The Future of the Print Journal
Table of Contents
Introduction
Past & Present
Serials Crisis
Service to Scholarship
Economic Myths & Realities
Production & Distribution
Market Issues
Archiving Issues
The Multi-Format Future
Transitioning to the Future
References
Additional Reading
About the Authors
The Future of the Print Journal
A White Paper Prepared for The Sheridan Press A Restricted Distribution Document
The Sheridan Press has commissioned this paper as a service to its customers and to the publishing community as a whole. Reproduction without prior written approval of The Sheridan Press is prohibited. Publisher
The Sheridan Press Contributing Editors Barry Davis Mary Hush Tad Parker Karol Sherman Joan Weisman Authors Barbara Meyers Linda Beebe
Copyright 1999, The Sheridan Press Printed February 1999
INTRODUCTION
At first blush, one might conclude that the future of the print journal is dim. If you look at the articles that publishers, librarians, information scientists, and the occasional editor and scholar have written in the last few decades, it is a rather mournful collection. The titles frequently feature words such as “collapse,” “death,” and “demise.” Until recently, the prevailing opinion published in the literature was that electronic journals would completely replace print journals and would do so very soon.
The attitude portrayed in the literature also seems to have been that the electronic journal is not just a different medium, but an entirely different process from beginning to end. Arnold (1993) noted that the process of creating new electronic products can be divided into three parts:
1. Create a way to determine what information should be put on the system. 2. Manage the information/data and perpetual access to it.
3. License use so that the producer is protected.
Although the terminology may be different, these steps describe precisely the process of publishing a print journal.
New information technologies have opened many new possibilities, and the idea of using this potential just because we can is very enticing. Yet we think it is important that we not confuse the use of technology to transmit information quickly with applications that are appropriate for the rigorous transfer of knowledge among scholars and other professionals. Negroponte (1995, p. 190) likened email to a “more
conversational medium. While it is not spoken dialogue, it is much closer to speaking than writing.” Spontaneous electronic communication cannot substitute for reasoned, scientific deliberation.
On the other hand, many believe that electronic communication will spark a resurgence in creativity that will carry science beyond the rigid requirements of traditional journals. Some suggest that the audiovisual interaction in electronic journals is actually more natural for us because, although we have been writing and reading for more than 5,000 years, we have responded to audiovisual stimulation for millions (Rawlins, 1993).
At the same time, several of our librarian colleagues are now researching the need for additional physical space not merely for new workstations but for more printed books and journals. There has even been a recent posting on the STS-L about a new science library, one that will house printed books and journals, as well as new electronic products.
This white paper does not predict a gloomy future for print publications. With the vast majority of journals at the end of the 20th century still in print and new print journals being created, we do not foresee the death of print. Instead, we consider the importance of using each medium’s strengths for the proper evolutionary development of information transfer. Although we cannot predict the future, we provide an overview of the major opinions and draw some conclusions about past trends and possible new directions.
“Futurology is like nostalgia - it is not what it used to be.” -Jenkins, 1995, p. 409.
PAST AND PRESENT History
Members of two societies invented the print scholarly journal over 300 years ago as an outgrowth of personal correspondence and circulation of private publications among colleagues. Journal publishing began with the first issue of the Journal des Sçavans issued by the Académie des Sciences in January 1665, followed by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London just across the Channel in March 1665 (Bishop, 1984). Oxford scholars, meeting regularly separate from their university
responsibilities, named their group the “Invisible College” in 1640 and later renamed it the Royal Society. The private letter initially served as their means of communication. As the society grew, letters between individuals proved inadequate to the task, so the journal became the more effective vehicle to exchange communications (Peek, 1996).
Early journal articles were primarily descriptive, noting only actions and observations. (This style continues to prevail in current “letters” journals.) Over the next two centuries, science grew increasingly sophisticated, and so did journal articles. Methodology was critical to confirm Koch and Pasteur’s germ theory of disease, and Pasteur reported his experiments in detail. Detailed reporting enabled replication of experiments, and providing sufficient information to permit replication became a basic principle of science. In turn, the principle of replicability drove the development of a standard for arranging contents within journal articles; this standard, now know as IMRAD for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion, evolved throughout much of the 20th century (Day, 1988).
Peer review, another critical component for maintaining quality in journals, evolved slowly from 1665 to its formal initiation in the mid-1800s (Schaffner, 1994). Acceptance of peer review across disciplines
Current Status
The growth of scientific literature has continued relatively unchecked as each new discipline and
subspecialty established one, and often several, journals to respond to the need for communication among practitioners. Nobody seems to know exactly how many peer-reviewed scholarly journals are published in the world. Tenopir and King (1997) found an estimated 6,771 scholarly scientific journals published in the U.S. in 1995. According to publisher Judy Salk, Ulrich’s Guide to Periodicals currently contains nearly 157,000 active tittles worldwide and includes 140,025 print only titles (1999 email communication). The total number of peer-reviewed journals in all fields of scholarship presumably lies between 6,800 and 157,000.
Since the 1970s, publishers and their suppliers have increasingly applied computer technology to various functions in the publishing and printing processes to realize increased efficiencies. Thus, it was inevitable that the physical format of the scholarly journal would eventually be brought into the digital world as well. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) began to track the number of electronic journals in 1991 when they found 27 “E-Journals/Zines.” In 1997, ARL identified 1,465 electronic journals, of which 1,002 are peer reviewed (Association of Research Libraries, 1997).
A growth from 27 in 1991 to 1,465 in 1997 is considerable. However, when compared with the total number of journals published in the world, it is not significant. Even Harnad (1997), one of the most vocal proponents of the electronic journal, wrote “In late 1997, 99.9% of it [the written corpus] is available only as print on paper. There are a vast number of bits up there in the sky, but very few of them are the learned bits.” It appears that rumors of the imminent demise of the printed scholarly journal may have been exaggerated.
Scientists from different disciplines adopt technology at different rates. Each group evolves a pattern of behavior based on how they have used the literature in the past. How they value the attributes of the new media and how they view those attributes as pertinent to their needs further define their reactions. As in the general population, scientists, engineers, and other scholars span the spectrum of technological acceptance. The physicists, for example, have been trendsetters while humanists have been slower adopters of the new technology. The different rates of acceptance are based on the different research and personal needs of each discipline. For example, by the late 1970s, engineers and physical scientists had developed word processing software such as TeX to handle the technical complexities of their manuscripts. On the other hand, history scholars deal primarily with words; consequently, some were content to write articles in long hand for some time. Further, physical scientists involved in the large research projects have a greater need for immediate recognition, which is assisted by electronic publication, because there is such
competition for funding.
Disciplines vary in their information-seeking patterns, the level of automation needed to produce and disseminate their work, and even in the funding patterns for their research. The speed of migration of scholarly literature from print-only to print and electronic and potentially to electronic-only is discipline dependent.
“First we shape our tools thereafter, they shape us.” -McLuhan, 1999 in Wired
SERIALS CRISIS
Since World War II, there has been an enormous increase in scientific knowledge. The availability of federal funds for research, particularly following Sputnik in 1957, spurred an increase in PhD programs and the number of scholars. As knowledge increased and science grew ever more complex, specialties and subspecialties within disciplines evolved. This “twigging” of science fueled an explosion in journal literature. Yet, as Rowland (1997) pointed out, while universities were expanding their research capacity, library budgets were declining in real terms. Thus, we created a body of knowledge that surpasses our institutional capacity to absorb.
The resulting serials crisis, a 35-year-old phenomenon, created a rift between librarians and publishers who should be natural allies in disseminating scholarly information. Librarians decry rising prices, while publishers explain that an increase in pages raises their costs. Although much of the move toward electronic journals was stimulated by the hope that they would ease the crisis, it appears unlikely that adding or changing formats will change the underlying economic issues that created it.
As subscriptions decrease, prices increase. As prices increase, subscriptions decrease.
Librarians’ Response
With insufficient funds to purchase the ever-expanding and increasingly expensive body of literature, librarians first decimated their book budgets, and the future of the scholarly monograph was in question. They relied more on interlibrary loan as they struggled to meet the needs of their users who, as Dow noted, “demonstrated no elasticity of demand for access to the publications” (in Dow, Hunter, & Lozier, 1991). They formed buying consortia. Libraries began to introduce unmediated ordering for faculty and students using automated document delivery services such as UnCover (Hamaker, 1997).
The strategies ARL libraries relied on the most were - cancellations
- university and society presses - sharing resources
- electronic publications
(Eaton, Dobson, & Black, 1996). The most recent strategy we have seen is eliminating print subscriptions altogether. Nature (Butler, 1999) reported that Denmark’s national Technical Knowledge Center and Library is phasing out print subscriptions and moving to delivering only electronic journals to its patrons. By 1995, the series of cancellation projects had reduced academic library collections to only the critical core titles in each discipline (Ketcham & Born, 1995). As Hunter (in Dow, Hunter & Lozier, 1991, p. 524) concluded, “Regardless of the reason for price increases, the net result is that libraries are able to own an ever declining percentage of the world’s literature.”
Dow (1991) suggested that libraries could buy editorial boards of some significant journals and work with them and suppliers to produce more cost-effective journals. Subsequently, in 1998, the Association of Research Libraries established the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) to effect positive changes in the pricing and distribution of scholarly work. By the end of the year, SPARC had announced three publishing partnerships. SPARC and the American Chemical Society announced in June that they would collaborate on at least one new journal each year for the next three years, with the first to be Organic Letters. In October, the Royal Society of Chemistry joined SPARC in announcing their collaboration on a series of new peer-reviewed electronic journals; the first product will be
PhysChemComm. The following month, SPARC announced a partnership with Michael Rosenzweig, who
was abandoning a thriving journal he had established in the mid-1980s because it had become too
expensive and beginning a new journal Evolutionary Ecology Research. Whether SPARC and its partners will succeed in reducing the cost of commercially produced journals remains to be seen.
Publishers’ Response
As subscriptions decrease, prices increase. As prices increase, subscriptions decrease. This damaging spiral began in the mid-1960s and continues today. Hunter (in Dow, Hunter, & Lozier, 1991) noted that the largest European publishers of scientific and technical journals lost more than half their subscribers
between 1967 and 1987. As Tenopir and King (1998) observed, journal prices are high for two basic reasons: high fixed costs and low, steadily decreasing levels of subscriptions. Some publishers were able to rely on individual subscriptions, but that was not the case across scientific and technical fields, particularly for commercial publishers.
Decreasing subscriptions were not the only reason for rising prices. In the 1970s, publishers struggled with inflation, changes in currency rates, increases in the price of silver that drove up typesetting costs, and other problems. In the 1980s and 1990s, all the costs of developing technologies added to existing fiscal
problems already intensified by the demand to produce more pages. In the past, proceeds from scholarly journals subsidized the publication of scholarly monographs. Earlier, books were sacrificed to pay for expensive STM journal subscriptions. Journal subscription revenues threatened by competition from the new electronic products joined books as a potential endangered species (Thatcher, 1992).
Physical Space Constraints
Another aspect of the serials crisis was the problem of finding space to house growing periodical
collections. Even with literally miles of shelf space in the library, off-site storage has become the rule for all but relatively current volumes in most libraries. Consequently, one of the pleasures of researching, that of browsing through the stacks, is no longer possible. The solution, it was thought, was to convert the atoms of the print journal to bits in an electronic version and eliminate the need to store shelves of paper. Odlyzko (1996) grumbled that the costs of new library buildings in London and Paris were two to three times the cost of scanning the books, noting that it would be more efficient to move the books into cheap warehouse space.
Yet electronic products do not necessarily resolve the problems of space. One CD can hold tens of thousands of text pages, and online journals are stored in cyberspace. But the equipment needed to obtain access to them—computers, terminals, CD-ROM jukeboxes, video players, and so forth—require more space than any traditional library study area. And maintaining all print volumes in warehouses, a thought that is likely to horrify librarians and readers alike, creates new environmental and cost problems.
Librarians anticipate that they will continue to need space to house both existing and new print journals, as well as electronic products. Consequently, library expansion will require two types of space: (1) shelving and study areas for print products; and (2) areas for using electronic products.
SERVICE TO SCHOLARSHP
Scholars work to advance the knowledge base in their discipline, and they write for journals to
communicate and test out their work. Since the first journals were created, scholars have preferred journals over books and personal correspondence because they reach a broader audience relatively quickly and are acknowledged as the key means of scientific communication. It might be presumed that electronic journals would be preferred over print because they can be delivered without the delay a physical postal system imposes. However, the issue is not that simple.
To serve scholarship, electronic journals must be accepted by the authors who submit papers, the people who evaluate their work, and the general community. Acceptance will be based on many of the same quality characteristics that scholars and institutions use to evaluate print journals. Fisher (1996) defined these characteristics as broad dissemination, citations from researchers, content well organized and presented, peer review, respected editor and editorial board, and inclusion in the field’s main abstracting and indexing resources.
If an electronic journal were to mirror a print journal in all but its delivery mechanism, there would be no concerns about quality. Creating a mirror publication, however, does not take advantage of the added value potential of an electronic product, and introducing new features calls for additional quality checks.
Unfortunately, many producers seem to have embraced the technical aspects of electronic products so ardently that they have neglected the basic tenets of scholarly journals, including quality control.
“[journals are] disseminators of authoritative scholarship.” -Tomlins, 1998, p. 135.
Functions of Journals
There is general agreement on the functions of a scholarly journal. In the early 1980s, the Council of Biology Editors defined a primary journal article essentially as “the first publication of original research results in a form whereby peers of the author can repeat the experiments and test the conclusions and in a journal or other source document readily available within the scientific community” (Day, 1988, p. 10). In discussing the roles that are key to the orderly functioning of scholarship, Rowland (1997) described four chief functions:
- dissemination of information - quality control
- canonical archive - recognition of authors
Dissemination, he said, was not the most important, because that function can be served with academic debate, correspondence, conference proceedings, and materials posted to the Web. Quality control and an unchanging archive, however, require the structure and discipline that mark traditional journal publishing.
Perceptions
In a survey of 511 authors and members of editorial boards, Butler (1995) found that 63 percent of
respondents felt that their colleagues perceive electronic journals as “not real.” More than half (54 percent) were concerned that electronic journals are not as prestigious as print journals. Although one-third of respondents said they received more feedback on articles published in an electronic journal, 39 percent said they received less. Cox (1998, p. 163) described a “cartooning” response to electronic journals, saying that many academics feel material published in electronic journals is not worthy of serious study because it arrives in the same medium as “The Simpsons” and other cartoons.
Tenure and promotion committees in general do not yet accept publication in an electronic-only journal as evidence of contribution to the knowledge base. Those who publish electronic-only journals pride themselves on completing the entire process from submission to dissemination electronically, yet the conventions of rewards for scholarship have traditionally mandated different forms of communication. For example, some authors whose articles have been accepted for all-electronic journals have requested an old-fashioned, hand-signed letter on official letterhead.
The Matter of Speed
One criticism of journals in the late 20th century has been the increasing lag time from submission to publication, a problem proponents suggest electronic-only journals can cure. It behooves us to look at where delays occur in the entire process from conception to delivery. Raney (1998) found that for the 151 articles published in the IEEE Transaction Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society in 1997, the longest lag times were not in the span of time from acceptance to delivery, but in the period between submission and acceptance. Using the Internet can hasten the process of submission and review. Revisions are another story. In many disciplines, several revisions are common before an article is published; sometimes those revisions are so substantial that the authors do not resubmit the revised article for many months.
We also should reconsider the notion of speed as an absolute virtue. Timeliness clearly is important, and many print journals would benefit from decreasing their lag times. Thoughtful, careful peer review, however, takes time, as does writing. Do we really want to communicate at the speed of thought? Many journal articles could be improved if the reviewer and the author had time for reflection. The attention to detail in production that assures reliable quality also requires investment in time.
Filters
Jenkins (1995, p. 412) noted that the last thing a reader wants is the “unedited sweepings of 100 minds.” Yet the flexibility of electronic self-publishing often leads to the dissemination of raw information that has not been vetted or edited. Furthermore, many authors post multiple versions of their work on the Web. Our store of knowledge has been doubling approximately every 15 years, and the Internet has made possible the distribution of a vast array of facts, semi-facts, and non-facts. In print journals, the filters of peer reviews, issue compilation, and professional copy editing—with the benefits of automated search tools—provide an orderly course of access to knowledge. In 1999, those filters are often missing from electronic journals.
Peer review is a particular concern. Although many electronic journals are peer reviewed, other editors take the approach of simply posting articles and letting the reader determine what is good and what is not. Another method is a virtual peer review. For example, the British Medical Journal is conducting a test in which they post articles for open, online review before accepting them for publication. The Electronic
Transactions in Artificial Intelligence employs both commissioned and open, online review (Butler, 1999).
We, among others, are concerned about the consequences of circulating information, especially medical information, broadly without filtering it. The lack of validation is of greater concern because the audience is no longer primarily professional, but encompasses anyone with access to a computer and the World Wide Web.
Concerns about Stability
Harnad (1997) predicted that the anarchy of early Web-based publishing will subside once it is constrained by peer review and will become a glorious new form of interactive publishing. Dubbing this form of publishing “scholarly skywriting” or “learned skywriting” in the “PostGutenberg Galaxy,” Harnad suggested that it would result in vastly improved dissemination of scholarly works. Others might interpret skywriting differently, likening it to the quickly dissolving contrails jet airplanes leave behind.
In early 1999, electronic journals guarantee neither an unalterable first edition nor a lasting archival copy. Authors may enter updates to online materials as if they were part of the original text, so that scholars are never certain what version they are reading. Even carefully edited journals often do not include a publication date, let alone a volume and issue number, anywhere in the article.
The potential for linking or attaching a wide assortment of related documents to the journal article, such as data sets or video clips—generally considered a great added value—raises another compelling concern about stability and quality. Although the article may be peer reviewed, who will evaluate the quality of the attachments? There are also concerns about the maintenance of links, particularly given the frequency with which the message “DNS Server Not Found” appears. Added to the ease with which changes can be inserted without evidence, all these issues suggest that electronic-only journals may be ephemeral
publications. Individual electronic journals may be of extraordinarily high quality with carefully controlled stability; however, until quality-control standards are established for electronic journals, the perception that their stability cannot be trusted is likely to prevail.
Other Factors
Harnad (1997) noted that electronic journals allow corrections for errors of fact or advances in science to be linked to the unalterable first copy in ways that safeguard people more effectively than the scattered corrections and “letters to the editor” in the paper version. He is absolutely correct, provided those
corrections and additions are identified in such a way that the evolved article is clearly distinguishable from the original. It is important that standards for doing so be established and followed.
Technology is likely not the driving force in the development of new forms of communication. In 1998 the American Geophysical Union (AGU) reported the results of a survey designed to determine the relative importance of quality factors for AGU’s principal serial, The Journal of Geophysical Research (Raney, 1998). Respondents rated scientific content highest. With no factor in second place, the content attributes of good writing and timeliness shared third place, followed by speed of publication and copy editing in fourth and fifth places respectively. New publishing technologies rated 12 among the 14 factors in the survey. Raney found the order particularly interesting given AGU’s strong leadership in electronic publication.
Schaffner (1994) pointed out that it was not technology that spurred the development of scientific journals, but science itself. We should not confuse the two. Although we have new information technologies, the form of electronic journals is not fully developed, nor is it likely to be crystallized soon. Consequently, we cannot yet ascertain the full extent of their potential service to scholarship.
“The constraints we work with are not technical, they are fiscal.” -Hunter, 1992, p. 130.
ECONOMIC MYTHS AND REALITIES Publisher Issues
The fiercest challenge to scholarly journal publishers entering the 21st century is to sustain their financial viability while publishing serials in both print and electronic formats. Many publishers feel pulled in opposing directions between the excitement of the technological evolution and the economic realities of the marketplace. The need for additional technical expertise from aggregator partners and others in the computer and information industries threatens some publishers because their finances become more unstable as shares of the margin get parceled out to an increasing number of suppliers (Fairbairne, 1996). Few electronic-only journal, if any, are producing revenues in excess of all costs. It is understandable, then, that publishers may tarry on the path to an all-electronic environment. In the meantime, they need to give customers what they want, and libraries want electronic products. Thus, publishers’ cost will continue to go up as they maintain one-and-a-half systems or more for a significant period to come (Hunter, 1993).
Cost Issues
Proponents of electronic-only journals have urged their adoption as a way of reducing the delivery costs for scholarly information or even offering free journals. Publishers hoped that electronic publishing would lower overall production costs so they would not be captive to market fluctuations such as the volatility in paper prices and availability. But is it really cheaper to produce electronic journals? The myth is that electronic-only journal production is at most 70-80 percent of the costs for print journal production. Those figures are based on the fact that printing and distribution generally consume between 20 and 30 percent of a journal budget. However, reality may be quite different if all costs of production and delivery are considered.
Specific costs including cost per page and cost per article have been debated in online discussions such as the September Forum (1998) and various articles. When MIT Press established the Chicago Journal of
Theoretical Computer Science in 1995, they found that their direct costs were lower than their costs for a
print journal; however, their overhead costs were greater (Fisher, 1997). For journals produced in PDF and HTML formats, the indirect costs were even higher.
Odlyzko (1997) analyzed a sample of mathematics and computer science journals and concluded that the average first copy cost for a print journal is between $3,000 and $4,000 per article, although the American Physical Society’s cost was around $2,000. Tenopir and King (1997) found that the average direct cost of a first copy was about $2,000, with indirect costs bringing the total to about $4,000. In comparison, Odlyzko set a range of first copy costs for different electronic journals at between $300 and $1,000 per article. The problem with his comparisons and that of others is that they do not compare like items, nor do the figures for electronic journals include all costs. For example, Tenopir and King (1996) discussed the myth of free storage and communication. Large full-text databases incur significant costs for storage, despite the ongoing drops in storage costs. Other information infrastructure costs include space, staff, software, maintenance, capital costs for upgrades, and ongoing training. In addition, development work and the costs of migration to new media must be included.
The comparisons also do not consider the cost of any “value added” features such as data sets, a journals database, multimedia, and interactivity. Tenopir and King (1998) noted that these processes will improve communication; however, the features add significantly to the production and ongoing maintenance costs. They also found that much of the literature citing very low costs per article for electronic journals
addressed small journals, which paradoxically have lower fixed costs per article. Consequently, the figures would be skewed for medium-sized journals, which have much higher fixed costs, and even more so for large journals.
In describing Earth Sciences, the electronic journal produced collaboratively by the American Geophysical Union, the Association of American Geographers, and the American Meteorological Society, Seitter and Holoviak (1996) noted that the society partners had recognized that the journal would not be less expensive to produce than a comparable print one. As reasons, they cited the costs of high editorial quality, creation of hypertext links, and acquisition and maintenance of the state-of-the-art technology required to deliver a product that takes the fullest advantage of the medium.
Some costs for the user may also be hidden if the parent institution absorbs such costs as Internet fees and ports. Because few people actually read an article online, the cost of printing simply shifts from the publisher to the institution or individual subscriber. On the other hand, the cost of processing electronic journals may be less expensive for libraries because there are no binding costs and less work for cataloging and shelving.
Electronic journals are expected to become ubiquitous given market demand. Odlyzko (1997) predicted, however, that they will not be new products, but rather electronic editions of established print publications. Consequently, they will be just as expensive as their print versions.
Quality Issues
In Internet forum discussions and in the published literature, the word leaner is often used to describe electronic journals that are more cost-effective than print. When we look more closely, however, we discover that leaner usually means eliminating some quality controls and substituting a good enough approach throughout the production and dissemination process. For example, costs are saved by eliminating professional copy editing, sometimes maintaining content editing but not always. The assumption is that authors will compose the final copy, so all tagging, typesetting, and composition costs are eliminated. Advocated dismiss concern about indexing and abstracting by suggesting that browsers can serve the function “nearly as well.” Some authors even propose that the peer review function is
unnecessary.
Incorporating electronic communication into the preparation of a journal for any medium can reduce costs without reducing quality. Peer review by email is much faster and less expensive than using the postal service, for example. Email submissions reduce peer review costs and can ease production costs if authors follow templates that publishers make available on their Websites. Tagging for SGML prepares material for derivative products. But simply eliminating quality checks serves no one well. Nor does it make one form of publication inherently less expensive than another.
“Paper is special for aesthetic reasons that make me somewhat skeptical about predictions that it will die.” -Bringsjord, 1998
Changes in Costs
The costs of electronic production and storage have decreased steadily over the past decade. And we can expect a continuing decline in many areas. However, the advances in technology that reduce the costs of electronic publishing also have a positive impact on print costs. As The Economist (December 19, 1998) noted, printers are now using more digital equipment. American printers now receive 60 percent of their work in an electronic format. Increasing numbers of printers are using digital presses that eliminate film and go straight to plates for printing. Digital printing is of great interest to publishers for at least three reasons:
1. They can reduce shipping costs by sending electronic files to regional printing plants rather than shipping heavy journals.
2. They can cut inventory costs, yet maintain the entire backlist on a permanent basis by printing on demand.
3. They can reduce their time to market.
With these possibilities, “digital publishing could restore the world of reading to the state it enjoyed in the 15th century when print-runs were small” (p. 126).
Researchers will continue to look at costs, which may diverge as some costs in the process of electronic production decrease. For now, however, it appears that there are little or no cost savings with electronic journals if we assume that all costs are included, indirect costs are fully applied, both forms of publishing receive the same quality controls, and differences in market response are taken into account.
PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
Production steps for much of the process between acceptance of an article and dissemination are the same for print and electronic products. Copy editing, tagging and coding, and composition of some sort are all required for quality journals in either format. Mark-up languages such as SGML, although not essential for print, are increasingly used for both print and electronic journals. Toward the end of the process, however, production steps diverge for two reasons: different capabilities and different dissemination methods for the two media.
Capabilities
Print products are “user-friendly,” portable, and long-lasting. Because they are also static, they are
relatively uncomplicated to produce. Production issues generally involve such things as whether a figure or table is of sufficiently high quality, whether the color on the cover is the correct PMS, or whether an image is registered and has proper contrast or clarity. Although problems in these areas are troublesome, they do not reach the same level of complexities as problems that arise from the enhanced capabilities of electronic products.
Interactivity is one of the strengths of electronic products. Their capabilities for searching and linking permit us to create a path to virtually any electronic file or digital element related to the subject, and they also introduce the potential for great complexity in production. Linking to references cited in the text is a common attribute of electronic journals, but forward linking to future citations is also possible. Raney (1998) envisioned dynamic citations in which the reference list, a bibliography of related materials, and inverse citations will all be updated continuously and automatically.
Whereas a print journal can include date only in relatively small tables or in bulky appendixes, the electronic journal can provide large data sets in a form that can be imported to various applications for analysis. Readers can also analyze mathematical equations and computations interactively. For many sciences, animated graphics, video, and even virtual reality take the reader well beyond the flat page of a print product.
All of these additional capabilities require additional steps in the process. Further they must be
accomplished by skilled individuals who require ongoing training. To be sure, the print product is rigid in its production requirements: the content must fit certain size parameters, steps must be taken in a certain order, and all material must be ready for printing at the same time, for example. However, electronic products require more, and more complex attention.
Dissemination Methods
The majority of journals published are still produced solely in print. After they are printed and bound, they are distributed through post services or via alternative delivery systems to compensate for time or distance. On arrival at libraries, they are checked in, catalogued, and then deposited in the reading room for current issues. When a volume of each journal is completed, the issues are bound together and then shelved in the stacks. They may remain there indefinitely or ultimately may be sent to off-site warehouses for storage. Some libraries purchase microform versions of journals to facilitate access to back volumes, discarding the print versions or giving them to other institutions.
An individual who receives a journal either reads it immediately or – more often – scans for future reference. Later, after reading some abstracts and perhaps some articles, the individual either disposes of the issue (possibly after tearing out articles of use) or perhaps maintains the issue loose or bound in a personal library. There have been a significant number of postings on the Web lately from researchers and scholars who wish to donate their large archives of print journal issues. The impetus for these offers may be retirement or the need for physical space. Scholars seem to feel uncomfortable with the thought of merely discarding journals as if they no longer had any value.
Electronic
The majority of electronic journals published are produced in parallel with the original print edition. After composition, they are delivered through a variety of formats such as floppy disk, magnetic tape, CD-ROM, and online. By far, online is the most common format for electronic journals.
There have been debates over how a user obtains access to electronic journals. Libraries prefer the use of Internet Protocol Standard (IPS) addresses, whereas publishers have been inclined to issue personal passwords. In an academic setting where there may be thousands of users, passwords introduce administrative complications that increase the institution’s costs. On the other hand, publishers seeking protection and payment for the investment they have made in developing and producing the journal, fear unauthorized use if passwords are not implemented.
If an individual subscribes to an electronic journal, either the journal appears in their electronic mailbox or they get an email notice that the issue is available on the journal’s Website. Many academic and corporate institutions have established profiles for their individual users; alerting services based on these profiles notify individuals when an article or issue that may be of interest to them has been posted. This “push” model is likely to be the basis for future, customized electronic journals.
Publishers have questioned when to release the electronic journal in relationship to the delivery of the print edition. Should the electronic version be available simultaneously, before, or after the printed edition? Which of these becomes the journal of record? When do the authors stake their claim? Publisher decisions vary. The American Chemical Society (ACS) dealt with the issue by establishing their ASAP – As Soon As Publishable – program. They post articles on the ACS Website as soon as they are completed, and the date that the article is posted online is the date published in the print journal as the publication date.
Access vs. Ownership
This question applies to print and electronic journals. First, a library that does not receive a journal, either because they cancelled it or did not subscribe to it, must find access to the content when patrons request it. Kingma and Irving (1996) contrasted the economics of entrée to print journals by subscription (ownership) and interlibrary loan (access). A single year’s subscription satisfies both current and future patron demand. If the library doesn’t own the journal volume, every time a new patron requests the content, they must obtain access via interlibrary loan or some other delivery service.
Grycz (1995, p. 50) posited that libraries are “rapidly turning from a collections-oriented financial model to an access-based budgeting model.” Among the forces he saw behind this major change were
- costs of maintaining collections - prices for print-based publications - electronic infrastructures
- abbreviated shelf life for some information - changes in patron demands
- operational issues such as real estate values and space usage.
The debate over access versus ownership is intensified with electronic products because the definitions of the terms have changed. With electronic products, subscribers are guaranteed only access, not ownership of the content. If you do not renew or cancel a subscription, are you assured future access? Publishers and librarians are beginning to negotiate terms for ongoing access.
MARKET ISSUES Demand
Originally, the demand for electronic journals came primarily from librarians and a few authors in various fields who were quick to see the potential in electronic publishing. As the technology became readily available, editorial boards and organizations grew to think that electronic publishing would add to their prestige and demonstrate how au courant they were. In most fields, however, the actual number of subscribers and users has been very small when the product actually reached the market.
Even such a passionate advocate as Odlyzko (1996) has conceded that electronic journals have not attracted much attention. In discussing the slow evolution of electronic journals, he noted, “the new electronic versions of established journals have not attracted much attention, and the new purely electronic journals are not deluged with submissions.” Paid subscriptions are a concern of course, but author submissions and citations are just as important. All three are related. Authors are always readers, and they submit
manuscripts to journals they believe will bring them prestige, the right audience, and potential citations. As publishers grow more concerned about retaining authors, the delivery interaction between authors and readers may become a new criterion for submission.
Ketcham & Born, in their annual Periodical Price Survey in 1997, reported that none of the large STM publishers offered their full line of journals solely electronically; instead, most came as free add-ons to print subscribers. For example, in that same year, the Institute of Physics Publishing offered its library subscribers free access to the Institute’s online journals as long as they retained their existing print subscriptions.
Publishers are continuing to look at ways to approach the market. In 1998, the American Psychological Association (APA) began offering an electronic database that incorporates all of their journals only to their members at a fairly nominal fee. The idea was to test how individuals would use the database. Previously, APA had not offered any of their primary journals in electronic form. Overall, the preliminary results indicate that, although some subscribers to multiple print journals dropped one or two, others either stayed the same or increased the number of their print journals. The net result, was am increase in revenue (Susan Knapp, email communication, 1999).
As a professional society, APA is particularly concerned with individual members; consequently, they have chosen to focus on delivery of their journals to those members. The expectation is that members will continue those print journals “nearest and dearest to their interests” for a while and that they will add access to the journals database for searching and current awareness. APA is still looking at how they will make the journals database available to the institutional market.
Economic Impact of Market Demand
Fisher (1997) also noted some market differences when dealing with electronic versus print journals. Two years after its launch, a new MIT Press electronic journal had less than 25 percent of the average paid circulation for print journals that the press started at the same time. Relative subscription figures may change as electronic journals gain greater acceptance, but until they do, the low rates for electronic journals will have an impact on the market for authors.
Further, the relative revenue must be considered in the cost equation when comparing print and electronic journals. If a print journal and an electronic one cost approximately the same to produce and the print journal brings in substantially more income, the electronic journal is clearly the financial loser. We should note that a vocal group of authors believes that journals should be free to readers, with production and dissemination costs for electronic journals financed by page charges. Consequently, they do not factor market differences into the cost equation.
The dynamic for institutional subscribers is related both to market demand and institutional capacity. As noted in our discussion of the “Serials Crisis,” for some time libraries simply have not had the budgets to acquire all the journals published across disciplines.
Global Access
We have yet to see whether the World Wide Web will enhance access to the journal literature or whether it will exacerbate the division between “have” and “have not” populations. Most of the developing, Former Soviet Union, and Eastern Block countries are not equipped with state-of-the-art computer technology. As Henderson (1998) commented, “Not everyone can afford a workstation that costs $5000+, an Internet connection, energy, and supplies of paper.” However, it is possible that these countries may move more quickly in acquiring communications technology than they will in building the capacity to purchase large collections of print journals. The explosion in the use of cellular phones in those nations that had not had universal access to traditional telephone technology is an example of this kind of leapfrogging.
Until there is global access to electronic publications, learned societies fear that we risk disenfranchising a segment of scholars who will not have access to the literature. Holoviak (in Kaufman & Miller, 1992) remarked that this disenfranchisement may be technological, rather than intellectual or economic.
ARCHIVING ISSUES
Traditionally, we have thought of archives as immutable objects, information frozen in time for the use of future generations. Archives of print journals, at least those printed on acid-free paper, are essentially that. As long as they are stored properly, they can be expected to last up to 1,000 years.
Electronic Archives
Electronic archives, on the other hand, require regular refreshing. The archivist – publisher, librarian, or third party – must expect to migrate all files to a new medium perhaps every five years to ensure that the product will not degrade and the point of access will not be outmoded. Raney (1998) noted that
maintaining an electronic archive also implies an obligation to maintain a meta-archive, “a collection of functional reading and transcription devices whose capabilities together span all archived media and their several version.”
Although CD-ROMs, particularly those that are mechanically stamped, may last longer than some had anticipated, there is great concern about whether the hardware will still be in existence when people want access to the content (Hagler, Rutledge, Marcy, & Batchman, 1998). Another problem is that, although it may be possible to retain the content, using all the features of upgraded technology may not be possible, particularly if the original was not carefully tagged. Meyers and Beebe (1997) noted that publishers must make critical format decisions to allow the use of equipment not yet developed to sustain information over the long term.
As publishers struggle to meet increasingly diversified market needs, they have an advantage if their original publications are digitized. They can then produce specialized subsets of the first work.
There is no doubt that the knowledge and tools necessary to maintain a viable electronic archive will be forthcoming. Odlyzko noted in 1996 that HD-ROMs developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory are extremely durable and producing them in stainless steel or irridium would guarantee stability. The high costs of these materials may be overcome. Harnad (1998) suggested that, as producers of journals increasingly have collective vested interests, it will become easy to arrange jointly to upload and upgrade material systematically to keep pace with new developments. If they are joint efforts, costs may also diminish for any single publisher.
However, the range of user preferences must also be considered. We suspect that many scholars would find the prospect of scanning journals and tossing out the original print versions akin to digitizing works of art and burning the original paintings.
Print Archives
For the time being, no successor has surpassed print as an archival medium. Print excels when we consider the cost of archiving, the stability of the product, the management of metadata related to the archive, need for subsequent attention, and user requirements. Those attributes librarians consider most important to preservation – integrity, accuracy, and predictability – are well served with a print archive (Association of Research Libraries, 1994).
Even with print products, there are numerous external threats to the preservation of books, journals, and other publications. Traditionally, libraries coped with these threats alone. Now with the advent of electronic publication and the fact that libraries often purchase only access rather than ownership, publishers must join librarians in their concerns and plans to ensure continued access to the literature. Archiving will likely change dramatically as we resolve such issues as changing versions and potential lack of access, but for now print is an essential archival medium even when digitized copies are retained.
THE MULTI-FORMAT FUTURE
New technology does not necessarily displace older technology. Television did not replace radio, the theater, or movies. Movies did not replace books; in fact, movies generally stimulate greater sales of the books on which they are based. Nor have newspapers or magazines disappeared. Scientist did not stop corresponding with each other when they began publishing in professional journals in the 17th century, and they are unlikely to stop publishing in and reading print journals because they can talk to each other on the Internet in the 21st century.
Use of Scholarly Journals
What may be of most import in looking at the different uses of journals is the consistent and frequent willingness of scholars and scientists, all of whom have dwindling amounts of time to pursue information, to spend time reading scholarly articles (Tenopir & King, 1998). Scholarly journals are critical to the development of knowledge, and studies indicate that scientists do in fact read them. Tenopir & King (1998) found that the average university scientist spent 182 hours a year reading articles, whereas the average scientist in a non-university setting spent 64 hours reading articles. Furthermore, they read articles long after they were published, mostly for research, whereas they read new articles for current awareness.
The value of reading to research, teaching, and other scientific endeavors had been proven through the years. Tenopir and King (1997) also found that those scientists who read more than their colleagues were found to be better and more productive workers. In addition, they found that scientists who receive recognition from their employers, peers, and professional societies read more than those who are not recognized.
Benefits of Print Journals
No electronic file can replace the satisfaction of turning pages in a volume, underlining, scribbling in margins, and comparing two passages side-by-side. Furthermore, researchers have found that the components of a printed page, as the journal format has evolved over the past 300 years, actually help the reader absorb the information (Schaffner, 1994). Thus, the abstracts, references, heads, and subheads – presented through typography – are guides to reading and understanding. This factor, in addition to the tactile sensations and portability of the print journal, may account for why scholars prefer to read articles in print.
Benefits of Electronic Products
Electronic products bring multiple dimensions to scholarly communication, in addition to their speed of delivery. Interactivity, searchability, animation, and linkages are just some of the benefits of electronic products.
In the future the market will demand not only greater functionality and more rapid delivery, but cross-publisher databases. Already libraries and their patrons are calling for full-subject databases that incorporate all of the literature in electronic form. These databases are likely to include indexes and abstracts, as well as full text.
However, there are side effects to the benefits that have not yet been fully resolved. For example, although automated searches and links lead scholars to information they might not have found in print products, they also result in a fragmentation of the literature. There is a real danger that some work will be taken out of context or that – with a vast array of information from which to choose – scholars may overlook important findings and conclusions.
“…electronic publication may serve niche audiences differently than paper publication…” -Tenopir & King, 1998
AAU/ARL Models
In 1993, the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, formed the Task Force on a National Strategy for Managing Scientific and Technical Information (Association of Research Libraries, 1994). After extensive analysis, they proposed three approaches to managing scientific information, which they termed Classical, Modernized, and Emergent.
Whereas the Classical model is the print scientific journal as it has appeared for over three centuries, the Modernized model incorporates different forms of delivery as well as different ways of finding the content. The user may find the journal in print, online, or in a document delivery service. Nonetheless, the content remains basically the same: a peer-reviewed, scientific journal following the conventions of the scholarly journal. The Emergent model, on the other hand, incorporates not just a total electronic form of delivery, but a different type of information and dialogue. This model represents an interactive way of doing research, rather than a mode of communicating findings and recommendations.
AAU and ARL Models
Classical: This is the traditional print-on-paper scientific journal. In early 1999, for most fields, it is the primary form of scientific communication.
Modernized: In this model, information is generally “published” and is primarily in print form, but there are expanding options for delivery and access. The model incorporates electronic journals, document delivery, and just-in-time publishing.
Emergent: Technology-based management model using computers and communications programs to share instruments, primary data, and software. Envisioned as used for “genuinely innovative” purposes, not just updating page-formatted information. Manages all functions of scientific communication from generation and creation through use. The Human Genome project was cited as an example of an Emergent model of communication.
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The task force projected that, because different disciplines embrace technologies at different paces, the models will progress at dissimilar rates across science. They also noted that the transition is not inevitable. Members concluded that the Classical, all-paper model, will be sustained until electronic products meet the following requirements:
- Receive peer review.
- Have prestige equal to print journals.
- Are archived to assure integrity and preservation.
Looking over the 20 years between 1995 and 2015, the task force projected fairly significant increases in the Emergent model from a tiny slice of the total scientific communication in 1995 to approximately 20 percent in 2015. Yet at the end of those two decades, they expected that all-print journals will still constitute 50 percent of the total scientific communications.
Use of Multiple Formats
To find information, scientists use a variety of tools. Scientists will use electronic products to search related topics, find specific articles, and view graphic or animated interpretations. For ongoing research, as opposed to current awareness, they may go back and forth between their print copy and the electronic one, scribbling on the margins in the paper and conducting data analyses in the electronic.
More experienced researchers are also likely to make greater use of a traditional abstracting and indexing service, because they have learned that searching unstructured information can be inefficient. After going down multiple dead alleys and then overlooking an important resource using browsers, they appreciate the filtering advantage of the traditional index. Dynamic citations, such as the Institute of Physics’
HyperCite™ (http://www.iop.org), and dynamic abstracts, such as IEEE’s Bibliographies On-Line
(http://www.ieee.org), are examples of the new and powerful search and citation capabilities coming online. In addition, one of the features of Elsevier’s ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com) is SummaryPlus, which includes full bibliographic information, abstracts, and index terms, as well as all tables, graphics, and references.
Scientists are likely to continue to want paper when they are reading an article or browsing through an issue. In addition to all the tactile satisfaction that print offers, print journals bring a wholeness that eases the problems of fragmentation. Scholars who pick up a print journal to read rarely put it down without looking at least at the table of contents, the editorial, and the letters. Therefore, they get a context for the information they originally sought.
Use of articles differs according to their age, their level of specialization, their physical location, and the number of scientists who practice the discipline. These differences led Tenopir and King (1998) to propose a site-license approach that would permit dissemination on paper as well as electronic access. They suggested that print journals might be best for people who read the journal extensively and do not have easy access to a shared collection, for collections of current periodicals, and for centralized older collections that are not held electronically. Electronic access, on the other hand, might be best for low-circulation journals, those readers use infrequently, and older articles.
Although scholarly communication is likely to comprise multiple formats overall, the forms will vary from specialty to specialty. For example, electronic-only journals may be the best choice for highly specialized fields with very limited audiences. Others may use the free-wheeling online environment of chat rooms, list serves, and so forth to conduct research and develop findings, then use the traditional scholarly journal in both print and electronic form to communicate findings and make recommendations to the entire community.
“Both publishers and librarians are locked in to a multiple medium environment for the foreseeable future. The paper-based journal will survive, but electronic products, particularly material delivered over the Internet, will become more important…”
- Cox, 1998, p. 164.
TRANSITIONING TO THE FUTURE
The idea of the electronic journal completely supplanting the traditional print publication can be likened to previous predictions, such as the one that television would eradicate radio. Since the early 1980s, we have heard dire predictions about the demise of print; yet print products of all types have higher readership than ever before. The excitement generated by the widespread adoption of the Internet and now the World Wide Web has misled many to believe that electronic communication will be the only form to exist into the future. Standage (1998, p. 211) described the current excitement about the Internet as the latest in a long “tradition of technological utopianism,” which he traced back 150 years to the first transatlantic telegraph cables.
Although the telegraph did not herald a utopia, it did change the world’s attitude toward technology. Recent advances in electronic communication are social phenomena as much as they are technological. The World Wide Web forms communities of science potentially open to all. Electronic media expand our ability to develop and communicate knowledge, building on print foundations. Electronic journals will become increasingly more accepted as all of the parties in scholarly communication work to bring about changes. Authors, publishers, librarians, aggregators, and other suppliers will be involved in correcting current problems. Once scholars and scientists feel surety that electronic journals can maintain an unbroken record of science with the high level of quality and standards that exist for print journals, publication in them will be accepted as a true contribution to knowledge development. Electronic media will also be used for a variety of new kinds of scholarly communication.
Nonetheless, scholars and scientists will continue to use both electronic and print journals because they serve different purposes for different aspects of their research and professional reading. The world is expanding, not contracting. There is no reason to believe that the emergence and rapid growth of electronic media must result in the demise of print products. There is every reason to believe that they will
complement each other for much of the 21st century. We foresee a multi-format future for scholarly communication, one with increasingly sophisticated tools in both print and electronic form.
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ADDITIONAL READING To Publish and Perish
This special issue of Policy Perspectives describes the library view of the serials crisis and possible solutions to the problems. The strategies outlined are also those included in the plans for SPARC. Association of Research Libraries, Association of American Universities, and the Pew Higher Education Roundtable. (1998). To publish and perish. [Online]. Policy Perspectives, 7, 1-12. Available. http://www.irhe.upenn.edu/pp.
Relationship Between Publishers and Academics
Graham described some of the underlying issues in the somewhat strained relationship between publishers and the academics who are their authors and their audience.
Graham, G. (1992). The relationship between publishers and academics. Scholarly Publishing, 24, 13-23.
Tragic Loss or Good Riddance? The Impending Demise of Traditional Scholarly Journals Odlyzko described why and how he thinks print journals will be replaced by electronic communications. Odlyzko, A.M. (1996). Tragic loss or good riddance? The impending demise of traditional scholarly journals. In Peek, R.P. & Newby, G.B. (Eds.). Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier. (pp. 91-102). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
