Previous Press Box Articles:
on the World Wide Web(Issue 7 ? posted May 2, 1997; archived May 30, 1997)
The Advent of Online Journals
How can libraries cope financially as the growth of scientific literature outpaces their budgets and shelf space, and when document delivery services charge huge fees for murky photocopies of articles? How can researchers sift through the huge volume of newly appearing literature to find information most relevant to them? These are pressing issues for research libraries, and both librarians and publishers are banking on the World Wide Web offering at least part of the answer.
| Notable biological and medical journals offering full text online | |
|---|---|
| Available now | Coming soon |
|
Science
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Current Biology and the Current Opinion series Journal of Biological Chemistry British Medical Journal |
Nature Cell |
| See "Online Access is Profoundly Changing Scientific Publishing" in the March issue of The Scientist | |
The number of electronic journals and newsletters has reportedly increased fifteen-fold since 1991 - and just last year the number doubled. According to the Association of Research Libraries, there are currently about 600 scientific serials available online. In some cases the full text is free, though generally only for a limited test period. In others, only personal print subscribers or to those who receive separate online subscriptions are allowed online access. BioMedNet is unusual in that most of the publications in its library allow articles to be purchased individually.
If this pay-per-view pricing model takes off, it could profoundly change the economics of journal publishing, as well as the way in which libraries cater to the information needs of their users. Currently librarians face the impossible task of reconciling multiple special interests as they manage annual subscription budgets. But in the future, administrators could have much more flexibility, rewarding the most productive labs with essentially unrestricted access to information while tightening the belts of underperformers. Indeed, under the pay-per-view model, there will be less need to cut back on more specialized journals in times of budget crisis, because the focus is on quality articles rather than the journals in which they reside. And as online competition develops, a user will be able to make his/her own decisions about which database provider or online library system to use to get best value for money out of their allocated spending quota.
Advantages of Online Journals
In addition to the move of print journals to the Web, there are some publications for researchers that have made their debut in Web-only form, while other new print journals are explicitly designed to take advantage of the Web. If the possibilities are fully exploited, Web publishing offers many obvious advantages to the reader.
| New journals developed with the Web in mind | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Title |
| Current Science Ltd. |
Critical Care Cardiovascular Clinical Trials |
| Current Biology Ltd. | Folding & Design |
| Chapman & Hall | Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials |
| Medscape | Medscape Mental Health Medscape Women's Health |
A Few Caveats
A Step Further: Online Communities
BioMedNet is working hard to develop the online potential of journals offered in its library. As well as extensive linking (to be greatly extended by the upcoming launch of Evaluated MEDLINE) and its pioneering development of the pay-per-view payment model, the Current Science Group (of which BioMedNet is a member) is also actively fostering online communities of subscribers to particular journals.
The Critical Care Forum, for example, is centered on a peer-reviewed electronic journal that includes original articles, systematic reviews of the field, a "journals club" focusing on the most recent literature from top publications, a registry of ongoing clinical trials, and equipment reviews. Members can also use BioMedNet's meeting-room facilities, which include private chat areas, an internal BioMedNet E-mail system (useful for E-mail retrieval on the road), access to other full-text periodicals online, a database of published clinical trials, and the CritLink database of evaluated links to Web resources relevant to the community.
The Dark Side: Bad Science, Authenticity, Copyright Abuse
Stepping back for a moment, we might ask what will be the disadvantages of online proliferation of scientific articles. How can it be argued that there is a dark side to the ready accessibility of scientific information - a world library of biomedical journals on every researcher's desk? Well, first, it has been suggested that the cheap democracy of Web publishing will make it possible for anybody to publish their data, peer review be damned. Bad science will abound. Second, there are security concerns :authors and readers will worry about the authenticity of the article being electronically accessed, and publishers will worry about copyright violation. Finally, everybody remains jittery about pricing policies - will the "new order" reap benefits to scientists or to publishers? (See "Scientific publishers increasing electronic information offerings" in the August 1996 issue of The Scientist.)
Most of the concerns are easily addressed. First, scientists swimming in a sea of bad data will simply seek islands of peer-reviewed journals, as is currently the practice. Peer reviews will not disappear; they will in fact be rendered simpler by intranet solutions of posted drafts and review templates. A bigger concern is that the public might drown in misinformation, although the proliferation and easy accessibility of good information might counterbalance that effect. One can hope for an outcome of 0% increase in the number of cults and fringe groups built on bad data.
Second, changes to files and illicit modifications of data will be tracked meticulously by top publishers, whose reputations ride on authenticity. Scare stories of hacker manipulations and theft of scientific data make good fodder for movies of the The Net genre - but should these emerge as realities it will bring the world to a halt, not just science. The copyright battle will also be solved pragmatically, as it is now in software publishing, not by fancy technological solutions, but by making it easier and more convenient for users to pay the publisher the correct price. Ask most researchers what is more important: time or money? Time will emerge the winner: scientists will pay $4 for an article of interest rather than plot their way past payment screens or scheme to obtain a bootleg version.
A Financial Interlude
It is more difficult to speculate on financial winners and losers in the business of Web publishing. Publishers now clearly lose as they gamble millions to convert data, build Web sites, struggle with billing, and revamp their marketing departments. Addressing markets as vastly different as libraries and individual scientists is complex. Scientists are the short-term winners as publishers offer free full text on their newly launched Web sites, the publishers assessing browsing habits and determining policies that will not outrage their readership but will be profitable in the long run. It is not yet clear whether the subscription model or the pay-per-view model, or a combination thereof, will emerge as the dominant financial transaction. There is a tidy economy in equating high accession rates of individual articles with financial reward. But this underlying premise of pay-per-view will clearly benefit a certain profile of readers and publishers while proving detrimental to another. In the long run, there should be an overall economy enjoyed by all, with greatly diminished paper, print, and distribution costs. (See "Wired science" by Herb Brody in MIT's Technology Review, and links therein, for a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of Web publishing for scientists.)
The Fox Knows Many Things, the Hedgehog Knows
One Big Thing
Up till now, we have discussed how conventional scientific publishing can take advantage of the Web. But the Web has the potential to change the role of scientific publishing. Will the lateral connections and sound-bite science facilitated by the Web be simply a distraction and a time drain? Or will easy access to scientific information encourage reaching outside of compartmentalized disciplines, a phenomenon that has arguably restricted big-time discoveries in our day? Here the metaphor of the World Wide Web represents not only physical connections between Kansas, South Africa, and Japan, but connections between branches of science. Publishers and editors will be responsible for facilitating those connections by reaching beyond the primary data and material at hand, assessing, filtering, summarizing and hyperlinking information that resides on other - even their "competitors'" - sites.
Time will tell whether scientists wish to be drawn from their hedgehog dens - where they gobble data at specialist sites such as BioMedNet - to browse generalist sites such as ScienceNow from AAAS and HMS Beagle. And in the higher reckoning, time will tell whether the new era of scientific publishing on the Web will give researchers a better shot at curing cancer and the common cold.
Sarah Greene was founder and editor in chief of HMS Beagle.
Matthew Cockerill is editor of BioMedNet, where he is responsible for acquisition of biological databases.
Andrzej Krauze is an illustrator, poster maker, cartoonist, and painter who illustrates regularly for HMS Beagle, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, Bookseller and New Statesman.
