repro." This has the effect that anyone posting a note to your list will receive a copy of their note. The normal default ("NoRepro") means that a poster only receives a message acknowledging receipt of his/her posting. + Page 141 + Recommended Readings Fuchs, Ira. "Research Networks and Acceptable Use." EDUCOM Bulletin 23 (Summer/Fall 1988): 43-48. Heim, Michael. "Humanistic Discussion and the Online Conference." Philosophy Today 30 (Winter 1986): 278-88. Hiltz, Starr Roxanne. Online Communities: A Case Study of the Office of the Future. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp. 1984. Katzen, May. "The Impact of New Technologies on Scholarly Communication." In Multi-Media Communications, ed. May Katzen, 16-50. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. Kerr, Elaine B. "Electronic Leadership: A Guide to Moderating Online Conferences." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication PC 29, no. 1 (1986): 12-18. Kovacs, Diane K. "GovDoc-L: An Online Intellectual Community of Documents Librarians and Other Individuals Concerned with Access to Government Information." Government Publications Review 17 (September/October 1990): 411-420. Landweber, Lawrence H., Dennis M. Jennings, and Ira Fuchs. "Research Computer Networks and Their Interconnection." IEEE Communications Magazine 24, no. 6 (1986): 5-17. Mackay, Wendy E. "Diversity in the Use of Electronic Mail: A Preliminary Inquiry." ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems 6, no. 4 (1988): 380-397. Pfaffenberger, Bryan. "Research Networks, Scientific Communication, and the Personal Computer." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication PC 29, no. 1 (1986): 30-33. + Page 142 + Quarterman, John S. The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide. Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1990. Rafaeli,Sheizaf. "The Electronic Bulletin Board: A Computer- Driven Mass Medium." Computers and the Social Sciences 2, no. 3 (1986): 123-36. Rice, Ronald E. and Donald Case. "Electronic Message Systems in the University: A Description of Use and Utility." Journal of Communication 33, no. 1 (1983): 131-152. Richardson, John. "The Limitations to Electronic Communication in the Research Community." Paper delivered at the Information Technology and the Research Process Conference, Cranfield, UK, July 1989. Spitzer, Michael. "Writing Style in Computer Conferences." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication PC 29, no. 1 (1986): 19-22. Sproull, Lee and Sara Kiesler. "Reducing Social Context Cues: Electronic Mail in Organizational Communication." Management Science 32 (November 1986): 1492-512. Steinfield, Charles W. "Computer-Mediated Communication Systems." Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 21 (1986): 167-202. Turoff, Murray. "Structuring Computer-Mediated Communication Systems to Avoid Information Overload." Communications of the ACM 28 (1985): 680-689. Updegrove, Daniel. "Electronic Mail and Networks: New Tools for University Administrators." Cause/Effect 13 (Spring 1990): 41-48. [Available by e-mail from LISTSERV@BITNIC with the command: GET EMAILNET UPDEGR-D.] + Page 143 + About the Authors Diane K. Kovacs Humanities Reference Librarian Kent State University Libraries Kent, Ohio 44242 DKOVACS@KENTVM DKOVACS@KENTVM.KENT.EDU Michael J. Kovacs Technical Advisor, GOVDOC-L, LIBREF-L, and LIBRES 781 S. Lincoln Street Kent, Ohio 44240 LIBRK420@KENTVMS LIBRK420@KSUVXA.KENT.EDU Willard McCarty Centre for Computing in the Humanities University of Toronto Robarts Library 130 St. George Street Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A5 Canada EDITOR@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Diane Kovacs, Willard McCarty, and Michael Kovacs. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 171 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 171-176. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Lorcan Dempsey. Libraries, Networks and OSI: A Review, with a Report on North American Developments. Bath, U.K.: Library, University of Bath, 1991. ISBN 0-9516856-0-0. $60. Reviewed by Clifford A. Lynch. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Lorcan Dempsey made a study trip to North America in May 1990 as part of a British-Library-funded study of library networking (i.e., use of computer networks by libraries) in North America. Based on this trip, as well as on extensive literature research and follow-on electronic mail and phone discussions, he prepared the report reviewed here. The prospective reader should understand that this book is in fact a published report. Some sections assume considerable familiarity with the subject matter; extensive quotations from the literature are included. Some sections are quite detailed and discuss work in progress (and some of this material will date quickly). Sometimes, the coverage is a bit encyclopedic, which makes for slightly tedious reading, but such detail is necessary in a comprehensive report. The book opens with a brief discussion of the computer networking context in both the U.S. and the U.K. and its implications for library service. The perspective is practical and service-oriented. Chapter 2 is a brief (25 page), very readable overview of OSI. Again, practical issues and real developments are emphasized, rather than theory or religious positions. TCP/IP is also briefly discussed, along with some TCP/IP-OSI interoperability considerations. There is some blunt discussion of the extent to which OSI can be expected to guarantee interoperability among systems, and of important issues such as registration, application interoperability profiles, and conformance testing. Dempsey supports his arguments with well-researched facts and statistics, and the concluding sections of this chapter, on the future of OSI, offer one of the most realistic assessments of the future I have seen in the library-related OSI literature. + Page 172 + The exploration of OSI is continued in Chapter 3, where discussion shifts from the overall OSI architecture and its acceptance to specific protocols for messaging (X.400), directories (X.500), file transfer (FTAM), and remote login (VTP). It is an excellent survey that links these sometimes abstract topics to real activities in the library world. Readers unfamiliar with these protocols will find this chapter a good introduction. Coverage, however, emphasizes Canadian developments, and it is weaker on some of the present U.S. work to integrate X.400 and X.500 technology into the existing Internet infrastructure. There is little mention of parallel protocols in use in the TCP/IP world. Chapter 4 covers the Linked Systems Project, the National Coordinated Cataloging projects, and related topics. This brief, even-handed review emphasizes the technical rather than political dimensions of LSP. The U.K. view of the project and of the role of the Library of Congress in the library community is particularly interesting. Chapter 5 covers the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Protocol (ISO 10160/10161), the National Library of Canada, and the Canadian vision of networked libraries. The National Library of Canada has been a very strong supporter of OSI and did much of the work on the ILL protocol. The view of the world implicit in this work is quite different from the U.S. vision (which is not much discussed in this chapter). U.S. readers will find this chapter uninteresting (irrelevant) . . . or provocative. Chapter 6 covers Search and Retrieve (SR, ISO 10162/10163, better known to many in the U.S. as Z39.50), which is the U.S. National Standard version of SR and includes some extensions not yet in the international standard. The chapter explains the functioning of the protocol in general terms, places it in perspective, and surveys some of the implementations currently underway. There is some interesting assessment of the impact of Z39.50 in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. + Page 173 + Chapter 7 deals with libraries and the research networks (e.g., Internet, NREN, and BITNET). Dempsey covers the political history of the NREN movement, use of LISTSERV technology in libraries, and briefly discusses network-based publishing, government data on the network, resource guides, the digital library system proposal of Kahn and Cerf ("knowbots"), and the activities of the Coalition for Networked Information. Again, the comparisons Dempsey draws to U.K. activities are very interesting. Local systems--online catalogs, access to journal literature, electronic information acquisition, and related matters--are explored in Chapter 8. The points of the chapter are illustrated by several case studies, including projects at Carnegie-Mellon University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Much of this chapter simply sets the stage for the following chapter, "Networks and Resource Sharing," by providing a picture of the changing library services visible to the patron. I feel that this chapter only weakly illustrates some of the budgetary pressures and institutional planning issues driving many of the developments under discussion. Chapter 9 gives OCLC, RLIN, ILLINET Online, the Ohio Library and Information System (OLIS) (currently in the planning stages), the MELVYL system, CARL, and Irving as examples of systems serving groups of libraries, and discusses some developments in Canada. The focus in this chapter is on current systems and near-term developments, not on possible longer-term activities such as site licenses for electronic journals. While interesting, the material does not seem to be connected to the rest of the report as well as it might have been. The report ends abruptly at this point; perhaps that is its great flaw. As a reader, I want some overall conclusions and general comments, giving Dempsey's view on the differences between the U.S. and U.K. and on where he thinks the projects he has described will succeed or fail. The absence of such a concluding section is a great disappointment. + Page 174 + To be sure, this report has some limitations. It provides little coverage of the issues concerning fee-for-service information providers or publishers. It tends to look only at the near-term future, and it does not consider more radical shifts that might take place later in the 1990's. The reader will not find "science-fiction" here about virtual reality, multimedia network documents that talk to each other, or intelligent agents. Dempsey is not an electronic network evangelist. While he produces an even treatment of many topics, his report does not recognize the powerful social forces at work within the computer networking "community" which are adding fuel to many of the developments he describes. The role of public libraries receives minimal coverage. There is a discussion of Cleveland Free-Net, for example, but more depth and more coverage of the policy issues here would provide a complete picture. The relationships between network information and scientific research are not really explored. Finally, there are a few projects that should have been mentioned and seem to be overlooked, such as the work of the Memex Institute. Although I disagree with some of Dempsey's conclusions, he is very careful to separate fact from opinion. I believe his facts are generally very accurate, which is a considerable achievement in an environment changing so fast and in which the literature is so spotty and occasionally contradictory. Dempsey supports his opinions so well, that despite our differences in opinions, I find his perspective stimulating and thought-provoking and very valuable. I can recognize that his "outsider's" dispassionate viewpoint offers important perspectives that we might not want to hear, but that we need to consider anyway. This is a wonderful book that we should thank Dempsey for writing and the British Library for supporting. (I do find myself thinking, parochially, that it is strange that the first real book on these topics has been written from a European perspective and underwritten by the British Library. The topics covered are terribly important to the library, information science, and networking communities. Why hasn't this type of book been written from a U.S. perspective?) + Page 175 + This volume collects and synthesizes a tremendous amount of information that has not appeared previously in any coherent form. Simply providing this report for North America would have been a great contribution, but Dempsey goes much further, providing analysis and comparison between North American and European attitudes and plans, which enriches the work with a new set of insights. Although it is not intended as a textbook, this would be a superb text (perhaps supplemented by some journal articles) for the classes studying the impact and implications of computer networks and network information resources on libraries, which all library schools should be planning for their curricula. The book includes an extensive, very current bibliography, a summary of relevant standards, and a good acronym list. It would be a provocative point of departure for any number of classroom discussions. Library administrators and library technology planners should read this book, as should those concerned with information technology planning in universities. Library school students (and faculty!) should read it. Those concerned with national networking policy should read it. It should be equally important to the computer networking community as a survey of the development of the role of libraries in computer networks and the evolving national information infrastructure, and I hope that members of this community will also read it. + Page 176 + About the Author Clifford A. Lynch Director, Division of Library Automation University of California Office of the President 300 Lakeside Drive, 8th floor Oakland, California 94612-3550 ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Clifford A. Lynch. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 5 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- Okerson, Ann. "The Electronic Journal: What, Whence, and When?" The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 5-24. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- This paper is based on a presentation given at the OCLC Users Council Annual Meeting in February 1991. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction A quick scan of topics of recent library, networking, professional, and societal meetings leads to the inevitable conclusion that electronic publishing is the "Debutante of the Year." Supporting technologies have matured and present their dance cards to eager potential suitors: publishers and content creators. The newest entrant to the glittering ballroom is academic discourse and writing, suddenly highly susceptible to the nubile charms of the ripening medium. The season's opening features the youthful search for the future of the scholarly journal. By "journal," I mean the scholarly journal. The scholarly journal mainly communicates the work of scholars, academics, and researchers, and it contributes to the development of ideas that form the "body of knowledge." By "electronic journal," I generally mean one delivered via networks, although those locally owned through a static electronic format such as CD-ROM are not specifically excluded. This paper overviews several critical questions about the electronic journal. What is it? What is its appeal? Where will it come from? At what rate will it appear? When will it be accepted? It suggests that for the first time in over 200 years the paper scholarly journal can be supplanted or, at least, supplemented in a significant way by another medium, and this may lead to a new type of scholarly discourse. + Page 6 + At the outset, consider a historical parallel for today's scholarly information concerns. In an article of fall 1990, Edward Tenner, an executive editor at Princeton University Press, describes information stresses of the last century [1]. Between 1850 and 1875, the number of U.S. library collections with more than 25,000 volumes increased from nine to one hundred, and the number of libraries with more than 100,000 volumes grew infinitely from zero to ten. This unprecedented growth occurred during the time of a technologically advanced tool--the printed book catalog. The printed book catalog was indisputably an advance on the handwritten one. Nonetheless, the printed book catalog became grossly inadequate to cope with ever-plentiful scholarly output. Although we view information management as a serious academic concern today, the perception that knowledge is increasing far more rapidly than our ability to organize it effectively and make it available is a timeless issue for scholarship and libraries. In the 1850's, Harvard pioneered the solution to the book catalog problem by establishing a public card catalog. In 1877, ALA adopted the present 75 x 125 mm standard for the catalog card. Despite Dewey's anger about its shift to non-metric 3" x 5" size, the card changed the entire face of bibliographic information, from the bounded (and bound), finite book catalog to the far more user-responsive, open, adaptable, organic--and exceedingly convenient--individual entry. Even then, libraries were technological innovators. The Library Bureau was established in 1876 to supply equipment to librarians, and even eager commercial customers lined up. In the late 1880's, the secretary of the Holstein-Friesian Association of America in Iowa City wrote to the Bureau that he had first seen a card system in the Iowa State University Library in 1882 and had applied the idea to 40,000 animals in the Holstein-Friesian Herd Book. "We are now using," he enthusiastically exulted, "about 10,000 new cards per year, which henceforth must double every two years." Mr. Tenner points out that here was a cattle-log in its truest sense! After I related this story to a group of librarians, a collections librarian from Iowa State announced that the Holstein-Friesian Herd Book still exists at the University library; it is in electronic form! + Page 7 + The story effectively reminds us--again--how quickly users want the latest information. Whether of books or cows, a catalog printed every year or so would not do, even 100 years ago. The unit card improved access by an order of magnitude, and online catalogs today list a book as quickly as it is cataloged, often prior to its publication. The book, or at least knowledge of its existence, becomes accessible instantaneously. One hundred years ago, perhaps even 20 years ago, articles were published in journals because journals were the quickest means of disseminating new ideas and findings. The information "explosion" teamed with today's journal distribution conventions mandates that the printed article can take as long, or longer, than a monograph to reach the reader. As articles queue for peer review, editing, and publication in the journal "package," distribution delays of months are the norm. One- to two-year delays are not unusual. Under half a year is "fast track." Meanwhile, as scholars demand the latest ideas, more and more papers are distributed in advance of "normal" publication outlets through informal "colleges"--distribution lists of colleagues and friends. The archival work of record is currently the paper one. The printed journal is important because it has established a subscriber tradition that reaches far outside the preprint crowd. Since libraries subscribe to journals, they potentially reach any interested reader and respondent. The scholarly journal's familiar subscription distribution mechanism and built-in quality filters (refereeing and editing) have also made its articles the principal measure of research productivity. By publishing critiqued ideas, authors not only distribute their work, they also leverage this printed currency into the tangible remunerations of job security and advancement. + Page 8 + Nonetheless, by the time of formal print publication, the ideas themselves have circulated a comparatively long time. Given researchers' information expectations and the perception that high-speed distribution is possible (and indeed already happens), alternative, rapid means of sharing information will assuredly displace the print journal as the sole icon or sacrament of scholarly communication. The front-runner is distribution via the electronic networks, such as BITNET and Internet, that already link many campuses, laboratories, and research agencies. For already established journal titles, advance descriptions of articles will routinely become available (like cataloguing copy), followed closely by prepublication delivery of the articles themselves. The success of such a program will eventually alter the fundamental characteristics of the paper journal. These changes are already beginning. At the heart of Mr. Tenner's story is the breaking down of the catalog into its component parts, paralleled 100 years later in the potential for unbundling the journal into its flexible component parts--articles--that can be delivered singly or in desired recombinations. Of course, the indexing and abstracting services began this process long ago. After World War II, photocopying made it practical to reproduce single articles. Now, rapid electronic technologies will accelerate unbundling. Soon the article (or idea) unit will supplant the publisher prepackaged journal. Like the book catalog, it will be perceived as a lovable but unwieldy dinosaur. Like the records cast loose from book catalogs, articles will need fuller and more unified subject description and classification to make it possible to pull diverse ideas together. These are urgent needs that reflect some of the most serious problems of the journal literature: (1) inadequate, inconsistent description of articles; and (2) the failure of the present secondary sources to cross-index disciplines, even as they duplicate title coverage. + Page 9 + 2.0 Two Visions of the Electronic Journal One view of the electronic journal, a conservative view, is based on today's journal stored as electronic impulses. This electronic journal parallels and mimics the current paper journal format, except that it may be article- rather than issue-based. Because it is delivered via electronic networks, it is quick, transmitted the moment it is written, reviewed, and polished. Able to appear at a precise location, it is a key component of the scholar's "virtual library." Where the subscriber does not seek a paper copy, the electronic journal saves the costs of paper printing and mailing. Its paper-saving characteristics could eventually relieve the "serials crisis" which is characterized by libraries' inability to repurchase institutional research results because of the learned journals' skyrocketing subscription prices. Of course, early experience with electronic equivalents of paper information loudly and clearly proclaims that the moment information becomes mobile, rather than static, this transformation fundamentally alters the way in which information is used, shared, and eventually created. Changing the medium of journal distribution, even with so modest, cautious, and imitative a vision, carries unpredictable consequences. Visionaries and electronic seers ("skywriters" such as Psycoloquy's co-editor Stevan Harnad [2]) find mere electronic substitution for paper archiving a timid, puny view of the e-journal. In their dreams and experiments, the idea is sprouted precisely when it is ready, critiqued via the "Net," and put out immediately for wide examination or "open peer commentary." Ideas that might have been stillborn in paper come alive as other scholars respond with alacrity and collaborate to improve knowledge systems. Such a revolutionary e-journal concept offers the potential to re-think the informal and formal systems of scholarly communication, and alter them in ways that are most effective and comfortable for specific disciplines and individuals, utilizing electronic conversations, squibbs, mega-journals, consensus journals, and models not yet dreamt of. Diverse forms of academic currency co-exist, and fewer writings are considered the "last word" on any subject. + Page 10 + The visionaries' e-journal is comfortable intermedia; it opens windows onto ideas attached as supplementary files, footnotes, sound, and visual matter. Writing is not confined to any place or time or group. Paper distribution either takes place secondarily or does not happen at all. In short, an increasing numbers of scholars imagine the whole process of scholarly communication undergoing dramatic change, becoming instant, global, interactive [3]. Not surprisingly, some academic editors believe that electronic publishers ought to begin with a more "conventional" publication strategy, which is likely over time to transform the scholarly communications system. Charles Bailey of the Public-Access Computer Systems (PACS) group of electronic publications as well as Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth of the Postmodern Culture group share this vision. 3.0 Rivaling the Scholarly Paper Journal In existence for over 200 years, the paper journal has been given the imprimatur and loyalty of the best scholars as authors and editors. Continually expanding, it has resisted all attempts to supplement it, let alone supplant it. For a very nice discussion of the largely unsuccessful projects that were targeted at a new format or type of journal, see Anne Piternick's article in Journal of Academic Librarianship [4]. For a detailed review of electronic journal literature and a comprehensive bibliography through about 1988, Michael Gabriel provides an excellent overview [5]. Early electronic publishing proposals long precede the Chronicle editorials by Dougherty [6] (we should marry the technological capabilities of university computers and university-sponsored research into a coherent system) and Rogers and Hurt [7] (the packaged, printed journal is obsolete as a vehicle of scholarly communication) with which librarians are so familiar. They were developed in the 1970's in the information science literature. Early experiments fundamentally failed because they were externally imposed, scholars were disinterested in writing for electronic media, and they were unwilling to read it. They were probably unwilling because of lack of pervasive equipment, learned electronic skills, and critical mass. But today, there are some thirty networked electronic journals, of which about eight are refereed or lightly refereed, and there are probably at least sixty networked electronic newsletters [8]. + Page 11 + Since the publication of Gabriel's book, the literature on electronic, network-based communication has mushroomed. The most comprehensive and highly readable report about what needs to be done (in areas of technology, standards, economics, and social acceptance) before the networked journal can become a genuine option has been issued in draft form as an Office of Technology Assessment Report by Clifford Lynch [9]. While exhortation and skepticism about electronic publishing continue in the conventional journal literature and have spawned at least one scholarly paper journal of its own (Wiley's Electronic Publishing) some of the best work and discussion is now, not surprisingly, online, through various lists and bulletin boards of editors and scholars interested in the future of scholarly communication. Even where articles on electronic publishing are headed for the paper track, authors may make them available electronically either in advance of publication or as an adjunct to print publication. For example, a thoughtful essay by psychologist William Gardner recently appeared in Psychological Science [10]. Gardner views the electronic literature and archive as more than a database; it is a single organization run by scientists and applied researchers, who adapt the environment to meet the needs of its users. His piece is noteworthy in part because readers debated it on the Net months before it was published in a print journal. 4.0 Who Will Publish Electronic Journals? Four possible sources of electronic journals currently exist. The list is very simple in that, for reasons of time as much as experience, it does not detail the specific--and not inconsiderable problems--connected with the options. However, Lynch and others have provided this type of critique. + Page 12 + 4.1 Existing Publishers Upon reflection, it appears that the majority of networked electronic journals could originate with existing journal publishers. Most journals, at least in the Western world, become machine-readable at some point in the publishing process. For these journals, some recent electronic archives already exist. A number of scholarly publishers are experimenting with networking options. In the commercial arena, publishers such as Elsevier, John Wiley, and Pergamon are discussing--perhaps implementing--pilot projects. Scientific societies such as the American Chemical Society, the American Mathematical Society, and the American Psychological Association are pursuing development of electronic journals. At the same time, vexing issues--uncertainty about charging models, fear of unpoliced copying resulting in revenue loss, questions about ownership, lack of standardization, inability to deliver or receive non-text, and user unfriendliness or acceptance--work off each other to create a chicken-and-egg situation that keeps electronic conversion careful and slow. And tensions abound. For example, some say one can place tollbooths every inch of the electronic highway and charge for each use; others say that at last the time has come to emancipate ideas from the bondage of profit. Nonetheless, solutions are underway by systems designers, publishers, and standards organizations. For example, by mid-decade there will assuredly be a reliable, affordable way to reproduce and receive non-text; technology specialists assert that "the technology is there." Non-technical (economic and social) issues are the ones that will slow network acceptance. As systems and standards develop, publishers will evolve transitional pricing models that maintain profit levels. As a consequence, publishers will offer the same article arrayed in different clothing or packaging: paper journal collection, single-article delivery, compendia of articles from several journals, collections-to-profile, publications-on-demand, and networked delivery to research facilities and institutions. Parallel CD-ROM versions of a number of scholarly titles are already becoming widely available. + Page 13 + This flexible parallel publication activity will have major side effects. Academic publishers (both commercial and not-for-profit) unable to deliver electronically will be left behind as personal user revenue grows. Paper subscription revenues from Third World countries will not be enough to sustain an academic publisher. The term "subscription" will be replaced. At present, it is currently used for a product that a reader or library buys and owns. It also will come to represent--indeed, already has with CD-ROM's--something which the purchaser does not own at all, but has the right to use. Subscriptions may gradually be replaced by licenses. The multi-site license will be applied not only to electronic publications, but also to paper subscriptions that are shared among institutions. Licenses are intended to compensate the publisher for the potentially broad and possibly undisciplined electronic copying of scholarly materials which could violate the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act. Unless libraries are prepared to pay the high differential prices currently charged for CD-ROM's and locally mounted databases, the language of such licenses will be increasingly important, as will good library negotiators and lawyers. Publishers assert that in the early days of parallel systems, whatever the ultimate storage and distribution method of networked journals might be, the price of information will be higher than ever. After research and development costs are stabilized and the print and electronic markets settle, who knows what pricing structures will prevail? There will probably be an enormous, unregulated range of fees. For instance, it is conceivable that, like older movies rented for a dollar at a video outlet, older science works will become cheap, and new works, very much in demand, will be expensive. Just as libraries found retrospective conversion to machine- readable records to be a lengthy and expensive process, publishers will find retrospective conversion of full-text information to be costly, and it will not happen quickly, even if library customers demand electronic documents. Retrospective conversion will be a non-commercial activity, which will be a joint venture between publishers and optical scanning conversion services or the sole domain of conversion services. + Page 14 + Currently, some publishers are experimenting with converting back files into electronic form, mostly in collaboration with universities or libraries. For example, Cornell, the American Chemical Society, Bellcore, and OCLC are experimenting with scanning ten years' worth of twenty ACS journals. The National Agricultural Library has negotiated agreements with a handful of society and university publishers for the optical scanning of agricultural titles. Public domain work will be scanned and converted first. While today's electronic articles from mainstream publishers are almost incidental or accidental and are not intended by publishers to replace the products which comprise their daily bread, they are opportunities for electronic experimentation, market exploration, and, possibly, supplementary income. 4.2 Intermediaries A number of intermediary organizations have negotiated copyright agreements with publishers and are well positioned to deliver their output to customers. Some of these organizations include indexing and abstracting services such as the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and the American Chemical Society. The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL) promises document delivery in the near future as an extension of its UnCover table of contents database service. This fall, the Faxon Company, a major paper journal subscription agency, intends to initiate an article delivery service. University Microfilms International (UMI) clearly has copyright clearance for thousands of journals to redistribute them in microform format; electronic distribution is only a step behind. Other efforts include full-text files available on BRS, Dialog, and IAC; the AIDS library of Maxwell Electronic Communications; and the Massachusetts Medical Society CD-ROM. It is not entirely clear why publishers, when they become fully automated and networked, would desire some of these intervening or even competitive services, although the networks will breed many other kinds of value-added opportunities. Rights and contracts will be critical in this area. The current pattern appears to be that publishers will assign rights in return for royalties to almost any reputable intermediary that makes a reasonable offer. + Page 15 + General hearsay suggests that large telecommunications firms (e.g., the regional phone companies and MCI) might wish to become information intermediaries or even content owners (i.e., publishers), and rumors abound about Japanese companies making serious forays in this arena. 4.3 Innovative Researchers and Scholars In this category, I include the trailblazers who publish the handful of refereed or lightly-refereed electronic-only journals which currently exist or are planned. They are editors of publications such as the Electronic Journal of Communication (University of Windsor), EJournal (SUNY Albany), the Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research (Virginia Tech), the Journal of Reproductive Toxicology (Joyce Sigaloff and Embryonics, Inc.), New Horizons in Adult Education (Syracuse University, Kellogg Project), Postmodern Culture (North Carolina State), Psycoloquy (Princeton/Rutgers/APA), and The Public-Access Computer Systems Review (University of Houston Libraries). Some regard these electronic-only journals as devils rather than saviors. For example, they serve those who are already information- and computer-rich, or even spoiled. Because network communication can be clunky, cranky, and inconsistent, e-journals serve the highly skilled or the tenacious. Rather than opening up the universe, they may appear temporarily to limit it, because only text is easily keyed and transmitted. Presently, editors of electronic journals are academics who spend a great deal of time being reviewers and referees, editors, publishers, advocates, marketers. After all that effort, it is unclear whether these activities, which are the path to tenure and grants in the paper medium, will bring similar rewards in the electronic medium. Powerful and persistent persuasion may be needed to induce colleagues to contribute articles and referee them. Today's electronic-only journals' greatest contributions are not that they have solved many of the problems of the current publishing system--or of the networked world--but that they are brave, exciting, innovative experiments which give us a hope of doing so. + Page 16 + It is not entirely clear whether this handful of swallows makes a summer--it feels like the beginning of a new warm season for academic communications--or how long that summer will be. It is an open question as to whether these academics will hand over their work to university presses, scholarly societies, or outside publishers. External economic conditions may push scholars to start networked electronic journals instead of paper ones. If the past year's serial price increases continue, scholars will have an incentive to create electronic journals, and they may appear faster than we expect. Substantial cost savings can be realized if the new start-up is electronically distributed on networks. Otherwise, paper and parallel publication costs become substantial. Currently, scholars' use of academic networks appears to be largely free, and it is a good time to experiment. It is unknown how long these good times will last; universities may not continue to subsidize academics' network use. (Even commercialized, the communications costs should appear as cheap as long distance and fax.) In the meanwhile, individually-produced journals may come and go, like New York restaurants. 4.4 University-Based Electronic Publishing At this time, it has been estimated that universities at most publish 15% of their faculty's output [11]. This includes discussion papers and periodicals emanating from individual academic departments as well as formalized university outlets like university presses and publications offices. Nonetheless, to the considerable cynicism of existing publishers, a vision of university-based electronic networked publishing is expressed by many librarians and other members of the university community in conversations about academe's regaining control and distribution of its own intellectual output. Publishers' skepticism is certainly justified in that, in spite of good rhetoric, there are no vital signs of university electronic journal publishing activity, apart from the publications of individual academics described in the last section. + Page 17 + However, there are some related electronic publishing experiments by universities. The most interesting experiments are in the preprint arena. One university research facility, the Stanford Linear Accelerator, has supported a preprint database in high energy physics for some fifteen years. Researchers worldwide contribute preprints, that is, any article intended to be submitted for publication. Database managers create bibliographic records and accession each preprint. Using this information, online subscribers can locate preprints, which they can request either from the author or the database. Database staff scan the printed literature routinely for new articles. A preprint so identified is discarded from the library, and the database record is annotated with the correct citation to the formal journal article. Staff add about 200 preprints per week, and the full database contains citations to 200,000 articles. Some experimentation is underway by a couple of laboratories to deposit the full text of preprint articles with the system. (Absent a submission standard, particularly for non-text information, this becomes complex.) If such a pilot is successful, the articles in the database could be distributed widely and quickly via the networks. Of course, the relationship with existing scholarly publishers might be jeopardized because of prior "publication" and perceived encroachments on the present notion of copyright. SLAC staff are sensitive to these potential problems, and they are being thoughtful about them. Some scholars argue that a preprint creates demand for the published version of a paper. In any case, since the preprints have not been refereed or edited and they represent work in progress, many scientists are hesitant to cite them, and, consequently, they lack the validity of the "finished" paper. On the other hand, a paper published in a prestigious university database might eventually pre-empt the paper version, provided some network review mechanism is added. + Page 18 + A second major initiative is being created in mathematics. The IMP project (Instant Math Preprints) will maintain a database of abstracts on a network computer at a major university. At the same time, authors of the mathematics articles will deposit the full text of preprints with their local university computer center, which will store them on a network computer. After searching the abstract database, users will be able to retrieve desired article files from host computers via anonymous FTP. Presently, the project is proposed to extend to about ten key research universities. The abstracts also will be searchable on "e-math," the American Mathematical Society's electronic member service. The benefits to researchers of both of these types of preprint information are enormous. In high-energy physics and mathematics, we may be viewing the substantial beginnings of university-based scientific publishing. 5.0 Computer Conferences as Electronic Journals Librarians and scholars are beginning to take seriously the scholarly computer conferences (known as "lists") available through the various networks, such as BITNET and Internet. Such academic flora and fauna number in the hundreds and thousands and grow daily [12]. While many of the original lists and their exchanges earned the Net a reputation as an information cesspool, an increasing number of lists are indispensable to specific interest areas and ought to be available through library catalogs and terminals. Indeed, some academics view the topical lists as an entirely new kind of "journal." It is well to remember that the ancestor of today's fancy scholarly journal was the diary or logbook (the original "journal") in which the scholar or scientist recorded data, thoughts, ideas, meetings, and conversations, much as do today's networked electronic lists. A growing number of colleagues testify that a few weeks of being active on the networks changes one's working life. Some of the benefits are: (1) accessing a wealth of informal information; (2) linking to colleagues and growing ideas quickly, with a wide variety of input and critique; (3) sharing an idea all over the world in a matter of minutes; and (4) finding new colleagues and learning who is pursuing the same interests in another discipline. Surely, this is the excitement of discovery at its most energetic and best. A number of librarians have recognized the new medium's power and they are promoting network-facilitating activities. + Page 19 + It is certain that widespread participation and ownership of this new method of communication have the potential to transform scholarly writing and publishing far more dramatically than the motivation to unbundle journals, publish quickly, or even reduce subscription costs. 6.0 Speculations These are very early days for this new information creation and distribution medium; however, readers want guesses about the future, and authors are tempted to satisfy the public and their own egos by venturing them. The self-evident statement is that the honorable, long-lived communication medium--the prestigious scholarly journal--will surely be quite different than it is today. It will be different because it will represent a new way of growing and presenting knowledge. Here is a possible scenario for the evolution of scholarly journals. 6.1 1991 A.D. o Paper journals totally dominate the scholarly scene. o There are some parallel electronic products, mostly the "static" CD-ROM format. o Some full text (without graphics) is available online via services such as Dialog and BRS. o Some mainstream publishers are experimenting with electronic publications. o There are a variety of options for delivering individual articles via mail and fax. o The biggest single article suppliers are libraries, via the long-popular and fairly effective interlibrary loan mechanisms. o Over a thousand scholarly electronic discussion groups exist. o Under ten scholarly electronic journals exist that are refereed, lightly-refereed, or edited. + Page 20 + o Two institutional preprint services are in development. o OCLC, a library utility, positions itself through development work for the AAAS as a serious electronic publisher of scientific articles. 6.2 1995 A.D. o Significant inroads into the paper subscription market, because (1) libraries make heavy journal cancellations due to budget constraints, and they feel "mad as hell" about high subscription prices; and (2) it becomes possible to deliver specific articles directly to the end-user. o Librarians and publishers squabble over prices--ELECTRONIC prices. o For the first time, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) sues a research library or university over either electronic copying or paper resource-sharing activities. o There are over 100 refereed electronic journals produced by academics. o In collaboration with professional or scholarly societies, university-based preprint services get underway in several disciplines. o The Net still subsidized. o Rate of paper journal growth slows. o Many alternative sources exist for the same article, including publishers and intermediaries. o Bibliographic confusion and chaos reigns for bibliographic utilities, libraries, and, by extension, scholars. + Page 21 + 6.3 2000 A.D. o Computer equipment and user-sophistication are pervasive, although not ubiquitous. o Parallel electronic and paper availability for serious academic journals; market between paper journals and alternatives (e.g., electronic delivery) is split close to 50/50. o Subscription model wanes; license and single-article models wax. o Secondary services re-think roles; other indexing (machine browsing, artificial intelligence, and full-text or abstract searching) strengthens. o Net transferred to commercial owners, but access costs are low. o New niches are created: archive, scanning, re-packaging, and information-to-profile services. o Publishers without electronic delivery shrink or leave the marketplace. o Many collaborations, some confusing and unworkable, as publishers struggle with development, conversion, and delivery. o Major Copyright Law revision continues. o Stratification of richer and poorer users, universities, and nations. 7.0 Conclusion Teilhard de Chardin writes: No one can deny that a world network of economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at an ever-increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes, it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively [13]. + Page 22 + Another writer has said that the only way to know the future is to write it yourself. We have some hints where the future of journals and scholarly communications, which will move quickly beyond today's journal, may lie. Those who have a vision for the future are uniquely positioned to write the scenario. Notes 1. Edward Tenner, "From Slip to Chip," Princeton Alumni Weekly, 21 November 1990, 9-14. 2. E-mail and list correspondence with Stevan Harnad, editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences as well as the refereed electronic journal Psycoloquy. 3. Stevan Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," Psychological Science 1 (November 1990): 342-344. 4. Anne B. Piternick, "Attempts to Find Alternatives to the Scientific Journal: A Brief Review," Journal of Academic Librarianship 15 (November 1989): 263-265. 5. Michael R. Gabriel, A Guide to the Literature of Electronic Publishing: CD-ROM, Desktop Publishing, and Electronic Mail, Books, and Journals (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1989). 6. Richard M. Dougherty, "To Meet the Crisis in Journal Costs, Universities Must Reassert Their Role in Scholarly Publishing," Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 April 1989, A52. 7. Sharon J. Rogers and Charlene S. Hurt, "How Scholarly Communication Should Work in the 21st Century," Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 October 1989, A56. + Page 23 + 8. For a complete listing of such journals and newsletters, see the free electronic directory that is maintained by Michael Strangelove (send an e-mail message with the following commands on separate lines to LISTSERV@UOTTAWA: GET EJOURNL1 DIRECTRY GET EJOURNL2 DIRECTRY). This information is also included in a paper directory, the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists, which is available at low cost from the Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing, Association of Research Libraries, 1527 New Hampshire Ave, N.W., Washington, DC 20036. 9. Clifford A. Lynch, "Electronic Publishing, Electronic Libraries, and the National Research and Education Network: Policy and Technology Issues" (Washington, D.C.: Office of Technology Assessment, draft for review April 1990). 10. William Gardner, "The Electronic Archive: Scientific Publishing for the 1990s," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 333-341. 11. Stuart Lynn (Untitled paper presented at the Coalition for Networked Information meeting, November 1990). 12. Diane Kovacs at the Kent State University libraries assiduously catalogs and organizes these electronic conferences. Her work is available to all users for free through files made available to discussion groups such as LSTOWN-L, HUMANIST, LIBREF-L and others. The Association of Research Libraries includes her information about these groups in their directory. 13. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1969). + Page 24 + About the Author Ann Okerson Director Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing The Association of Research Libraries 1527 New Hampshire Ave., NW Washington, DC 20036 OKERSON@UMDC ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Ann Okerson. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 54 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Savage, Lon. "The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 54-66. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research is a scholarly, refereed electronic journal, distributed via BITNET and Internet, for researchers in the academic discipline of hotel, restaurant, and institutional management and tourism. As such, it holds several distinctions: (1) it is one of the first, if not the first, among the refereed electronic journals to be marketed at a subscription price; (2) it is aimed at a small, well-structured academic market that has no particular affinity for computers and electronic communication; and (3) like a printed journal, it was planned to serve, and was marketed by direct mail advertising to all in the discipline--not just those who are computer literate and/or have access to BITNET and Internet. As a result of its development and philosophy, the Journal has had experiences--both positive and negative--which may reflect importantly on the future of electronic journals and the directions which this movement should take in the years immediately ahead. It is the purpose of this paper to present and analyze those experiences. 2.0 Sponsorship and Purpose JIAHR, as it is called, is sponsored by the International Academy of Hospitality Research, a relatively new organization of some twenty to thirty scholars, most of them leading faculty in schools of hotel, restaurant, and/or institutional management located in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It is published by the Scholarly Communications Project of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, in cooperation with the University's Department of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management (HRIM). Launched in the fall of 1990, JIAHR publishes original, refereed papers on all aspects of hospitality and tourism research and is billed as the only journal devoted exclusively to hospitality research. + Page 55 + JIAHR serves a second purpose in electronic communication. The Scholarly Communications Project of Virginia Tech (as the University is known popularly) agreed to publish JIAHR as a pioneer effort to explore--in a very practical way--the frontier of electronic communication of scholarly information. In that sense, the journal serves the entire academic community, not just hospitality research. As a practical demonstration of the concept of electronic journals, JIAHR was designed in part to encourage the scholarly community to address a "real world" example of what until then had been largely a concept: electronic scholarly journals marketed and distributed via computer networks. 3.0 Background The idea of JIAHR emerged from concurrent interests of the Scholarly Communications Project (SCP), and the University's HRIM Department. The SCP was originated in the fall of 1988 to: (1) expand the university's activity in publishing scholarly information, and (2) to provide leadership and experimentation in the use of electronic communication of scholarly information as a means of holding down the spiraling costs of scholarly journals and improving the quality of scholarly communication. The project was placed organizationally within the responsibility of Dr. Robert C. Heterick, Vice President for Information Systems, widely known in the area of electronic communication. The first substantial step toward achieving the project's purposes was a bid in early 1989 to take over publication of a print journal. That bid, made in competition with a large, international commercial publisher of scholarly journals, was submitted to the Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc., of Bethel, Connecticut, to publish the International Journal of Analytical and Experimental Model Analysis, a highly technical engineering journal. The Society approved the SCP's bid largely because of the university's commitment to holding down prices of scholarly journals and because of the commercial publisher's record of escalating journals prices. Effective January 1990, the SCP began publishing the journal for the society, printing it on campus and distributing it by mail. A year later SCP became its copyright owner. + Page 56 + In the meantime, Dr. Michael D. Olsen, Head of the Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management, and the assistant department head, Dr. Mahmood Khan, contacted the project director about the possibility of launching a scholarly journal in hospitality research. Dr. Olsen was president of the International Academy of Hospitality Research, whose purpose was to promote the interests of researchers in this field. Dr. Khan was an IAHR fellow. Dr. Olsen was also associate editor of one of the leading journals in the hospitality field, and a frequent contributor to others. He and Dr. Khan had developed the concept of such a journal, organized its editorial board, and formulated its editorial policy. The project director offered the suggestion that it be launched as an electronic journal, and after much discussion that was agreed. The decision to launch JIAHR as an electronic journal was based on several considerations. The primary reason was economic; the cost of launching an electronic journal was minuscule when compared to that of launching a print journal. Other considerations included: (1) those in the relatively new academic field of hospitality research were more receptive to an innovative publishing approach than scholars in more classic disciplines; (2) members of the Academy welcomed the opportunity to be part of a pioneering effort in the field of scholarly communication; (3) the small size of the scholarly community--an estimated 500 persons worldwide engaged in hospitality research--was regarded favorably, as helpful in managing the journal's development and planning its future; and (4) the responsiveness of electronic communications--the speed of transmission as well as the ease of two-way communications among editors, authors, and readers--was considered an additional asset. The idea was submitted to the membership of the Academy in the April of 1990 and was soundly approved. 4.0 Planning the Journal As president of the sponsoring Academy, Dr. Olsen appointed Dr. Khan as Editor and Dr. Eliza Tse of the HRIM faculty as managing editor. Plans for publication of the journal were announced in May. A call for papers was published that summer, and a committee was established to plan the journal's launching. + Page 57 + The planning committee was composed of the managing editor and representatives of the Scholarly Communication Project and representatives from the University's computing center, library, and faculty. A Steering Committee for the entire Scholarly Communications Project, composed of the University's library director, computing center director, director of communications resources, faculty representatives, and persons representing the University's printing programs, also provided leadership for the journal, as did the Vice President for Information Systems. In a series of about ten meetings in the spring, summer, and fall of 1990, the planning committee worked out the details of the journal's development. The following decisions were reached. Each issue of the journal would consist essentially of a single scholarly paper. The publication schedule would call for ten to twenty papers (issues) each year. Each issue (one scholarly paper) would be delivered in its entirety electronically to each subscriber as an e-mail message, and the issue would be sent out whenever it was judged suitable. The journal would be in ASCII format, and graphics would not be accepted. The journal would be marketed by a direct mail campaign. Subscriptions would be maintained on a closed list server, and issues would be sent via the list server to the BITNET and Internet addresses of subscribers. The journal, according to minutes of an early meeting, "should be of a nature that can evolve, step by step, and in step with both technological advance and current practices of scholarly life." Another important distinction was that, to the best of the editors' ability, the journal would serve the entire field of hospitality research, not just those in the field who were sophisticated in the use of computers; subscribers unable to receive the journal electronically would be sent issues on a delayed basis either on paper or on disks. Behind these decisions was a philosophy of trying to minimize the adjustment of traditional readers to the innovations of an electronic journal by preserving many of the "print journal" customs: charging a fee, delivering the journal to a "mailbox," offering both individual and institutional subscriptions, marketing by direct mail, and maintaining traditional copyright. Quite consciously, the committee sought to reach out to journal subscribers, authors, editors, and others "where they are," and gently lead them down the path of electronic communication. The committee thought that, to change people's habits, it helps to work with the habits that need changing. By no means did the committee feel this should be the only approach to electronic journals, or even the best approach, but it was an approach worth pursuing. + Page 58 + The committee also agreed on a policy to archive past issues of the journal in the university computing center and make the archive available electronically to all current subscribers via "GET" commands to the closed list server. The committee agreed to copyright each issue primarily as a matter of protection of the author and publisher's rights; however, as a matter of editorial policy, the editors agreed to be very liberal in granting copying privileges, until such time that a copyright problem was perceived, at which time greater restriction might be imposed. Subscribing libraries were allowed to distribute the journal to their own constituents with little restraint; however, the editors did not broadcast this policy widely until there was greater experience with it. The journal was registered with the Copyright Clearance Center, and a notification that "Limited duplication is permitted for academic or research purposes only" was placed in the journal. An ISSN was obtained: 1052-6099. 5.0 Charging a Subscription Fee One of the most important and controversial decisions was to offer the journal, and to market it, at a subscription price. At least one member of the committee argued that it should be made available to subscribers without cost. The public announcement of the journal with plans to charge a subscription fee received some negative comment from observers nationally, especially in the electronic media, who argued that scholarly information distributed on BITNET should be in the public domain and that BITNET and Internet should not be used for "commercial" purposes. Despite this, the committee decided to charge $30 per year for institutional subscriptions, $20 for faculty/individual subscriptions, and $10 for student subscriptions. The decision was made for several reasons. First, the committee felt that if subscribers purchased their subscriptions, they--and all others--would take the journal--and all electronic journals--more seriously. A subscriber's investment in the journal would serve as testimony to its worth to authors, readers, libraries, and promotion and tenure committees in the universities. Moreover, libraries and others unaccustomed to electronic journals would be more inclined to make special efforts to receive and accommodate an electronic journal that they had paid for, than one they had not paid for. + Page 59 + Second, marketing the journal for a fee would tend to "force the issue" of electronic scholarly journals. Librarians everywhere then were discussing the pros and cons of electronic communication of scholarly information. The committee wanted to place at least one network-based electronic journal in front of the library community in the same way a printed journal was presented--that is, through a marketing campaign and a subscription "purchase." It was a custom libraries thoroughly understood. What better way, the committee thought, to encourage libraries to move into this new age of electronic communication? Finally, some members of the committee disagreed with the argument that BITNET and Internet should carry only material that was "free." Such a policy, it was feared, might exclude much serious scholarly work of significant value, while encouraging information of less value. Because of the non-profit nature of the journal, it is felt that JIAHR's pricing policy did not conflict with network policy prohibiting use of the networks for commercial purposes. Financial considerations had very little weight in the decision to charge a subscription price. Income from the sale of subscriptions--amounting to less than $1,500 in the first year--will never be more than a very small fraction of the University's and the Academy's investment of time and resources into the journal. The income does not go to the Scholarly Communications Project but is returned to the University. 6.0 Editorial Policies Fellows of the Academy serve, ex officio, as members of the journal's Editorial Board, and they, plus other members of the Academy as well as non-members, are asked to write papers for it. Papers are submitted electronically, either as a file or on disk, and are sent to one, two, or three referees for review. If it survives this screening, the paper is given final editing and placed as the feature item of an issue. Each paper is published with an abstract, key words, and references. In each issue will be found the list of the Editorial Board members, instructions to authors, copyright information, and other information of value to subscribers. + Page 60 + The fellows of the Academy who comprise the Editorial Board, in addition to Dr. Olsen and Dr. Khan, are Jon Bareham of Brighton Polytechnic in the United Kingdom, Horace A. Divine of Pennsylvania State University, Chuck Gee of the University of Hawaii, Donald E. Hawkins of George Washington University, Michael Haywood of the University of Guelph in Canada, William Kent of Auburn University, Robert C. Lewis of the University of Guelph, Ken McCleary of Virginia Tech, Robert C. Miller of the University of Central Florida, Turgut Var of Texas A&M University, and Brian Wise of Footscray Institute of Technology in Australia. 7.0 Marketing Marketing the journal began in September 1990, with the mailing of printed brochures and a covering letter from Dr. Olsen to a list of some 400 faculty members at 138 degree-granting hotel schools worldwide as well as to their libraries. The brochure was much like that of any printed journal, providing information about the organization, purpose, editorial policy, and subscription prices, with a special section on "the electronic part." In addition to customary information, the return subscription form requested the subscriber's e-mail address. Use of credit cards was allowed. In addition, Paul Gherman, Director of University Libraries at Virginia Tech and a strong supporter of the Project, sent personal letters to the directors of the Association of Research Libraries calling attention to the journal as "the first journal I am aware of to be distributed solely electronically on a subscription basis." He added "I don't have to tell you the importance to libraries of successful development of this kind of journal." He also said that the journal would offer "new challenges for librarians: how to handle it within your institution; how to catalogue it; and I suspect you'll encounter problems we've not anticipated . . ." + Page 61 + Returns from the mailing came in slowly. By November, when it was time to send out the first issue, there were about thirty paid subscriptions, rather evenly divided among members of the Academy, individual faculty members, and subscribing libraries. In late March 1991, the journal had 53 paid subscriptions, slightly more than anticipated in pre-publication planning. Marketing efforts were halted deliberately after the one mailing, as the publisher wanted to work closely with those subscribers already on board. It can be noted that the success of the one mailing (nearly a ten percent return rate if one includes Academy members and a five percent return rate excluding them) indicated that further marketing would produce additional subscriptions. 8.0 The Subscribers Most subscribers were in the United States, but there were also subscriptions from Australia, Canada, England, France, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Scotland. An analysis of those subscriptions is revealing. Among the subscribers were approximately thirty individual faculty members, both within and outside the Academy membership, and a lone student. Of these, only a few had e-mail addresses at the time they subscribed. Six months later, approximately 25 of the 30 individual subscribers had e-mail addresses, and others were working to get them, showing the impact the journal was beginning to have on subscribers who were unsophisticated in computer use. Nevertheless, a sizable proportion of the individual subscribers--perhaps a fifth--appeared either unable or unwilling to work out the problem of getting an e-mail address where their electronic journal could be sent. The experience with these individuals may cast light on the problems e-journals generally face in the future, and possible solutions to those problems. + Page 62 + The nature of their problems was almost as varied as the individuals. Several faculty reported they did not have access to BINET or Internet. Numerous subscribers did not know that their institutions had access to BITNET and/or Internet, when in fact they did. Some did not have access to the networks in their departments. Several, after learning their institutions were on BITNET and/or Internet, still were not successful in their efforts to obtain e-mail addresses. A few faculty reported they did not have time to check their e-mail. The lone student subscriber, who successfully struggled to obtain an e-mail address solely to receive JIAHR, asked to be telephoned whenever an issue was sent out so that she would know when to check her e-mail. One faculty member thought he was subscribing to a print journal and withdrew his subscription when he learned it was electronic. Although these numbers are small, they may be significant. They indicate that, even among interested faculty who are willing to pay for an electronic journal, it is difficult for many to work out the electronic part--to obtain and make good use of an e-mail address in receiving an electronic journal. The remaining 23 subscribers tell a far more encouraging story, and their story may also have significance for e-journals generally. They are, for the most part, 23 university libraries--nineteen in the United States, two in Canada, two in Europe, and two in Australia. Nearly all of them indicate they are receiving the journal and are making it available to their clientele. Many appear excited about the advent of an electronic journal. Several indicate they are adjusting their procedures to accommodate JIAHR. For some, JIAHR is serving as the prototype, the vanguard, of what they anticipate will be numerous electronic journals. Because of the obvious implications of the Project's activities for libraries, the Scholarly Communications Project was moved organizationally on July 1, 1991 to the Virginia Tech Library, where it can work more closely with library personnel and reflect library objectives. + Page 63 + 9.0 Library Handling of the Journal The Cornell School of Hotel Administration is sharing the journal with its faculty and staff via a local area network, with the enthusiastic permission of the publisher, and the innovation was greeted with considerable excitement and praise. One state university considered mounting the journal on the campus mainframe either through a conferencing facility or on its local BITNET list server. Another considered storage on a microcomputer in the main library reference area. One library asked permission to download individual issues onto a floppy disk that would be made available for patrons as well as to make an archival copy and a circulating copy. At Virginia Tech, JIAHR's home base, a library task force, after lengthy study, recommended that the library store texts of e-journals on the university mainframe for the indefinite future and provide terminals for dedicated access to those texts. Clearly, as one librarian put it, questions and reports from libraries indicated "a transition from paper to electronic mind-set." Not all library reports were encouraging. One library subscribed without access to either BITNET or Internet. Another tried to cancel its subscription after it learned the journal was electronic (until a faculty member interceded, unasked, in the journal's behalf). Several libraries asked for second copies of issues because they had lost the first, usually through equipment failure or procedural error. Nevertheless, the tone of the reactions of libraries was clearly encouraging; most subscribing libraries indicated they are ready, willing, and eager to move ahead with electronic journals. As evidence of this, one library, Dartmouth, subscribed even though it has no hotel school. Presumably, it subscribed for the opportunity to work with an electronic journal. Success or failure was not affected by geography. The journal was delivered successfully in such places as Australia, Europe, Hong Kong, and New Zealand as well as throughout the United States and Canada. The first issue of JIAHR was sent out via the list server on November 26, 1990. An indication of the problems was that, when asked, only a handful of the approximately thirty paying subscribers reported they had received it in good order on the first try. By the second issue, on February 20, 1991, it appeared that about forty or fifty subscribers, including nearly all of the libraries, received it in good order. + Page 64 + 10.0 Finances Meanwhile, another significant--even if it is very obvious--aspect of the journal's operation was becoming very clear in the operations of the Scholarly Communications Project: The SCP's print journal was costing more than $5,000 an issue for printing and distribution; the corresponding cost of the electronic journal was nearly nothing. The significance of this enormous advantage cannot be overstated. The second issue of the Journal announced that the journal was archived electronically at Virginia Tech, and past issues were now be available electronically to subscribers. The issue also announced plans for a moderated discussion capability, which was implemented in the summer of 1991. 11.0 Other Problems There also were additional unfavorable developments. Of most importance was a dearth of acceptable papers submitted for possible publication in JIAHR. Although the publishers had anticipated putting out ten to twenty papers, or issues, per year, only three were published in the first six months. Publication of a fourth paper had to be postponed because the paper depended so heavily on graphics as to be of little value without them. A number of other papers, submitted for publication, were rejected in the review process. JIAHR's editors assert that the electronic nature of the journal is not a major factor in the lack of adequate papers. They point out that hospitality research is a small field, and scholarly production is correspondingly small. Print journals in the field report similar problems. The quality of papers published in JIAHR unquestionably is high. The editors believe that submissions will increase as the journal becomes better known and its quality is recognized. However, if the number of issues in the first year is significantly less than promised, the publisher will either extend subscriptions without charge or otherwise make amends. The inability to use graphics, although initially considered only a minor handicap, is now considered of much importance. The publisher and editors have placed increased emphasis on finding a way to use graphics in the journal, perhaps by sending it out in both ASCII and PostScript formats. + Page 65 + 12.0 The Future The experiences in publishing JIAHR suggest several possible directions for scholarly communicators and libraries to consider as they plan for the future in electronic communication. Perhaps the overriding conclusion is that future success of electronic scholarly journals can be materially affected by concerted efforts of libraries. The difficulties that individuals--faculty, students, and others--have had trying to receive JIAHR indicate that many persons in the hospitality discipline--and probably others--are not fully prepared for electronic journals. Assuredly, many are ready and enthusiastic, but many are not. On the other hand, the interest, eagerness, and ability that libraries have shown in handling JIAHR suggest that the most efficacious way for electronic journals to reach the scholarly community may be through libraries. This conclusion has important ramifications. The editors and publisher of JIAHR plan to work more closely with subscribing libraries in the future to determine the ways that they process and use JIAHR and other electronic journals. The moderated computer conference which JIAHR introduced offers opportunities for librarians to discuss among themselves and with the editors some of the more effective ways of delivering e-journals to readers. Together, they may be able to resolve the problem of sending graphics, by PostScript or other means, for maximum satisfaction. Already, several subscribing libraries have helped individual faculty at their institutions in receiving copies of JIAHR electronically. This may suggest that electronic journals can be sent to faculty through their libraries, which can then distribute them (Cornell is doing this with JIAHR), and individual faculty subscriptions can be either eliminated or limited to those computer-literate persons who need little help. Libraries can do much to promote the success of electronic journals, and it is essential that they do so. + Page 66 + If libraries and publishers can jointly work out the means of delivering electronic texts to their faculty and students in a satisfactory manner, the rewards can be enormous. It seems apparent that such means can be developed. Like those at Cornell, Virginia Tech, and many other universities, libraries should be eager to subscribe to electronic journals (most especially those that cost nothing!) and they should move vigorously in accommodating them and making them available to their clients. To build on-campus understanding and support for e-journals, libraries can initiate special promotions for them on their campuses, such as visual displays both in and outside the library, special educational programs, faculty involvement in establishing e-journal policies and practices, and seminars and discussion groups. All involved in scholarly communication will be the beneficiaries of such action, but none will benefit more than the libraries. About the Author Lon Savage Director, Scholarly Communications Project Virginia Polytechnic Institute 1700 Pratt Drive Blacksburg, VA 24061-0506 SAVAGE@VTM1 ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Lon Savage. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 111 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Tuttle, Marcia. "The Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 111-127. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction Currently, serials librarians face two important issues: (1) unacceptably high journal subscription prices, and (2) the emergence of electronic publishing as a viable alternative to the traditional paper journal. An electronic serial, the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues, serves as a case study that illustrates one way librarians are responding to both of these issues. This article documents one effort to use electronic technology to meet a critical scholarly need. 2.0 Brief History At the 1988 ALA Midwinter Meeting, the Publisher/Vendor-Library Relations Committee (PVLR) of ALA's Resources and Technical Services Division (now the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services) was called upon to assume leadership in the library profession's fight against high journal prices. To meet this challenge, it created a subcommittee. Members of the subcommittee were Deana Astle, Mary Elizabeth Clack, Jerry Curtis, Charles (Chuck) Hamaker, and Robert Houbeck, all of them active in and knowledgeable about serials pricing. Curtis was a subscription agent; the other members were academic librarians. In Spring 1988, Caroline Early, PVLR Chair, asked me to chair the unnamed subcommittee (later called the Subcommittee on Serials Pricing Issues), which was charged with collecting and disseminating information regarding serials prices. Members had been appointed and a meeting had been scheduled for the summer conference, but Early had not been able to find a chair. She and I speculated about a newsletter as an appropriate means of disseminating pricing information. We knew that Hamaker had edited an informal letter on this subject for collection development librarians. He was not able to continue this service because of mailing costs. I accepted Early's invitation to chair the subcommittee. At the July 1988 ALA Conference, the subcommittee met for the first time and took the following actions: + Page 112 + 1. Determined that its first concern was to serve as a clearinghouse for information about serials pricing. 2. Decided that dissemination of pricing information through a newsletter should be by both electronic and paper means. 3. Discussed publicity and distribution of a press release to generate both news about and an audience for the newsletter [1]. Having only limited experience with electronic mail on BITNET or DataLinx, subcommittee members were neophytes when it came to electronic publishing, but we very quickly decided that the newsletter we produced should be distributed in both electronic and paper versions [2]. In this way, it would get serials pricing news quickly to those who could receive it electronically, and it would also make the newsletter available to those who could not receive the electronic version. Simply making the decision to publish an electronic newsletter was exhilarating. The subcommittee had not considered questions of production, distribution, and publicity, but we had made a leap of faith in committing our group to go electronic. We had visions of a nationwide--no, worldwide--network of librarians and others concerned with serials prices. BITNET would carry the "official" edition of the newsletter, with other prospective outlets being DataLinx, EBSCONET [3], ALANET [4], and the paper edition. At this point, our excitement went to our heads, influencing other decisions. We did not want to be a real serial because we would not publish forever, but only until the pricing crisis abated. We anticipated that: (1) librarians' actions would lead to publishers' decisions to slow price increases and/or discontinue marginal titles, and (2) the U.S. dollar would gain enough strength to eliminate apparent increases in prices of foreign journals. Therefore, we did not want the newsletter to have an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN). Nor did we want it to have a regular frequency. If we could somehow avoid numbering the issues, then it would not be a serial and would not have to be bound by serials standards. (Yes, these decisions were being made by four serials librarians, another librarian, and a subscription agent!) The paper edition, in order not to be a serial, would be dated memos, not issues; however, it would have some regularity by being batched and distributed six times a year. In the paper edition, the news would be cold; it was intended only for persons and institutions without electronic mail capability. + Page 113 + Between the first meeting of the subcommittee and its next meeting six months later, the group wrote a press release introducing the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues (subsequently referred to as the "Newsletter"), and it planned the content of the first issue. In February, ALA sent the press release to more than 200 journals and organizations. Announcements in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Library Hotline proved to be the most successful, bringing many inquiries and subscribers to all formats of the Newsletter. Several persons requested that issues be sent by telefacsimile, but this was not an option because of cost and time considerations. Interested persons, most of them librarians, began to submit notices and brief articles for publication. The first issue, dated February 27, 1989, went to about 150 addresses, nearly 100 of them in paper format. Minor editing on the word processor turned the very plain BITNET edition of the Newsletter into a fair printed product. The electronic mail system could not handle such niceties as brackets, underlining, bold print, and certain other symbols, so this information and a header were added before printing. I had the first nine-page issue photocopied and mailed at my library's expense. Immediately thereafter, my institution was placed under a spending freeze. The RTSD office then agreed to distribute up to 200 copies of each issue through December 1989. The only serious problem the subcommittee faced with the Newsletter was the expense of producing and distributing the paper edition. During the fall of 1989, the mailing list reached the maximum number of 200 paper subscribers that ALCTS had agreed to fund, and we had to turn down further requests to subscribe. Each paper mailing cost close to $800 in photocopying and postage charges. At the 1990 ALA Midwinter meeting, the ALCTS Board of Directors, on the advice of the Publications Committee, voted to discontinue the paper edition, effective the end of 1989. Cost and lack of timeliness were the two primary reasons given. Number thirteen was the last issue of the Newsletter to be distributed in paper format. + Page 114 + Our subscription lists grew steadily, and editorial contributions continued to arrive, primarily through BITNET. The first three issues appeared a month apart, then a fourth issue was ready in two weeks. The electronic publication schedule was, and would continue to be, irregular because the subcommittee members believed that it would be foolish to impose a communication schedule for this type of publication. From the outset, the Newsletter went to DataLinx subscribers who requested it. A short time after the Newsletter was established, I was able to arrange for selective distribution to EBSCONET subscribers. It took longer to begin distribution of the Newsletter on ALANET. Most recently, Readmore Academic Subscription Services began to print and mail the Newsletter to customers who request it. 3.0 Contents of the Newsletter The Newsletter does not usually have true articles, and we have no intention of becoming a refereed journal. This would defeat our purpose. We interpret "serials pricing issues" very broadly, as is illustrated by our coverage of peer review issues, the merits of the academic reward system, and acquisitions meetings at ALA. Naturally, the Newsletter also covers specific price increases and ways libraries are coping with the situation. We are fortunate to have active subscribers who send "news" by both e-mail and regular mail. The Newsletter contains a variety of material. I ask readers to report on relevant meetings and events. I seek permission to abstract or reprint articles from internal or very small circulation documents. I include related press releases, usually in their entirety. I try to find authors for topics that are suggested by readers. Other types of contributions include readers' letters to journal publishers and publishers' responses; abstracts of items from the non-library press (Science and Nature are good sources); accounts of individual libraries' evaluation and cancellation procedures; and "Hamaker's Haymakers," an outgrowth of the previously mentioned collection development newsletter. + Page 115 + There is an informal, bulletin-board spirit about the Newsletter, with questions and answers flying back and forth electronically, with me in the middle. At times, I wish it were a bulletin board, where readers could have more freedom and news would go out quicker. However, an edited publication has significant benefits, and a bulletin board would only be accessible to BITNET and Internet users, limiting participation to persons having mailboxes on those networks. 4.0 Production and Distribution of the Newsletter I compose each issue on WordStar aiming for nine or ten single- spaced pages (25 to 30 KB). The first revision is usually done on-screen, but I eventually print a draft copy to revise. The final copy is output as an ASCII file, and it is uploaded to a campus mainframe computer using Kermit. From this computer, it is transmitted to users on BITNET and interconnected networks (e.g., Internet) via e-mail. This copy is also used for EBSCO distribution; another ASCII copy is customized for ALANET. The ALANET and EBSCO copies are sent via TYMNET. From the beginning, I have had to rekey the Newsletter into DataLinx. Issue distribution takes more time now than in the beginning, perhaps five hours to send copies to four different systems. It takes approximately four to five hours to edit each issue. Subscription list maintenance requires two or three hours a week. All together, each issue requires about fifteen to twenty hours of the editor's time. 4.1 BITNET Distribution For the distribution of the early issues, I created a simple list of e-mail addresses and nicknames, but this list soon grew to an unmanageable size. I conferred with our campus e-mail guru, who has been indispensable for a wide range of problems. He suggested using a list server for the Newsletter, a suggestion that had also been proposed by some of our subscribers. The list server would receive subscription and cancellation messages, and I could use it to send out each issue. However, at the time, I thought that the list server permitted users to distribute messages to the subscriber list, so I rejected the idea. Instead, a mail server was used. We named the list PRICES-L, and I gave the guru a file of subscriber addresses. Use of the mail server made distribution much easier. + Page 116 + Using my BITNET address, I had the ability to send and receive messages to and from Internet users. It was also possible to communicate with users on other national and international networks. Given these connections, the Newsletter attracted BITNET subscribers in Canada, France, Sweden, Chile, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Israel; BITNET and JANET subscribers in the United Kingdom; OZ subscribers in Australia; and ALANET subscribers in Australia and other countries. And the list keeps growing. The BITNET mailing list, which includes all the above-mentioned networks except ALANET, is now over 760 subscribers. When William Britten's article on library-related electronic bulletin boards and newsletters appeared, I was surprised to read that one could subscribe to the Newsletter simply by sending a mail message to LISTSERV@UNCVX1.BITNET [5]. I quickly sent an electronic message to the author telling him that it wasn't so. He indicated that this was not true; he had just done it and so had several other people. An inquiry revealed that users could subscribe to the Newsletter directly, through either LISTSERV@UNCVX1 or MAILSERV@UNCVX1. They just had to say: SUBSCRIBE Prices-L. Apparently, both a list server and a mail server had been set up to distribute the Newsletter. Nonetheless, I preferred users to subscribe through me because I sent a test message to them, a practice that proved worthwhile for ensuring that e-mail addresses were correct, especially the addresses of new e-mail users. 4.2 DataLinx Distribution When one of its officers was named to the subcommittee, the Faxon subscription agency welcomed the opportunity to distribute the Newsletter to interested DataLinx subscribers, and this was done. Unfortunately, DataLinx was based on a system designed many years ago for Faxon's internal use. It incorporated an old e-mail system, Courier, and it was not possible to upload documents to this system. In order to distribute the Newsletter to DataLinx subscribers, someone had to rekey the issue into Courier. This procedure could take as long as five hours, at the rate of eight to ten screens an hour. + Page 117 + After I had sent several issues in this way, Faxon arranged for me to upload the text in an ASCII file via Kermit to their mainframe computer in Westwood, Massachusetts. A Faxon employee then rekeyed the Newsletter and distributed it to the Courier subscriber list. We followed this procedure for a few issues, but the person in Westwood (as might be expected) did not have the same interest in the Newsletter as its editor. Typographical errors were more prevalent. Since the keying chore had to be incorporated into an employee's normal workload, issue transmission was delayed for several days. Although we had no reader complaints about this change, I was not happy with the situation. I decided to go back to the original plan, whereby I would key the issue. This turned out to be a good way to do some extra proofreading. By printing a copy of the final document to be transmitted to the other networks and using it to key the DataLinx edition, I was able to find and correct additional errors and inconsistencies in the network edition of the Newsletter. Since I was more conscious of mistakes in that edition, I spent more time proofreading each Courier screen, and this reduced mistakes in the DataLinx edition. Since I have resumed keying the DataLinx edition, I have usually not resented the extra time required. 4.3 ALANET Distribution The RTSD Executive Director had given me an ALANET account for Newsletter purposes, and I received a few inquiries about subscribing that way. ALANET distribution was important because it was the best way to reach publishers and subscription agents. Unfortunately, one attempt after another to upload the Newsletter to ALANET failed. I tried using ProComm to transfer the ASCII file via Telenet. The system would locate the file on my word processor, but it would not transfer it. Eventually, I made an arrangement with a former UNC-CH Library staff member who was working for EBSCO. When I sent him a message by ALANET that an issue was ready, he came by my office, picked it up on a floppy disk, took it to his home, and uploaded it to ALANET using another communications program. Very quickly, this procedure became tiresome. Finally, ALANET's Rob Carlson and I got together by telephone and figured out what was wrong; it was nothing more than changing a single setting on my copy of ProComm. + Page 118 + Because I had not gotten any responses from ALANET readers of the Newsletter, I had no idea how many people this edition reached and whether it was worth the money it cost ALCTS. At the end of a recent ALANET edition, I added a message asking readers to let me know if they used ALANET to access the Newsletter. Two weeks after the issue appeared, I had six responses, three of which informed me that they were planning to switch soon to BITNET. This level of readership may not justify the cost of the ALANET edition. However, I am concerned about readers in Australia who receive the Newsletter on ILANET; the ALANET edition is transferred to ILANET by Alan Ventress at the State Library of New South Wales. So far, we have found no way to establish communication between ILANET and BITNET. 4.4 EBSCONET Distribution From the beginning, the subcommittee members wanted to have the Newsletter available to EBSCO customers. Had I been an EBSCONET subscriber, it might have been simpler to get each issue to the proper staff member at EBSCO. Instead, we agreed that I would send a paper copy of each issue to EBSCO, and personnel in Birmingham would summarize the contents on an EBSCONET message screen, then mail or fax complete issues to any EBSCONET customers who wanted them. Later, it proved far easier to upload each issue as an ASCII file to EBSCO's mainframe computer in the home office. EBSCO staff took over distribution from there. This procedural change saved me from having to make any paper copies of the Newsletter. Currently, EBSCONET distribution accounts for approximately 150 copies of the Newsletter. 4.5 Readmore Distribution The third distribution arrangement with a subscription agent was with Readmore Academic Subscription Services. After several abortive attempts to upload a copy of the Newsletter to Readmore's mainframe computer, I agreed to mail each issue as an ASCII file on a floppy disk to the agent's New York office. Starting with issue 30, Readmore personnel printed and distributed copies of the Newsletter to customers who requested this service. + Page 119 + 5.0 Copyright Questions The Newsletter has avoided the twin problems of intellectual property rights and subscription fees. The publisher does not charge for subscriptions. The only expense to subscribers is their cost for network access. In support of our mission, we have not copyrighted the contents of the Newsletter. Each issue carries this message: Readers of the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues are encouraged to share the information in the Newsletter by electronic or paper methods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the Newsletter. From an early survey and from subscribers' messages and remarks, I know that many more people receive the Newsletter than are on the mailing list. It is also excerpted in local library newsletters and professional association publications. 6.0 Electronic Publishing Issues Both the producers and consumers of electronic publications would benefit from the establishment of more standards in this area. Some standards are already in place (e.g., ISSN), and they are just as appropriate for electronic serials as for paper serials. Other print-oriented standards are not appropriate for electronic publishing, and new standards need to be developed. For example, we were not surprised that readers wanted to cite the Newsletter. However, we were not prepared for their questions about a standard citation format. Users wanted to cite the Newsletter in general as well as specific articles and news notices. The subcommittee members were forced to face standards issues as they arose and to recognize that there were often no existing solutions. We responded as we thought appropriate. Standards will emerge as electronic publications mature, but a period of experimentation is, I believe, a necessary prerequisite to formal standards. + Page 120 + 6.1 ISSN At the start, the subcommittee members decided that they did not want an ISSN for the Newsletter because we saw it as a response to a current and probably temporary problem. Unfortunately, the rest of the library world did not view the situation that way. We eventually did have to get an ISSN. About six months after the first issue, Julia Blixrud, head of the National Serials Data Project at the Library of Congress, "invited" the Newsletter's editor to apply for an ISSN. Now, each issue displays the ISSN correctly--and proudly--in the upper-right-hand corner. 6.2 Format and Arrangement of Electronic Documents At the present time, no standard exists for the format and arrangement of electronic publications. We need a standard similar to the National Information and Standards Organization (NISO) standard on Periodicals: Format and Arrangement to regulate the presentation and appearance of electronic documents. We need to determine what elements are essential and where they should be placed for easiest access. As electronic journals and newsletters proliferate and their editors experiment with format and arrangement, a de facto standard may evolve, which could be later formalized by NISO. 6.3 Citation Format Librarians and other researchers are sticklers for the correct form of citation, and a large number of messages to the Newsletter concern the proper means of citing electronic publications. Sue Dodd, of UNC-CH's Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, may be the leading expert on bibliographic control of electronic publications. She electronically transmitted to me a copy of a talk she had given on this topic. This talk, which had examples of citations to electronic documents, made the point that electronic publications are, in this respect, just like any other publications. For example, the only unique requirement in citing the Newsletter is to note that it is electronic. Subscribers often ask how to cite specific items in the Newsletter. This appears to be a difficult decision to make. + Page 121 + The different electronic editions of the Newsletter do not have standard page numbers. Since users print out the Newsletter from different editions and use different methods to print it, page numbers on printed copies do not always match, and consequently they are meaningless. Moreover, a subscriber can very easily edit or reformat the electronic document before printing it. Citing line numbers in the electronic document is no more satisfactory. Besides being awkward to calculate, the length of the header in a BITNET message varies, and the header is counted in the total number of lines. If the issue is forwarded by the recipient to a colleague, the message header gets longer. Thus, just as with paper serials, we need a standard article identifier for electronic publications. There are other uses for such a standard identifier. I believe that much of the serials acquisitions of the future will be at the article level, not at the journal level, and it will not be limited to acquisitions and reference librarians. Library patrons will be acquiring their own materials electronically. Several groups are working on article identifiers for serials, including NISO and ADONIS. Either they will work together, or one group's recommendation will win out over the others and evolve into a standard. This identifier will be as important in electronic journal publishing as the ISSN is for all types of serials. 6.4 Downloading Different levels of user expertise in downloading, complicated by many different institutional mail systems, have led to frequent questions about downloading the Newsletter for redistribution and retention. We have carried a few instructional items, but too often what works at one institution and with one type of communications software is not generally applicable. Users get the best results when they seek assistance from their local computer center. + Page 122 + I have received inquiries about downloading the Newsletter to an institution's local network for internal distribution. The University of Michigan has done this, and I have discussed procedures with several other universities. John James at Dartmouth College sent this message: Not everyone at Dartmouth uses BITNET. This is our paperless method for handling the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues. The BITNET copy is saved on the Library's file server. Staff can access the file server and read the newsletter online and, if desired, print portions of the text. The complete backfile resides on the file server [6]. 6.5 Security and Archiving Security and archiving are two issues that are not easily resolved. I have little idea of what people may do to the text of the Newsletter after I send it to them. It would be easy to change a few words and alter the sense of an item. As editor, I retain online and disk copies of each issue, and I understand that ALCTS downloads and prints an "archival" copy. I have no answers to these two questions, but they must and will be resolved. Perhaps a national archival database is the solution, possibly associated with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. 7.0 Reader Response Response from The Newsletter readers, nearly all of which has been positive and constructive, has been an unexpected and much appreciated aid to the subcommittee's publishing effort. I value this thoughtful comment from Chuck Hamaker: I really enjoyed the last Newsletter, particularly the "spot" announcements of how different libraries and librarians were reacting to serials price increases. It sounded active--for once--rather than just "Oh, my, how bad it is." Also, several people had clearly done some of their basic homework. It was good to see other libraries had tracked specific increases for their collections (although no one hazarded an overall estimate except UNC, if I remember correctly). The Newsletter gave a real sense of urgency and action, with a fair amount of competence in terms of reactions. I was quite frankly surprised. I think we've helped people focus some of their thinking over the last year [7]. + Page 123 + While it is exciting for me to assist new users (so soon after I was a new user myself!) and to make new e-mail friends, strange things have happened. For example, users' attempts to subscribe have gone out to the entire mailing list, leading to wonderfully exotic messages back--some of which have, in turn, gone to everybody, leading to more messages. In the early days of the Newsletter, a number of subscribers urged me to change the format to a bulletin board or a discussion group. Because I felt strongly that submissions should be edited, I refused to do this. After subscribing to two BITNET discussion groups, I am even more determined to retain the edited newsletter format. Without the intervention of an editor, a large number of messages are disseminated, many of which are careless and repetitive, leading to wasted time and frustration on the part of the reader. Several subscribers have encouraged me to continue the newsletter format for just this reason. For example, one subscriber writes: I subscribe to several listserv bulletin boards, which inundate me with information on lots of library issues and problems. They are a chore to keep up with, and I wonder why I make the effort. Your newsletter, on the other hand, is equally timely but much more succinct and to the point. You do a great job [8]. One electronic publication that combines the best in discussion groups and newsletters is the relatively new ACQNET, which is edited by Christian Boissonnas at Cornell University Library [9]. Boissonnas receives submissions at his e-mail address, edits them slightly (if at all), and batches them every few days into a sequentially-numbered issue of 150 to 200 lines. 8.0 The Future of the Newsletter The immediate success of the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues is assured. + Page 124 + As stated earlier, the Newsletter has had very few commercial publishers as subscribers. In order for the Newsletter to accomplish its mission, publishers must be able to receive our "news" and to respond to it. In recent months, more and more publishers have made electronic contact asking to subscribe to the Newsletter. They often use CompuServe; however, increasingly, they have BITNET addresses through a nearby academic institution or through their own node. European publishers are beginning to subscribe either by using their own BITNET or JANET addresses or through other networks that I have not yet identified. In the United Kingdom, JANET now accepts commercial accounts. I hope this is a trend that will spread to the United States. This growing ability for publishers and librarians to communicate electronically is most welcome. Communication is essential if we are to resolve the controversy over journal prices. Many of the items in the Newsletter relate publishers' practices that seem unfair to librarians. It is only right that the publishers should be able to respond and fully explain their reasons for such practices. One editorial board member is able to print a limited number of paper copies that are sent to certain involved publishers, vendors, and librarians who have no access to electronic mail. I feel certain that others do the same. We are fortunate to be able to distribute the Newsletter through three subscription agents. Not only do we have the vendors' cooperation, but we know they read the Newsletter. We have had a number of valuable contributions from subscription agents. Several things will make the Newsletter better. More commercial publishers need to subscribe to the Newsletter and contribute responses to issues raised by librarians. We need to keep up with developments in electronic technology--especially standards. We need to seek additional means of distribution. We also need to participate in resolving issues common to all types of electronic publishing. + Page 125 + 9.0 Conclusion New electronic newsletters, bulletin boards, and journals are rapidly appearing on BITNET and other networks that will be part of the proposed National Research and Education Network (NREN). These electronic services differ in their purpose, editorial control, and sophistication. An OCLC/American Association for the Advancement of Science electronic publishing venture, which will launch a science journal on OCLC's EPIC System, is breaking new ground, with librarians and scientists cooperating in producing the new journal. Commercial publishers remain reserved about the short-range feasibility of electronic distribution of scientific research results; however, the ADONIS Project is a good example of the type of electronic publication service that may be highly appropriate for the coming national network. The project has expanded its coverage from 219 biomedical journals from a few publishers to more than 400 scientific journals from several publishers. Owners have listened to ADONIS users and responded to their requests for wider availability and personal computer access. The articles, in CD-ROM format, may soon be available to any purchaser, such as a library system or consortium, for use with a CD-ROM juke box. Libraries could subsidize access or charge for it, as they do for interlibrary loan, and scholars would be able to identify and download articles on their own workstations, paying a fee for retrieval, copying, and royalties. The system is not ready today, but something like this seems well suited for Internet and, in the future, NREN. Electronic publishing will not happen on a large scale until the value of a library is measured in terms of access as well as ownership. The academic reward system is beginning to regard quality over quantity, as is demonstrated by the increasing number of institutions limiting the number of publications considered in tenure and grant decisions. Compilers of library statistics must change their standard to adapt to current realities and possibilities. It will be a slow evolution, and its lack of speed will deter the migration to electronic access to information. + Page 126 + It is clear that electronic publishing has a crucial role to play in the national network, both as a way of refining scholarly research and in distributing its finished products. Electronic publishing efforts on networks are maturing, and they will provide a valuable base of experience that will ease the transition to retrieving journal article information through the NREN. Electronic publishers recognize the problems of access, control, security, and preservation, and we are working toward resolving them. As user demand and confidence increase, electronic publishing will continue to evolve as an alternative to paper publishing. Someone suggested that I include in my resume the fact that, as editor of the Newsletter, I am on the cutting edge of electronic publication. I am not sure I am ready to go quite that far, but the Newsletter is definitely a part of the developing electronic network, and those of us involved in its content and production are helping to ease the way for those coming after. And we're having a lot of fun doing it! Notes 1. Subcommittee on Serials Pricing Issues, meeting minutes, 10 July 1988. 2. DataLinx is a system providing access to the Faxon Company's publisher and title information files as well as to MARC serial records and other files. Part of DataLinx is Courier, an electronic mail service. 3. EBSCONET is EBSCO Subscription Services' online title and publisher information file. 4. ALANET is the online network of the American Library Association. 5. William A. Britten, "BITNET and the Internet: Scholarly Networks for Librarians," College & Research Libraries News 51 (February 1990): 103-07. 6. "From the Editor," Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues, no. 10 (30 September 1989). (Request from editor: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET.) + Page 127 + 7. Charles Hamaker, BITNET e-mail message, 3 October 1990. 8. Margie Axtmann, BITNET e-mail message, 1 June 1990. 9. To subscribe to ACQNET, send a message to Christian Boissonnas at CPC@CORNELLC.BITNET. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Note: In May 1991, The Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues ceased to be an ALA publication. Marcia Tuttle is now the publisher of this electronic serial. ALA's ALCTS Division now publishes ALCTS Network News as its electronic newsletter. ----------------------------------------------------------------- About the Author Marcia Tuttle Serials Department C.B. #3938 Davis Library University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill,NC 27599-3938 Telephone: (919) 962-1067 FAX: (919) 962-0484 BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Marcia Tuttle. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ----------------------------------------------------------------