             _______  _______                                         __

            / _____/ /__  __/                                        / /

           / /__       / / ____    __  __  __ ___  __ __    ____    / /

          / ___/  __  / / / __ \  / / / / / //__/ / //_ \  / __ \  / /

         / /____ / /_/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / / /     / /  / / / /_/ / / /

         \_____/ \____/  \____/  \____/ /_/     /_/  /_/  \__/_/ /_/

 



June, 1994              _EJournal_  Volume 4  Number 2           ISSN 1054-1055

                      There are 886 lines in this issue.



                   An Electronic Journal concerned with the

                implications of electronic networks and texts.

                       2879 Subscribers in 37 Countries

 

              University at Albany, State University of New York



                            EJOURNAL@ALBANY.bitnet

  

CONTENTS:                                                      [This is line 20]



   A ROLE FOR LIBRARIES IN ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION         [ Begins at line  68 ]

	

	by Frank Quinn

		Mathematics

       		Virginia Tech



   ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: NEITHER FREE NOR EASY             [ Begins at line 417 ]

	

	by Fytton Rowland

		Information & Library Studies		

		Loughborough University of Technology



   University Press Announcements:                        [ Begin  at line 542 ]

	

	Electronic Publication at Johns Hopkins: Project Muse

	     	Susanna Pathak

	Electronic Publication at MIT

		Janet Fisher



   Editorial Notes and Comment                            [ Begin  at line 713 ]

        

	This Issue and VPIEJ-L	

        Electronic Journals and Speed 

	Library Survey via _EJournal_, December 1992

	Fewer Subscribers? 



   Information about _EJournal_                           [ Begins at line 805 ]

  

        About Subscriptions and Back Issues

        About Supplements to Previous Texts       

        About _EJournal_

 

   People                                                 [ Begins at line 848 ]

 

        Board of Advisors

        Consulting Editors



*******************************************************************************

* This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1994 by      *

* _EJournal_.  Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its  *

* contents, but no one may "own" it.  Any and all financial interest is hereby*

* assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts.  This notification*

* must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_.                              *

*******************************************************************************





A ROLE FOR LIBRARIES IN ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION                        [line 68]



		Frank Quinn

		Mathematics, Virginia Tech

		quinn@math.vt.edu



  ABSTRACT: This is a proposal for direct involvement of libraries in

  the publication of scholarly journals.  The issues discussed are

  money, standards, copyright and access, and the roles of

  individuals.  The goal is a managed transition to electronic

  publication which does not sacrifice quality and is within current

  budgetary constraints.



THE PROBLEMS                                                                  

                                                                             

  Journal subscription costs have been rising rapidly and have

  absorbed all movable resources in many libraries.  Subscriptions are

  being cancelled, and access to scholars has been reduced.  Even so,

  shelves are filling rapidly.  Knowledge continues to grow, and more

  outlets are needed, not fewer.  Miraculously, a solution seems at

  hand: electronic communication is cheap, fast, and accessible. 

  Electronic journals seem a wonderful solution: pay less, get more. 

  Unfortunately serious problems with access, quality control, and

  financing have held up development of this medium.  The first

  experimental offerings by commercial publishers are unattractive in

  several ways: they restrict access; some of them shift traditional

  library functions (e.g., archiving) to the publishers; and there are

  no indications that they will be much cheaper.  At the other extreme,

  preprint data bases and homebrew journals have sprung up on the

  network.  These are free, but have problems with stability, quality

  control, visibility, and acceptance.  It is not at all obvious how

  these disparate interests and forces will eventually come together.



  One approach to electronic journals is to simply wait and see what

  happens.  No doubt a satisfactory system will eventually evolve,

  much as paper journals evolved.  But there are strong motivations

  for implementing a consciously designed system, if a satisfactory

  one can be found.  First, evolution is slow and expensive, and the

  library crisis is here now.  Second, there are serious concerns that

  pressures from preprint databases and electronic journals, on top of

  financial problems, will cause a collapse of paper publication

  before a replacement is ready.  Third, evolution involves trying

  different systems and weeding out the ones which don't work.  But

  the failures will pollute the literature and impose a burden on the

  scholarly enterprise at a time when efficiency and effectiveness are

  more important than ever.                                          [line 113]



  Finally, important features of the current system are simplicity,

  credibility, and inertia.  Scholars write to high standards and

  submit to a relatively rigorous editing and refereeing process

  because the options are simple: do that or don't get published; they

  are used to the system; and they accept this discipline because they

  believe everyone else does, and everybody gains from it.  An

  unmanaged transition will lose much of this.  It will be complex,

  will have to earn its own credibility, and will have widely

  accessible outlets for substandard work.  No doubt some areas will

  manage to keep high standards, but many will not, and there will be

  a net decline in quality.  A key goal in a managed transition is not

  just to find a system that works, but also transfer the credibility

  and acceptance of the current system to the new one.



THE IDEA



  The basic idea is that every research library should publish

  electronic scholarly journals.  However the terms "publish" and

  "journal" need clarification, and "why libraries?" needs an answer. 

  We give a first pass here, and add detail in the following sections.



  First, "publish": this would mean permanently maintaining a file of

  reviewed and edited papers, freely accessible over the electronic

  network.  It would also mean managing the editorial structure (see

  "Standards") to maintain standards.  It need not involve editorial

  work, keyboarding, file formatting, etc.  These, to the extent they

  are done, could be the responsibility of editors and authors.



  Next, "journal": this is a repository for primary scholarly work. In

  the beginning it should look like a paper journal, except for

  format.  Some additions might be made, for instance attaching to

  each paper a list of errata, and forward citations approved by the

  editor.  But at present real experiments with the electronic medium

  should be left to the secondary literature, to preserve the

  credibility of the process. 



  This scenario does not address the secondary literature: texts,

  review and survey books, encyclopedias, many monographs, etc.  The

  basic structure for dealing with these does not seem to be in

  immediate trouble, so we can afford to let them evolve.  Technical

  issues such as file standards, formats, and access modes are also

  not addressed here.  These vary from field to field, and information

  should be available from professional societies.                    [line 157]



  Finally, "why libraries?": first, to maintain standards (and

  credibility) editors must be accountable to someone.  Now they are

  usually directly accountable to publishers, and indirectly to

  librarians who decide whether or not to subscribe to the journal. 

  Ideally, publishers would continue in this role, but most are

  unlikely to adopt policies which would make this possible (see

  "Money").  So it makes sense for librarians to move forward a few

  steps in the quality-control chain.  The other reason is, to quote

  the bank robber, "that's where the money is."  Most scholarly

  journals are primarily supported by library subscriptions, paid from

  monies earmarked for the support of scholarly information needs.  It

  is not realistic to expect new sources of support, nor is it

  realistic to hope that library subscription budgets can be shifted

  elsewhere for this.  So research libraries are nearly the only

  places professionally managed electronic journals can be supported.



STANDARDS



  The greatest problem is maintenance of standards of correctness and

  quality of exposition.  Not only to ensure that the material

  published is of good quality, but to provide ways for readers,

  authors, and librarians to be assured of this.



  The key to quality is, of course, the editor or editorial board. 

  But it is not satisfactory to rely on the reputation of the editor

  as a gauge of quality.  Librarians and readers often do not have

  information about reputations.  There are not enough people with

  appropriate reputations who are willing to do editorial work.  And

  it is unstable: a change of editors might significantly change the

  quality of the journal.



  For a journal to have a reputation (and existence) separate from

  that of the editor, the editor must be accountable to someone.  In

  this proposal that person would be a librarian.  Files for the

  journal would be maintained in the library.  This would address

  important concerns about security and permanence, but the main point

  here is that it provides a mechanism for accountability.  In an

  extreme situation, analogous to the firing of an editor by a

  publisher, the librarian could deny write access to the file.       [line 197]



  In most instances librarians do not have the expertise to monitor

  the standards of a journal, or even the qualifications of editors. 

  Further, they would lack the feedback (and discipline) that

  publishers get from subscription levels.  There are several ways to

  get expert advice, and distribute the responsibility for monitoring. 

  One is to have a "board of trustees" of recognized experts.  The

  editor would serve "at the pleasure" of the trustees: they appoint

  new editors and would have the authority to remove an editor if

  necessary.  Trustees would meet periodically--say yearly--for a

  report from the editor and to review standards and policy.  Since

  trustees would not be directly involved in editorial work it should

  be much easier to recruit eminent trustees than eminent editors. 

  And listing the names of trustees as well as editors would allow

  readers to use the trustees' reputations as guides to quality of the

  journal. 



  Another possibility for accountability is that a department could

  sponsor a journal: "The Wobegone Journal of Irony, published under

  the auspices of the Wobegone University Department of Ironical

  Studies, G. Kellor editor."  Care should be taken to ensure it is

  not a vanity journal for the department.  Finally, professional

  societies might respond to the electronic confusion by establishing

  accreditation boards for journals.  This would amount to a partial

  centralization of the "trustee" function. 



  There is actually not much new in this.  Editors of commercial

  journals are accountable to the publisher, and people often use the

  publisher as a guide to quality of the journal.  Professional

  societies usually have committees of de facto trustees to oversee

  editors of society journals.  The "trustee" mechanism for ensuring

  quality and stability is used by universities and major

  corporations.  And Universities, physicians, and barbers are subject

  to accreditation or licensing.  The only novelty is the location of

  the person to whom the editor would be accountable.



  It should be emphasized that the `standards' issues of concern here

  are correctness, reliability, and quality of exposition.  Importance

  or interest are not involved.  The first reason for this is that

  boring but correct and well-exposed work does not damage the

  integrity of the literature, and may eventually be useful to

  someone.  The other reason is that we already have a satisfactory

  way to grade papers according to interest: a large array of journals

  with varying degrees of specialization and standards of importance. 

  Electronic publication should preserve this diversity, and not be

  just one huge database.  What we largely do not have now

  (particularly in the sciences), and don't want to have, are large

  numbers of journals which vary significantly in two dimensions:

  standards of correctness as well as significance.                   [line 246]



MONEY



  Electronic journals based in libraries would lack most of the

  obvious expenses of paper journals: printing, mailing, bookkeeping

  costs associated with subscriptions, and publisher profit. 

  Keyboarding costs can be shifted to authors by requesting submission

  in standard file formats, and assessing page charges otherwise. 

  Copyediting can be abandoned, or reserved for extreme cases.  Most

  editors and reviewers of scholarly journals are already unpaid.  But

  some expenses would remain, and there might be new ones.  If a

  journal has trustees it would be appropriate to at least help pay

  their travel expenses to meetings with the editors.  A reasonable

  guess is that costs could be held to about 20% of the current

  levels. 



  In support of this guess I would like to relate my own experiences

  as editor.  In 1991-92 expenses charged to my publisher were $1,300

  for postage and some secretarial support.  Postage costs have

  declined since then due to a nearly complete change to electronic

  mail.  During this time 154 papers were processed, and about 40

  accepted for publication.  Most authors provided useable electronic

  files.  Keyboarding services for the remainder were readily

  available locally, but I expect offering these services to authors

  at cost would have increased the number of author-prepared files to

  near 100%.  I would have wanted to support the keyboarding of a few

  third-world submissions.  There was essentially no copyediting: most

  rewriting involved technical issues and was done by the author.  In

  cases of linguistic difficulty it was usually effective to suggest

  seeking help from a colleague.  This experience leads me to believe

  I could have delivered complete electronic files for this journal--

  lacking professional polish, to be sure, but completely usable-- for

  about $2,000. 



  Many economies are also available to commercial publishers.  We

  could stay with publishers and avoid this whole scenario if they

  would seriously address the cost and access issues.  For example, by

  offering scholarly journals electronically, with minimal

  restrictions on use, at 25% the current price.  Less generous terms

  would just continue a process which will lead to the collapse of

  commercial journal publication.  In some fields this collapse is

  nearly certain within ten years, and possible within five.         [line 288]



  Expenses of library publication must be borne by the publishing

  institution.  Attempts to shift them to users will meet with the

  same problems of access and collection which make commercial

  electronic publication unattractive.  Shifting expenses to other

  departments in the institution would create conflicts of interest,

  and might create vanity presses.  Also the money isn't there.  But

  in research libraries these expenses would not be new, or unrelated

  to the mission.  These costs are already borne through subscription

  charges.  It will cost more to publish an electronic journal than to

  subscribe to a paper one.  But the proper perspective is that each

  library-published journal saves the community of research libraries

  80%.  If a small fraction of subscription budgets were diverted to

  direct publication, the result would be a huge increase of easily

  accessible material.  And movement of a small fraction of existing

  journals into libraries would even render cancellations unnecessary

  for such a diversion. 



COPYRIGHT AND ACCESS



  Copyrights are currently used primarily to protect the revenue

  stream of publishers.  Library-based journals could be much more

  relaxed about this.  It would make sense to allow the copying of

  entire articles, with the original citation, in any medium for any

  purpose.  Other libraries might want to load them into their own

  archives, for instance to speed up searches.  Any user should be

  able to download and print them.  The local copy store or library

  could download and print copies for the electronically

  disadvantaged.  They could be included in specialized reprint

  collections, and accessible through commercial databases.  In short

  they should have all the functionality that preprint databases do. 

  The only remaining functions of copyrights would seem to be to

  provide legal recourse in cases of plagiarism, and to avoid having

  individual authors imposing restrictions on access. 



  Commercial publishers who want to retain a journal presence will

  also have to relax about access.  For instance, back issues over two

  or three years old probably should be freely accessible over

  networks from any library.  There is really not much benefit to

  "protecting" back issues, and it would be onerous to libraries and

  unattractive to authors and users.  The general principle is that

  functionality must be as close as possible to that of preprint

  databases: they are now the competition.                            [line 331]



WHAT YOU CAN DO



  If you are a librarian: work toward having someone in the library

  (with experience and integrity) designated as the "publisher." 

  Develop (if you do not have) the ability to access electronic

  journals and print out copies as needed.  Develop the capacity to

  securely maintain on-line journal files.  Make known your

  willingness to take on electronic journals, but insist on visible

  quality control through some mechanism like trustees: do not create

  a vanity press.  Cancel subscriptions to provide resources for this

  (this will cause temporary inconvenience, but is easily justified). 

  And work toward having this accepted in the library community as a

  professional responsibility rather than an option.  This is a

  community problem, and requires a community response: it will go

  very slowly if everyone waits for Harvard to do it all. 



  If you are a commercial publisher: if you can bring yourself to do

  it, slash costs and offer journals electronically with the freest

  possible access, at 25% of list price.  Offer unprofitable or

  marginal journals "free to a good home" in a library.  And shift

  your offerings toward monographs.  The end result of this scenario

  is that libraries will service their journal needs with a fraction

  of the current budget.  But a great deal of this budget was

  kidnapped from monograph budgets and would return there if freed. 

  Monograph sales can be expected to increase substantially, and

  should be safe well into the next century.  In the short run this

  scenario offers lower profits than toughing it out until the

  collapse.  The advantages are control over the transition and a

  graceful exit which will minimize damage to the disciplines you

  service. 



  If you are an institutional administrator: encourage your library to

  participate vigorously.  Encourage your University Press (if you

  have one) to transfer its journals to the library.  Encourage

  subscription cancellations, or provide bridge funding to support

  these journals until similar transfers elsewhere generate savings to

  pay for them.  This transition will help with several very pressing

  problems (information access, library budgets and space shortfalls). 

  Vigorous and concerted action will bring relief rapidly.           [line 371]



  If you are an editor: encourage your publisher to participate

  voluntarily in this transition.  Explore the possibility of moving

  to a library.  You should be prepared to offer a visible

  accountability system, for instance by recruiting eminent scholars

  or previous editors to serve as trustees.  This will substantially

  increase the confidence of authors and readers in a smooth

  transition. 



  If you are a scholar: seriously consider publishing your work in a

  library-based journal, if you are satisfied an appropriate chain of

  accountability is in place.  Your work will probably appear more

  quickly, and may be far more accessible to most of the profession. 

  If you are thinking about starting a journal, approach your library

  (or someone else's library).  But be prepared to address the

  accountability issue.  And be aware that electronic publication does

  not avoid many of the problems of starting a journal.  In

  particular, gaining acceptance and having an impact still requires

  recruiting outstanding papers for the first few issues, and

  establishing high standards. 



SUMMARY



  Change is coming, forced by rising production of knowledge and

  falling library budgets, and enabled by electronic communication. 

  Left to itself the transition will be chaotic and damaging.  A

  controlled transition has been described which would serve the needs

  of scholarship within current budgets and without sacrificing

  quality.  The major features are a shift of primary journal

  publication to research libraries, and concentration of commercial

  publishers on texts and monographs.



		Frank Quinn

  			Mathematics

	  		Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

  			quinn@math.vt.edu





[[ This essay in Volume 4 Number 2 of _EJournal_ (June, 1994) is (c) copyright

_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give it away.  _EJournal_ hereby

assigns any and all financial interest to Frank Quinn.  This note must

accompany all copies of this text. ]] 



==============================================================================



ELECTRONIC JOURNALS:  NEITHER FREE NOR EASY                         [line 417]



		Fytton Rowland, Research Fellow

		Department of Information & Library Studies

		Loughborough University of Technology

		J.F.Rowland@lut.ac.uk



  My perspective on questions of publishing, archiving and accessing

  electronic journals is that of someone who trained as an

  information scientist, has worked for most of the last 25 years for

  not-for-profit learned-society publishers, and is now a research

  fellow in electronic publishing in a university information &

  library studies department.  My impression is that much of the

  continuing debate actually has little to do with the paper versus

  electronic issue. It is in fact quite an old controversy that

  predates the computer, and reflects the animosities that often exist

  between academics, librarians and publishers -- with the publishers

  being, on the whole, the people that everyone else loves to hate.



  Academics have long wanted to control their own publication system,

  and initially did so.  Scholarly journals were edited by academics

  in their spare time and published by university presses or learned

  societies.  If any full-time staff worked on them, they were

  relatively low-status people very much in an "editorial assistant"

  position.  Nor, indeed, did academics hold librarians in very much

  higher esteem, and although today academic librarians usually do

  formally have academic-related status, they and their skills still

  are not always respected by academics.  The substantial departmental

  library at one of Britain's most prestigious university departments

  --the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge-- for example employs no

  qualified library staff at all, not even a paraprofessional; the

  physicists run it themselves.  I believe that there is a romantic

  idea that if only academics did the whole job themselves, as they

  did in some golden era in the past, then scholarly communication

  would be quicker, cheaper and more effective than it is with these

  various professional intermediaries --publishers, subscription

  agents, librarians-- involved.



  Why, then, did the golden age pass away?  Was it just because of all

  this slow and messy business of putting ink on to paper?  I believe

  that the major reason why professionals came into the picture was

  because of the sheer quantity of scholarly material being published

  --that is, because of the growth of the scholarly community

  producing papers.  A university library of a million volumes has to

  have a staff of professional librarians.  And while a journal

  publishing 15 papers a year could be run on an "amateur" basis, one

  publishing 1500 papers a year cannot, regardless of the medium it is

  published in.  The sheer administrative load of organizing the

  input, refereeing, copyediting, formatting, and distribution of that

  many documents (including the ones that get rejected, which generate

  work too) requires full-time staff.  And since these people have to

  eat, they need a salary.  Contrary to what some participants in

  discussions of electronic journals have alleged, it is this area of

  "first-copy cost" that is responsible for most of the cover price of

  a journal, not the paper, printing, binding and postage costs.  Yes,

  a purely electronic journal is inherently somewhat cheaper than a

  paper one; but not a tiny fraction of the cost.                  [line 473]



  There is also the question of subsidy --an emotive word.  I prefer

  to put it that the costs of running a high-quality scholarly

  communication system have to be covered from somewhere.

  Traditionally, one major route by which universities subsidized

  scholarly publication was by giving their libraries funds to buy

  journals.  Controversy arose because commercial publishers, from the

  1940s onwards and led by the unlamented Robert Maxwell, realized

  that there was scope for making lots of profit here.  However,

  not-for-profit publishers --university presses and learned

  societies-- have a big presence in the scholarly publishing field

  and cannot be criticized for excessive profit-taking.  The main cost

  is simply the pay of the people who do the work.  Of course, these

  people can be (and in the case of the presently free electronic

  journals on the Internet, presumably are) subsidized in a different

  way, by the university that originates the journal paying for them. 

  But for how long?  And for how long will the network itself be

  entirely free of charge at the point of use to the academic

  community, anyway?



  Another question --raised by Frank Quinn-- is how much of the work

  done by journal staff needs doing at all?  Is copyediting necessary? 

  The existing network journals are of necessity put out in straight

  ASCII text for the most part, while paper journals that are being

  experimentally offered in dual form (paper and electronic) acquire

  their page-image bitmaps by scanning the printed pages.  The craft

  knowledge of typographers, graphic designers and even the despised

  copyeditors is not negligible.  They all serve to turn a crude,

  possibly unreadable manuscript into a publishable paper.  What an

  advance it was when Graphical User Interfaces like Windows

  replaced purely textual DOS screens --a great increase in

  user-friendliness.  In the  same way, a pleasingly designed and laid

  out printed page, written in correct  and readable English, is more

  user-friendly than a typescript (however scientifically correct) in

  poor English.  So even if no printed edition is published, I believe

  that the requirement for quality will mean that some copyediting and

  design work will need to be done by someone.                        [line 510]



  In case it is felt that I am a pure Luddite, let me finally say that

  I do believe that the networks have transformed informal academic

  communication beyond all recognition, and in particular have

  democratized the invisible college.  Whereas in the past only those

  who actually received the personal letters or phone calls, or who

  could afford to attend the international conferences, were admitted

  to the invisible college, now anyone anywhere can join discussion

  lists or computer conferences or look at bulletin boards.  This must

  be an improvement.  And formal communication should certainly be

  quicker, and somewhat cheaper.  The additional features available

  online, most notably the ability to append open peer commentary to

  papers, are very valuable too, and when the supernetworks come along

  we will be able to add multimedia features to "papers."  But we

  should not kid ourselves that this will all happen at no cost and

  without specialist staff.



       		Fytton Rowland

			Research Fellow

			Department of Information & Library Studies

			Loughborough University of Technology  

                	J.F.Rowland@lut.ac.uk

                    

[[ This essay in Volume 4 Number 2 of _EJournal_ (June, 1994) is (c) copyright

_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give it away.  _EJournal_ hereby

assigns any and all financial interest to Fytton Rowland.  This note must

accompany all sopies of this text. ]]



=============================================================================





  ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION AT JOHNS HOPKINS:  PROJECT MUSE           [line 542]

		                         

  		  Susanna Pathak

		  Johns Hopkins          

                  spathak@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu



  In one of the first joint ventures of its kind, the Johns Hopkins 

  University Press, the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, and Homewood Academic

  Computing have joined forces to launch Project Muse, an initiative that

  enables networked electronic access to the Press's scholarly journals.

  This collaboration draws the Johns Hopkins University community together

  to move scholarly communication into the electronic age and develop an

  economic model that addresses rising costs and diminishing budgets.

 

  The first phase of the project, completed in February 1994, is a freely

  accessible prototype consisting of current issues of Configurations, MLN

  (Modern Language Notes), and ELH (English Literary History).  The fully

  formatted text of these journals is now available on the Internet via

  online access to the library's server (http://muse.mse.jhu.edu).  Features

  include subject, title, and author indexes; instant hypertext links to

  tables of contents, endnotes and illustrations; Boolean searches of text

  and tables of contents; and voice and textual annotations.  Several

  members of the scholarly community at Johns Hopkins have already used this

  resource, and one professor describes it as "an intelligent, incredibly

  easy system to use . . . an actual research tool."

 

  The prototype is accessed through a networked hypermedia information

  retrieval system known as the World Wide Web (WWW).  It can be viewed and

  searched using any of a number of freely available WWW readers, but runs

  optimally under the Mosaic reader developed by the National Center for

  Supercomputing Applications.  Users of Mosaic can annotate text, record

  paths taken during online sessions, download text for printing, and create

  "hot lists" of frequently accessed documents.  Mosaic readers are

  available for a variety of operating systems, including Unix, Mac, and

  Windows machines.  Users of the prototype may send comments and

  suggestions with the online form provided in the prototype or via regular

  e-mail (ejournal@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu).



  The short-range goals of Project Muse, which the prototype enables us to

  achieve, are the creation of an easy-to-use electronic-journal environment

  with searching and multimedia features that cannot be duplicated in print,

  and the collection of data on amounts and types of usage for an access and

  costing model.  Long-range goals are to offer reasonably priced electronic

  journals to university libraries and to use online technology to make

  works of scholarship more widely available within individual university

  communities.                                                        [line 587]

 

  If funding for capital costs can be raised, the project team aims to mount

  about forty of the Press's journals in math, the humanities, and the

  social sciences.  These issues will appear on a prepublication basis and

  will be available electronically a few weeks in advance of the printed

  version.  Beyond developing a prototype, Project Muse has enabled the

  university press, the library, and the computing center to engage in a

  meaningful dialogue about the current state of the scholarly communication

  process. We believe that this dialogue will not only influence the final

  appearance, price, and distribution method of the Press's online journals,

  but the shape of scholarly publishing in the information age.

                               

			Susanna Pathak

                        	Project Muse Team

				Johns Hopkins University Press

				spathak@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu

  	

 ==============================================================================



ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION AT MIT                                        [line 607]

				

		Janet H. Fisher

		Associate Director for Journals Publishing

		MIT Press

                Fisher@mitvma.mit.edu



  Beginning in late summer 1994 we will begin publishing a

  peer-reviewed electronic  journal called _Chicago Journal of

  Theoretical Computer Science_.  With the  same attention to

  peer-review and editorial quality that the Press applies to its

  twenty-eight print journals, we believe this journal will be

  important to the scholarly community for several reasons.  It



* provides high-quality, backed by a standard publisher

* incorporates the advantages of the electronic medium that scholars

need

* gives librarians an electronic publication purchasable by standard

subscription procedures, accompanied by liberal use-guidelines

consistent with its electronic form of publication; it is available

through vendors

* is committed to inclusion in traditional indexing and abstracting

services

* is committed to archiving by agreement with the MIT Libraries and a

back-up archive



  We anticipate publishing 15 articles in the first calendar year (the

  equivalent of a standard tri-annual publication); subscriptions

  will be available for $125 for institutions and $30 for individuals

  for a calendar year period.  Subscribers will receive a notice each

  time an article is published, and instructions on how to retrieve the

  article from the Press's FTP site.  Because of the need to transmit

  math, graphics, and symbols, articles will be available in LaTeX

  source (which is ubiquitous in the field of computer science, and

  thus preferred by individuals) and PostScript (which is preferred

  by libraries).  Hardcopy of articles will be available from MIT

  Libraries Document Services Department.



  The journal will publish peer reviewed articles describing new and

  significant research results in all areas of theoretical computer

  science.  In addition, articles will have an associated file called

  Forward Pointers that will refer to subsequent papers, results,

  improvements, etc., that are relevant to it.  These Pointers will

  change with time as conjectures stated in the paper are settled or

  new relevant results are discovered.  Insertion of Forward Pointers

  will be controlled by the editors.  Articles will also have an

  associated file of comments which will be unrefereed, unmoderated,

  and easily accessible from the article.                             [line 654]



  Subscribers will be allowed unlimited access to the articles

  published during the calendar year.  In later years, subscribers

  will be able to access the file of articles published before the

  current subscription year by paying an additional fee above their

  subscription fee.  We are considering providing electronic copies of

  articles to non-subscribers for a per-article fee.



  We are publishing this journal without difficult-to-administer

  restrictions with the assumption that librarians and individuals

  will be willing to pay for what they use.  Having paid a

  subscription price, we believe libraries should be able to use the

  journal in a way that reflects what they currently do with paper

  journals and that recognizes the differences inherent in the

  electronic medium, such as:



* store articles electronically on a library server and allow the local

community to print or download copies

* print out and store articles on library shelves

* print out articles and allow users to take them from the library

* print out articles and store them on reserve if requested by a professor

* print out articles and share them with other libraries under standard

interlibary loan procedures

* place articles on a campus network for access by local users

* convert articles to another medium (i.e. microfilm/fiche/CD) for storage



  Individual subscribers will be able to:



* store articles on their personal computer

* download and retain a paper copy of the article

* convert the files to another program

* perform reasonable format conversions



  The journal will be archived by agreement with the MIT Libraries and 

  Information Systems department.  A back-up archive site has been set

  as  Scholarly Communications Project, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

  and State University. Paper copies of individual articles will be

  available to non-subscribers from MIT Libraries Document Services.  [line 692]



  We are anxious to see if a model such as this one is viable. We

  believe it has the potential to meet the needs of the scholarly

  academic community, librarians, and publishers.  Obviously, how it

  is received in the market will be the true test.  We'll see if

  scholars are willing to submit articles to such a publication.  We'll

  see if enough librarians are willing to buy an electronic journal to

  support its cost.  (And there are indeed costs.)  We'll see if

  individuals are willing to support the cost of providing such

  publication outlets for their field.  (There are no "page" charges

  for this journal.)

                    		

			Janet H. Fisher

			Associate Director for Journals Publishing        	

			MIT Press

			Fisher@mitvma.mit.edu



                                                                

===============================================================================



  **  Editorial Note - This issue and VPIEJ-L                        [line 713]



  The essays and announcements in this issue appeared originally on a

  Listserv List about electronic journals based at Virginia

  Polytechnic Institute and called VPIEJ-L.  We think the essays'

  mixtures of good sense, lucidity and pertinence to "the implications

  of electronic networks and texts" made them apt candidates for an

  issue of _EJournal_, and we are grateful to Frank Quinn, Fytton

  Rowland, Susanna Pathak, and Janet Fisher for letting us edit and

  re-"print" their texts.

                          ==========



  **  Editorial Comment -  Electronic Journals and Speed



  When _EJournal_'s first issue was published in March of 1991, one of

  our goals was to minimize the time from submission through

  peer-review to publication.  Our April issue was the best example so

  far of how fast we *can* move.  



  Professor Holland sent us a proposal, with an outline, on 16

  December 1993.  Two consultants recommended that we encourage

  development of the essay.  "Eliza..." actually arrived on 25

  February, was sent to readers (without authorial identification) on

  10 March, and was accepted (with suggestions for revision) on 22

  March.  That was the slow part of the process.



  A revised version arrived on 28 March.  5 messages about details

  were exchanged before a formatted version of the issue was sent to

  Florida on 31 March, in case Professor Holland had last-minute

  copy-editing corrections or other suggestions to make.  The "Eliza

  Meets the Postmodern" issue was e-mailed on 10 April 1994.  That's

  114 days from *proposal* to publication.  



  Three points about the process:



  1)  Most important: Professor Holland delivered.  Our questions were

  sometimes answered within an hour; the essay (and revision) arrived

  promptly; the text was clean.                                    [line 750]



  2)  The readers were prompt (and virtually unanimous).  Editorial

  acceptance wasn't delayed by negotiations, in other words.



  3)  Several steps of the process happened at a time --during spring

  break-- when we in Albany could act and respond swiftly. 



  Observation:  E-mail does indeed speed up the publication process,

  but what really matters --still-- is the people involved.



  Within a week of distribution we received four responses.  One was

  almost a "cancel my subscription" snort, one questioned the

  thoroughness and reliability of our editorial procedures, one

  promised a measured disagreement (since received), and one was a

  quick but lengthy inquiry that we hope will become a publishable

  response.  So we are working on a "Supplement" issue of _EJournal_,

  one that will further illustrate response time in the Matrix.

                       	==========



  ** Editorial Note - Electronic Journals and Libraries



  In the December, 1992 issue of _EJournal_ [V2N4], Ms. Meta Reid

  conducted a survey about electronic journals and libraries.  Of the

  respondents who identified themselves, 55 were professors and 19

  were students.  Librarians numbered 34.  And fifty of the 

  respondents reported that they worked outside "the academy."  



  I conclude from Ms. Reid's "Results" that electronic journals are

  not yet thought to be as respected as paper-based journals, but that

  their readers believe they will become more important.  The

  respondents agree that electronic journals "may be useful in

  reducing costs of publishing, storing and making available technical 

  information."



  We were pleased that Ms. Reid chose to ask actual readers of an

  electronic journal about the medium, and we're grateful to her for

  sharing her "Results."

  			==========

  	

  ** Editorial Note - Fewer Subscribers?



  Readers may have noticed an apparent drop in the number of

  subscribers.  The change is ambiguous.  We removed more than 400

  "nobody home" addresses from our Listserv list after V4N1 was

  mailed, and have had many people subscribe since then.   

  			==========

	

  	





      -----------------------------------------------------------------

    ------------------------  I N F O R M A T I O N  --------------------

  -------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Subscribing and Sending for Back Issues:                        [l. 805]



In order to:                    Send to:                  This message:  



Subscribe to _EJournal_:        LISTSERV@ALBANY.bitnet    SUB EJRNL Your Name



Get Contents/Abstracts

 of previous issues:            LISTSERV@ALBANY.bitnet    GET EJRNL CONTENTS



Get Volume 1 Number 1:          LISTSERV@ALBANY.bitnet    GET EJRNL V1N1 



Send mail to our "office":      EJOURNAL@ALBANY.bitnet    Your message...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About "Supplements":                                                 



_EJournal_ is experimenting with ways of revising, responding to, reworking, or

even retracting the texts we publish.  Authors who want to address a subject

already broached --by others or by themselves-- may send texts for us to

consider publishing as a Supplement issue.  Proposed supplements will not go

through as thorough an editorial review process as the essays they annotate.

                                                                    

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About _EJournal_:



   _EJournal_ is an all-electronic, e-mail delivered, peer-reviewed,

   academic periodical.  We are particularly interested in theory and

   practice surrounding the creation, transmission, storage,

   interpretation, alteration and replication of electronic "text" -

   broadly defined.  We are also interested in the broader social,

   psychological, literary, economic and pedagogical implications of

   computer-mediated networks.  The journal's essays are delivered

   free to Bitnet/ Internet addressees.  Recipients may make

   paper copies; _EJournal_ will provide authenticated paper copy from

   our read-only archive for use by academic deans or others.  



Writers who think their texts might be appreciated by _EJournal_'s audience are

invited to forward files to EJOURNAL@ALBANY.bitnet .  If you are wondering 

about starting to write a piece for to us, feel free to ask if it sounds 

appropriate.  There are no "styling" guidelines; we try to be a little more

direct and lively than many paper publications, and considerably less hasty and

ephemeral than most postings to unreviewed electronic spaces.  Essays in the

vicinity of 5000 words fit our format well.  We read ASCII; we look forward to

experimenting with other transmission and display formats and protocols. 

                                                                       [l. 848]

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Board of Advisors:                                                   

                        Stevan Harnad     Princeton University  

                        Dick Lanham       University of California at L. A.

                        Ann Okerson       Association of Research Libraries 

                        Joe Raben         City University of New York  

                        Bob Scholes       Brown University  

                        Harry Whitaker    University of Quebec at Montreal

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Consulting Editors - November, 1993

 

ahrens@alpha.hanover.bitnet    John Ahrens            Hanover

ap01@liverpool.ac.uk           Stephen Clark          Liverpool

dabrent@acs.ucalgary.ca        Doug Brent             Calgary

djb85@albany                   Don Byrd               Albany

donaldson@loyvax               Randall Donaldson      Loyola College

ds001451@ndsuvm1               Ray Wheeler            North Dakota

erdtt@pucal                    Terry Erdt             Purdue-Calumet

fac_askahn@vax1.acs.jmu.edu    Arnie Kahn             James Madison 

folger@watson.ibm.com          Davis Foulger          IBM - Watson Center

george@gacvax1                 G. N. Georgacarakos    Gustavus Adolphus

gms@psuvm                      Gerry Santoro          Penn State

nrcgsh@ritvax                  Norm Coombs            RIT 

pmsgsl@ritvax                  Patrick M. Scanlon     RIT

r0731@csuohio                  Nelson Pole            Cleveland State

richardj@bond.edu.au           Joanna Richardson      Bond 

ryle@urvax                     Martin Ryle            Richmond

twbatson@gallua                Trent Batson           Gallaudet

userlcbk@umichum               Bill Condon            Michigan

wcooper@vm.ucs.ualberta.ca     Wes Cooper             Alberta

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor:                             Ted Jennings, English, University at Albany

Managing Editor:                Chris Funkhouser, English, University at Albany

Editorial Asssociate:              Jerry Hanley, emeritus, University at Albany

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

University at Albany Computing Services Center:  Ben Chi, Director

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

University at Albany      State University of New York    Albany, NY 12222  USA



