Ramping Journals onto the Highway
(Delivered at the Electronic Journal Publishers Summit, June 25, 1997, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.)
(Posted September 5, 1997 · Issue 15; archived September 19, 1997)
The digitization of citation links from abstracts, full text, and other sources opens the technical literature to the promise of seamless integration across the horizon of world scholarship. For the first time in history, scholars now to a limited extent, and eventually even more comprehensively, will be able to click from a reference in one paper, to an abstract in another, to the full text in a third, to an illustration in a fourth, to a method in yet another, and so on, zig-zagging down unexpected side roads like a visitor in a strange country, driving without a road map. Publishers who do not link their digitized full-text articles to this web of democratized, decentralized information may eventually find their journals stranded like ghost towns, far from speeding information highways.
The ever-increasing integration of citations will be the most productive and the most efficient way for scholars to perform literature searches. Those journals that establish independent, unlinked channels, off the beaten path, outside the web of links, will increasingly find themselves isolated and marginalized when scholars find themselves blocked from entering their literature because publishers have set up a Berlin Wall against free access. No single publisher will be able to exercise sufficient power in the marketplace of ideas to guarantee that the world's researchers will seek out their aloof periodical, unaided by the global chain of references.
Of course, once you click onto proprietary information, you will need to punch in your credit-card data, key in your digital signature, access your deposit account or your online subscription number, or, remarkably, enter one of the uncanny, new commercial Web technologies with the simple option of clicking on "yes." Away you go, free to order, read, and pay, totally automatically.
The most compelling commercial problem for those publishers who will limit access to their material, using either their own proprietary channels or through a limited number of designated pathways, is that they will suffer financially if they insist on owning the means of dissemination as well as the words, numbers, and pictures. The history of the publishing business shows that the makers of information extract the lion's share of profits (or, in the case of nonprofits, "surplus") from the information economy. Margins acceptable to subscription agents and book dealers are trivial when compared with those traditionally achieved by publishers. There's just not enough money in the distribution business.
The second commercial problem is that dissemination is far more open to technological races than is the production of text alone. Innovation in methods of electronic distribution is so fickle that publishers would do best to stay away. Most cannot command the technical, human and financial resources necessary to continuously upgrade hardware and software to keep pace.
The third obstacle, again economic, is marketing. No publisher (except under extreme circumstances) would ever deny access to third-party delivery channels - libraries, wholesalers, or subscription agents - to its print products. "Oh, I don't like that bookstore in Duluth so I'm just not going to allow it to sell my textbook!" Or, "I hate sending merely one or two subscriptions to that agent in Cairo - so I'm not going to let his customers get them!"
It's economically counterintuitive to say no to any delivery vehicle that wants to disseminate your material, so long as it accepts your price and your terms. The time will come - and I think it's soon - when the producer will set the acceptable price and discount for digital distributors, as is now the practice with booksellers and agents. Published material will then be sent out liberally and democratically throughout the world on all channels - with authors and publishers getting their due, and eager readers getting timely, peer-reviewed information in the desired format.
Universal access in an end-user-driven marketplace from the desktop in an intense and intricate web of links is the surest way of sustaining quality research. Focus groups tell us that few scholars push the turnstile at their libraries and then go to dusty shelves to actually read hard copy. Academic, industrial, and government research organizations are already finding that the volume of information flow is increasing exponentially in the electronic environment as compared with conventional printed pages. Ramping the journal up onto the access road to the information autobahn is destined to achieve both economic and intellectual success.
Robert Ubell joined Marcel Dekker, Inc., as executive vice president in early September. This article is a slightly edited version of a talk he gave at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in June.
Endlinks
University of Aukland Library - Biological Sciences - many links to desktop databases, general databases, online journals, resource guides for the biosciences, and more.
Dr. Anna E. Ross's Links Page - numerous links to resources on cells and tissues, the immune system, medical and health resources, skin, evolution/phylogeny, genetics, and neuroanatomy/neuroscience, plus links to publishers, societies, news and reference, software sources, and more.
Electronic Journals: Stetson University - links to lists of links to electronic journals; categories include biology journals and other biology resources, electronic journals lists, academic and reviewed journals, and science journals.
American Society for Microbiology :Links to Other Resources - includes meetings/workshops, microbiology newsgroups, search engines, electronic journals, and more.
Lists Of Electronic Journals - includes links to Web sites including MedWeb Electronic Publications, Pedro's BioMolecular Research Tools, the Journal Club on the Web, and more.
