Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
may not be the optimum design.
2
In addition, even with advanced electronicity
3
e-journals rarely use the full features afforded by the Internet; they often look and
feel like paper journals.
In this chapter, we describe the development of academic publishing as a means
of communication among scholars and as an instrument to measure scholarly pro-
ductivity and grant rewards (Section
2
). We next detail the forces that affect that
development and the challenges currently facing the publishing industry (Section
3
).
In Section
4
, we describe some of the solutions e-journals offer and the new chal-
lenges e-journals introduce. In Section
5
, we discuss the economics of electronic
journals. In Section
6
, we describe the effect e-journals have on various stakeholders
(authors, editors, academics as a community, libraries, and gatekeepers). We con-
clude (Section
7
) with insights regarding the directions in which academic electronic
publishing is heading.
2.
History of Academic Publishing
Publishing is as ancient as herding and hunting. Even before people invented writ-
ing, they published their hunting expeditions on cave walls in the form of pictures
and symbols. For thousands of years, manuscripts and letters were copied manually.
This labor-intensive and time-consuming task made manuscripts a rare commodity.
Manuscripts were only available to a selected group of people. The dissemination
of knowledge through published work was slow. The quantity of the published work
was limited and its distribution local. The few who owned manuscripts and were able
to read them were so familiar with the work they did not need indexing or search
mechanisms. Manuscripts were copied manually and modified intentionally or acci-
dentally. Therefore, each copy of the manuscript was unique in some ways
[49]
.
Cave writing was time consuming and not transportable, limiting the reach of the
information to a local tribe. Clay tablets and other similar material were portable
but impractical.
4
Paper first appeared in China around 2000 years ago. It signaled
a major change in publishing and the dissemination of knowledge. The Arabs used
paper by the 10th century. It was only around the 12th century that paper reached
Europe. The invention of the printing press in 1450 was a subsequent technological
innovation that was facilitated by the existence of paper as a delivery medium.
The printing press signaled a first major change in the dissemination of infor-
mation among people. Manuscripts and books could be copied quickly and accu-
2
Some argue that it may be the worst possible design.
3
The term “electronicity” is used to define the extent to which an e-journal exploits the new content,
format, and structure afforded by the Internet.
4
Stone and clay were heavy, wood and scroll were not sustainable.
