Three characteristics of hard-copy scholarly journals--visibility, immutability and longevity--which electronic journals might emulate to gain more acceptance and trust of potential authors and readers, are pointed out. The role of digital libraries in helping electronic journals in the emulation is also discussed.
Electronic journals have several obvious merits as the medium for scholarly publication[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7] and have received due attention. Their numbers certainly are increasing rapidly. The latest edition (1996) of Association of Research Libraries Directory of Electronic Journals and Newsletters[8] lists close to 1700 scholarly journals or newsletters, which is more than double the nuber in the 1995 edition [[9]. Several major scholarly societies[6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]have made many (sometimes all) of the current issues of their scholarly journals available on-line. Major publishers of scholarly journals have also made their products available in electronic form: As of September 1997, Springer [15] had 219 journal online, Academic Press [16] 175, Kluwer Academic Publishers [17] 116, Blackwell-Science [18] 110, and MCB University Press [19] had 98 online. Elsevier Science [20] has announced plans to make all of nearly 1100 journals it publishes online by January 1998. On-line bibliographic utilities [21, 22] and others [23, 24] have made on-line journals available, and major abstract services [25, 26] have started abstracting articles from electronic-only journals.
At the present time, however, except for a small number of scholarly electronic journals most are "dual" journals with accompanying hard-copy versions, whereas the real economy of electronic journals can be realized only when the hard-copy editions are gone[27, 28]. Weisberger at CAS [29] has observed that "authors of scientific studies continue to prefer publishing in conventional journals" and that "there is a lack of awareness of the online journals, but also a general perception about the lack of recognized credentials for those publications, a ccncern about gaining little visibility and readership among one's peers, and the view that publication in such journals may not 'count' toward career goals". Harter and Kim [30], based on their reference study, has concluded that "[electronic journals] presently play almost no role in scholarly cmmunication". Scholarly electronic journals need to gain more acceptance and trust from their potential authors and readers rather quickly, if they are to be viable channels of scholarly communication.
One obvious way of gaining trust is quality control by peer review and editing process. Whether or not the traditional pre-publication, anonymous review process is appropriate for scholarly communication in the electronic era has been the object of repeated discussion[2, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39a ]. However, most scholarly electronic journals have chosen to retain rigorous process of pre-publication peer review [39, 28], and major abstracting services have announced that they will consider only peer-reviewed electronic journals for inclusion in their databases[25, 26]. Hereafter in the paper, only peer-reviewed electronic journals will be considered. It is worth noting, however, that in one field of scholarship (law), review by student editors, not by peers, has been the norm, and that in another field (physics), it has been reported[4] that authoring "hot preprints" on a non-refereed electronic depository is as important as any (refereed) publication in impressing potential employers and grant proposal referees.
In the present paper, three characteristics of hard-copy scholarly journals which electronic journals might emulate to gain more acceptance and trust of potential authors and readers, are pointed out. These characteristics are visibility of the article, immutability of the text and longevity of the journal. The role of digital libraries in helping electronic journals in the emulation is also discussed.
In the next section, the three characteristics above are defined and discussed. In Section 3, the potential role of digital libraries in helping electronic journals to acquire these characteristics and in increasing the acceptance of electronic scholarly journalsis discussed.
Comparing electronic scholarly journals with conventional ones, one finds some characteristics of conventional journals which contribute to the acceptance conventional journals enjoy. They can be summarized as visibility of the article, immutability the text and longevity of the journal. Many electronic journals at present seem to lack those characteristics. They may be what is needed, in addition to maintaining high quality and biding time, for electronic scholarly journals to be accepted and trusted by potential authors and readers.
Visibility of the article, which is important to the author as well as the reader of an a journal, means that the article in the journal is likely to be seen by people who are important to the author. Those people may be leading scholars in the field, the author's potential employers, students in the field, people from other fields or even lay persons.
The fact that electronic journal articles are more easily indexable, accessible and retrievable compared to printed journal articles does not guarantee better visibility. It is true that in the world of conventional journals, many worthy articles are not read by those who should have read them because they are not available. However, the reverse is also true; many articles in successful conventional journals are discovered by non-subscribers, for example, by being in a select journal, or by being part of a limited collection in a small library. Although in the case of an electronic journal, automatic means such as an alerting service by e-mail enhance visibility, more is evidently needed to compete with hard-copy journals.
Immutability of the text is the assurance that the content of an article will not be changed once it is published. It contributes to the sense of stability and finality needed for long-lasting scholarly work, and prevents discussions from becoming shooting matches with moving targets.
In a hard-copy journal, immutability is automatic because the text can't be changed once it is published. As Cox[38] has pointed out, "paper-based publications have a 'fixity' that facilitates retrieval, citation, archiving and, ultimately, scholarship." Many copies are widely distributed and stored independently from the publisher or the author. On the other hand, in an on-line electronic journal, there is either a single copy or few copies of the journal, usually all controlled by the publisher or the author. The on-line record can be modified by the publisher, by the author, by the third party or by an accident. Even if outright updating is not permitted, if the deletion of records is permitted confusion is still possible; the old version may be deleted and a newly appended version may be confused with the original.
Some electronic journals declare this policy of not updating past records, others may just assume it. For dual journals the hard-copy version assures the immutability, and journals which publish CD-ROM archive version acquire some measure of immutability from there. However, trust based on immutability of text is evidently not as high in an electronic journal as in a hard-copy journal.
To compensate for this lack of trust, electronic journals (especially those that are not dual journals) have to make conscious efforts to guarantee immutability. Explicit statement of editorial policy guaranteeing immutability of once-accepted text is necessary, and a conscious effort to have many archival sites[40] (rather than just mirror sites) will help.
Longevity of the journal is the assurance that the journal will be available for a long time, even after the publishing body is gone. It is necessary for commanding respect from the readers and trust from the authors. Again, for conventional journals it can be achieved without such efforts, because several copies are expected to be kept in separate libraries and by individual subscribers.
For an electronic journal, however, there are many obstacles to its longevity. If the only on-line copy is managed by the publishing body, what would happen if the body goes? Even when there are several mirror sites, will those sites keep the copies even when they are no longer updated? What will happen to archives if the storage technology (or the character codes) changed? Obviously, conscious efforts in the part of the publishing body and by other actors are necessary to achieve longevity of electronic texts which matches that for hard-copy journals[42, 43] and Bowen[44] have discussed digital post-publication archive for commercial (mostly paper) journals: electronic journals are in more acute need of reliable archives.
In the present chapter, possible contributions from digital libraries to the visibility, immutability and longevity of scholarly electronic journals will be described. First, the term "digital library" used here will be defined, and two types of functions of digital libraries will be discussed, as they are relevant to the discussion here.
A "digital library" here means an institution or a mechanism which offers masses of digital information to end-users over the network, and/or assist the end-users to retrieve necessary information from there. It of course includes those institutions where books, journals and other large body of information are either created, collected and converted, or edited to form a large digital database to serve requests over the network.
However, according to the above definition, the following may also be called a "digital library": a "traditional" library which maintains and offers free terminals for the end users or conducts network reference services[45]; a library or an information center which creates indexes and links to resources on the net and/or maintain gateway services; a section of an organization which secures funds and subscribes to electronic journals so that members of that organization may be able to access those journals whenever they need to; and a commercial company which conducts paid searches of the network for the user.
When one defines a digital library in the above way, there are two types of functions to it. They might be called the front-end and the back-end functions of a digital library[46]. The front-end functions are those functions which is used to offer digital library services directly to the end-user, and the back-end functions are those which create and maintain large-scale resources for the services. Most digital libraries have front-end functions, but fewer have back-end functions. Of course, with changing technology, organizational structure, and social environment (such as copyright laws and digital cash), this situation may change in the future.
Digital libraries can provide visibility to some electronic journals by using their front-end functions: by selectively linking[47] to some and/or by subscribing to them when they are paid journals. In the article level, an alerting service for internal users will also give additional visibility to articles and journals concerned.
Digital libraries with back-end functions can contribute to the immutability of electronic journal texts by providing an archival site with an asserted policy of not modifying information content deposited in the past. Each article should have, for example, a link page for present or future attachments, and any change in the database should be limited to amending links and adding comments, discussions and/or revocation statements. The revoked pages may be hidden from public view, but they should not be actually deleted.
Digital libraries with back-end functions can contribute to the longevity of electronic journals by providing an archival site which has an assured policy of keeping them for a very long time, even after the demise of the publishing body. Then, links can be made to those records rather than the publisher's record, enhancing the stability of those links and enormously enhancing public trust in resources on the network. This will also help digital libraries with front-end functions by saving them from checking and updating numerous links.
The perceived superiority of printed journals over electronic ones in their "fixity"[38], "permanency" or "archival property" have been pointed out by several authors, and rebuttals have been made. Harnad[27] has answered to the comment "The Net cannot ensure archiving in perpetuity" by saying "Can Libraries?". However, library materials age only in decades or in centuries, and they are not dependent on the presence of the publishing body for their survival. Absence of "fixity" and "archival problem" have been pointed out about scholarly electronic journals, but it is not clear whether they mean immutability of texts or longevity of the journals. It is important to realize that they are different, and strive for achieving both qualities. Some scholarly electronic journals are aware of it and have expressed their commitment "to providing long-term archival retrieval"[48]. However, at the present time there is no mechanism for guaranteeing their longevity after the publishing body's life.
The above answers and reasoning seem to need more elaboration such as in the present paper. The author is not aware of a discussion of longevity, which is the availability of the journal records even after the publishing body leaves the scene, elsewhere. It is important to realize that there are two distinct desiderata, the immutability of the journal content and the longevity of journal records. The publishing body can fulfill the desiderata by conscious and well-chosen policies, with the help of digital libraries with suitable back-end functions. Pay-per-view and/or licensing charges, if present, can be arranged and transferred to the end user or to another digital library with suitable front-end functions.
[1] Shatz, B. "Telesophy: A System for Manipulating the
Knowledge of a Community", Proc. IEEE Globecom '87, 1181-1186 (Nov.
1987).
[2] Harnad, S. "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication
Continuum of Scientific Inquiry", Psycholog9ical Science 1, 342-343
(1990). URL: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Harnad/HTML/harnad90.skywriting.html (Visited June 30, 1997).
[3] Harnad, S. "Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution
in the Means of Production of Knowledge", "Public-Access Computer Systems
Review 2(1), 39-53 (1991). URL:
http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad91.postgutenberg.html (Undated, Visited July 30, 1997).
[4] Ginsparg, P. "After Dinner Remarks, 14 Oct '94 APS
meeting at LANL", URL: http://xxx.lanl.gov:80/bl
urb/pg14Oct94.html (Visited June 30, 1997).
[5] Cox, J. "Charting a Course Through Turbulence: the
Publisher's Vision of 21st Century Journal Literature", Serials,
8(2), 121-124 (1995).
[6] Denning, P. J. and B. Rous. "The ACM Electronic
Publishing Plan", Comm. ACM, 38(4), 97-103(1995).
[7] Heller, S. R. "Publishing on the Internet - A Proposal
for the Future", Trends in Anal. Chem., 15, 111-114 (1996).
[8] Association of Research Libraries Directory of
Electronic Journals and Newsletters, 6th Edition. URL:
href="http://arl.cni.org/scomm/edir/ (Dated Oct. 1, 1996. Visited Oct.
6, 1997).
[9] Okerson, Ann Shumela. "Introduction to the 6th Edition
(1996): Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic
Discussion Lists", URL:
http://poe.acc.virginia.edu/~pm9k/libsci/96/intro.html
[10] "ACS Publications/Essential Resources for the
Chemical Sciences", URL: http://pubs.acs.org/ (Dated Oct. 11, 1997,
Visited Oct. 12, 1997).
[11] "American Medical Association Publishing Home Page".
URL: http://www.ama-as
sn.org/public/journals/pubhome.htm (Updated Sept. 18, 1997, Visited Oct.
4, 1997).
[12] "American Mathematical Society Journals", URL: http://www.ams.org/journals/
(Updated May 7, 1997, Visited Oct. 4, 1997).
[13] "APS Research Journals", URL: http://publish.aps.org/indexjr
nls.html (Updated Oct. 10, 1997, Visited Oct. 12, 1997).
[14] "Get more than 32% of the world's literature in
electrical engineering and computer science in a single electronic source.",
URL: http://www.ieee.org/iel/(Updated
May 26, 1997, Visited Oct 13, 1997).
[15] "Springer LINK - What's New", URL: http://link.springer.de/
whatsnew.htm (Dated Sept. 27, 1997, Visited Sept. 29, 1997).
[16] "Academic Press Journals", URL: http://www.apnet.com/www/journal/ (Undated, Visited Oct. 4, 1997).
[17] "What`s new - Kluwer Online", URL: http://www.wkap.nl/kaphtm
l.htm/KLUWERONLINE" (Undated, Visited on Oct 4, 1997).
[18] "Online Journals", http://www.blacksci.co.u
k/online/default.htm (Undated, Visited Oct. 4, 1997).
[19] "MCB Journal Portfolio", URL: http://www.mcb.co.uk/portfoli
o/home.htm
[20] "ScienceDirect(TM) entering Early Release phase!",
URL: http:/
/www.elsevier.com/inca/homepage/news/ 1997/sciencedirect/ (Dated June
13, 1997, last updated July 14, 1997, visited Oct. 4, 1997)
[21] "OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online", URL:
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/menu/eco.htm (Undated, Visited July 22, 1997).
[22] URL: http://www.nacsis.ac.jp/els/el
s-e.html (Dated April 25, 1997, Visited June 30, 1997).
[23] "BioMedNet Library", URL: http://biomednet.com/library/
(Undated, Visited Oct. 13, 1997).
[24] "Welcome to CICNet!", URL: http://www.cic.net/ (Undated, Visited Oct. 6,
1997).
[25] "INSPEC TO COVER ELECTRONIC JOURNALS FROM 1996", URL:
http://www.iee.org.uk
/publish/news/elecjrnl.txt (Undated, Updated Feb. 29, 1996, Visited July
30, 1997).
[26] "Online-Only Journals Monitored for Chemical
Abstracts:", URL: http://www.cas.org/EO/ejourn2.html
(Dated July 1997, Visited Oct. 4, 1997)
[27] Harnad, S. "The PostGutenberg Galaxy: How to Get There
from Here", Times Higher Education Supplement May 12, 1995. URL:
http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/THES/thes.html (Undated, Visited June
30, 1997).
[28] Heller, S. R. "Electronic Publishing of Scientific
Manuscripts", Chapter for Wiley Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry, in
press. URL: http://www.hellers.com/
steve/resume/p146.html (Undated, Visited June 30, 1997).
[29] "CAS Evaluates First Year Covering Internet
Publications: Few electronic publications meet the criteria for inclusion in
Chemical Abstracts", URL: http://info.cas.org/New1/epub.html
(Dated Nov. 14, 1996, Visited on Oct. 4, 1997).
[30] Harter, Stephen P. and Kim, Hak Joon. "Electronic
Journals and Scholarly Communication: A Citation and Reference Study",
Proc. 1996 Midyear Meeting of the ASIS, 299-315 (May 20-22, 1996, San
Diego, CA, USA). URL: http:/
/ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~harter/harter-asis96midtxt.html (Undated.
Visited on Oct. 4, 1997).
[31] Judson, Horace Freeland. "Structural Transformations
of the Sciences and the End of Peer Review ", Invited paper at The
Second International Congress on Peer Review in Biomedical Publication
(July 13, 1994). URL: http://www.am
a-assn.org/public/peer/7_13_94/pv3112x.htm (Dated July 13, 1994, Updated
March 22, 1997, Visited Oct. 13, 1997).
[32] Kassiler, Jerome P. and Campion, Edward W. "Peer
Review: Crude and Understudied, but Indispensable", Invited paper at The
Second International Congress on Peer Review in Biomedical Publication
(July 13, 1993). URL: http://www.am
a-assn.org/public/peer/7_13_94/pv3089x.htm. (Dated July 13, 1994,
Updated March 22, 1997, Visited Oct. 13, 1997).
[33] Rathie, S. E. "Electronic Journals and Peer Revie:
Perils and Promises", URL: http://www.cs.
ubc.ca/spider/rathie/elecpub/paper3.html (Dated 1994, Visited June 30,
1997).
[34] Odlyzko, A. M. "Tragic Loss or Good Riddance? The
Impending Demise of Traditional Scholarly Journals", Notices of the
American Mathematical Society, 42(1), 49-53(1995).
[35] Ginsparg, P. "Winners and Losers in the Global
Research Village", URL: http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/p
g96unesco.html (Dated Feb. 19-23 1996, Visited June 30, 1996).
[36] Hibbitts, B. J. "Last Writes? Re-Assessing the Law
Review in the Age of Cyberspace", URL: http://www.law.pitt.edu/
hibbitts/lastrev.htm (version 1.2, Dated March 10, 1997, Visited Oct.
4, 1997)
[37] Zariski, Archie. "'Never Ending, Still Beginning': A
Defense of Electronic Law Journals from the Perspective of the E Law
Experience", firstmonday, 12(6), URL; http://w
ww.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_6/zariski/index.html (Dated June 2,
1997, Visited Oct. 13, 1997).
[38] Cox, J. E. "Publishers, Publishing and the Internet:
How Journal Publishing Will Survive and Prosper in the Electronic Age",
The Electronic Library 15(2), 125-131 (April 1997).
[39] "ACM Policy on the Quality of Refereed Electronic
Publications", URL: http://www.acm.org/pubs/quality.
html (Dated January 15, 1997, Visited June 30, 1997).
[39a] Hibbitts, B. J. "Yesterday Once More: Skeptics,
Scribes and the Demise of Law Reviews", URL: http://www.law.pitt.edu/h
ibbitts/akron1.htm (Dated March 6, 1997, Visited June 30, 1997).
[40] "Purpose of The Electronic Journal (The Electronoc
Journal of Combinatorics)", URL: href="
http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/EJC/Journal/Information/purpose.html"
(Undated, Visited Oct 4, 1997).
[41] Task Force on Archiving of Digiral Information of The
Research Libraries Group. "Preserving Digital Information", URL: http://www.rlg.org/ArchTF/t
fadi.index.htm (Undated, Updated June 19, 1996, Visited Oct. 13, 1997).
[42] Quinn, Frank. "A Role for Libraries in Electronic
Publication", EJournal 4(2) (June 1994). URL: http://rachel.al
bany.edu/~ejournal/v4n2/article.html (Undated, Updated Dec. 3, 1994,
Visited Oct. 13, 1997).
[43] Quinn, Frank. "A digital archive for mathematics",
URL: http://www.math.vt.e
du/people/quinn/archive.html (Undated, Updated June 24, 1996, Visited
Oct. 13, 1997).
[44] Bowen, William G. "JSTOR and the Economics of
Scholarly Publication", URL: http://www.mellon.org/jsesc.html
(Dated October 4, 1995, Updated June 12, 1997, Visited Oct. 13, 1997).
[45] Yamamoto, Takeo. "The Digital Librarian: Work and
Tools (in Japanese)", Digital Libraries 1, 29-37. URL: http://www.
dl.ulis.ac.jp/DLW_E/Journals/no1.html#yamamoto (Abstract in English,
Visited June 30, 1997).
[46] Yamamoto, Takeo. "The Front-End and Back-End Functions
of the Digital Library (in Japapnese) ", Digital Libraries 7, 11-16
(1996), URL: http://www.
dl.ulis.ac.jp/DLW_E/Journals/no7.html#yamamoto (Abstract in English,
Visited June 30, 1997).
[47] Marcum, D. B. "Digital Libraries: For Whom? For
What?", The Journal of Academic Librarianship, March 1997, 81-84
(1997).
[48] "Internet Journal of Chemistry Statement of Purpose",
URL: http://www.ijc.com/statepurp.html (Undated, Visited Oct. 4, 1997).