+ Page 1 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review Volume 2, Number 1 (1991) ISSN 1048-6542 Editor-In-Chief: Charles W. Bailey, Jr. University of Houston Associate Editors: Columns: Leslie Pearse, OCLC Communications: Dana Rooks, University of Houston Reviews: Mike Ridley, University of Waterloo Editorial Board: Walt Crawford, Research Libraries Group Nancy Evans, Library and Information Technology Association David R. McDonald, Tufts University R. Bruce Miller, University of California, San Diego Paul Evan Peters, Coalition for Networked Information Peter Stone, University of Sussex Published on an irregular basis by the University Libraries, University of Houston. Technical support is provided by the Information Technology Division, University of Houston. Circulation: 2,685 subscribers in 32 countries. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Address: Charles W. Bailey, Jr. University Libraries University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-2091 (713) 749-4241 LIB3@UHUPVM1 Articles are stored as files at LISTSERV@UHUPVM1. To retrieve a file, send the GET command given after the article information to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1. To retrieve the article as an e-mail message instead of a file, add "F=MAIL" to the end of the GET command. Back issues are also stored at LISTSERV@UHUPVM1. To obtain a list of all available files, send the following message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1: INDEX PACS-L. The name of each issue's table of contents file begins with the word "CONTENTS." Note that all of the above e-mail addresses are on BITNET. The list server also has an Internet address: LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU. + Page 2 + CONTENTS SPECIAL SECTION ON NETWORK-BASED ELECTRONIC SERIALS The Electronic Journal: What, Whence, and When? Ann Okerson (pp. 5-24) To retrieve this file: GET OKERSON PRV2N1 Online Journals: Disciplinary Designs for Electronic Scholarship Teresa M. Harrison, Timothy Stephen, and James Winter (pp. 25-38) To retrieve this file: GET HARRISON PRV2N1 Post-Gutenburg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge Stevan Harnad (pp. 39-53) To retrieve this file: GET HARNAD PRV2N1 The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research Lon Savage (pp. 54-66) To retrieve this file: GET SAVAGE PRV2N1 Postmodern Culture: Publishing in the Electronic Medium Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth (pp. 67-76) To retrieve this file: GET AMIRAN PRV2N1 New Horizons in Adult Education: The First Five Years (1987-1991) Jane Hugo and Linda Newell (pp. 77-90) To retrieve this file: GET HUGO PRV2N1 EJournal: An Account of the First Two Years Edward M. Jennings (pp. 91-110) To retrieve this file: GET JENNINGS PRV2N1 The Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues Marcia Tuttle (pp. 111-127) To retrieve this file: GET TUTTLE PRV2N1 + Page 3 + COMMUNICATIONS How to Start and Manage a BITNET LISTSERV Discussion Group: A Beginner's Guide Diane Kovacs, Willard McCarty, and Michael Kovacs (pp. 128-143) To retrieve this file: GET KOVACS PRV2N1 Providing Data Services for Machine-Readable Information in an Academic Library: Some Levels of Service Jim Jacobs (pp. 144-160) To retrieve this file: GET JACOBS PRV2N1 COLUMNS Public-Access Provocations: An Informal Column Depth vs. Breadth: Enhancement and Retrospective Conversion Walt Crawford (pp. 161-163) To retrieve this file: GET CRAWFORD PRV2N1 Recursive Reviews Copyright, Digital Media, and Libraries Martin Halbert (pp. 164-170) To retrieve this file: GET HALBERT PRV2N1 REVIEWS Libraries, Networks and OSI: A Review, with a Report on North American Developments Reviewed by Clifford A. Lynch (pp. 171-176) To retrieve this file: GET LYNCH PRV2N1 + Page 4 + The User's Directory of Computer Networks Reviewed by Dave Cook (pp. 177-181) To retrieve this file: GET COOK PRV2N1 ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 67 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth. "Postmodern Culture: Publishing in the Electronic Medium." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 67-76. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction Postmodern Culture was founded in 1990 by Eyal Amiran, Greg Dawes, Elaine Orr, and John Unsworth at North Carolina State University (professors Dawes and Orr have subsequently stepped down as editors in order to pursue their research projects, though both remain on the editorial board). Postmodern Culture is a peer-reviewed electronic journal which provides an international, interdisciplinary forum for discussions of contemporary literature, theory, and culture. It accepts for consideration both finished essays and working papers, and carries in each issue fiction and/or poetry, book reviews, a popular culture column, and announcements. The journal does not consider essays dealing exclusively with computer hardware or software, unless those essays raise significant aesthetic or theoretical issues. PMC comes out three times a year (September, January, and May) and is free to the public and to libraries via electronic mail. Each issue of Postmodern Culture carries a volume and number designation. The journal is also available on computer diskette and microfiche; it is distributed in a variety of diskette formats (Macintosh 3.5", IBM 5.25", or IBM 3.5"), but no issue will exceed 720 KB of data, the equivalent of one 3.5" or two 5.25" low-density diskettes. The subscription rate for diskette or microfiche is $15/year for individuals, $30/year for institutions (in Canada add $3; elsewhere outside the U.S. add $7). At the present time PMC has about 1,200 subscribers in 17 countries. The journal's ISSN number is 1053-1920. The editorial board for Postmodern Culture includes researchers and writers in African American studies, cultural studies, film, Latin American studies, literature and literary theory, philosophy, sociology, and religion. + Page 68 + The board members' primary responsibilities include reading essays for the journal (approximately four essays a year), inviting submissions, and helping to publicize the existence of the journal. Some have also contributed essays. Members were chosen because of their own performance in their field (or the promise of it--we chose some younger scholars who were highly recommended by their colleagues) and because they offer special knowledge of diverse disciplines, genres, and cultures. The first volume (numbers 1-3) of the journal included essays on Latin American politics, eating disorders and spiritual transcendence, the theory of writing in the hypertext environment, William Gaddis's novel JR, the implications of the postmodern critique of identity for the Afro-American community, the rhetoric of the Persian Gulf War as presented in the New York Times, the politics of Sartre, AIDS and cyborgs, Ishmael Reed's The Terrible Two's, and representations of mass culture, postmodern ethnography, and other subjects. The journal has also published popular culture columns on the televising of the Tour de France, Satanism and the mass media, and female body building, plus fiction by Kathy Acker, a hybrid theoretical-interpretive-poetic work by Susan Howe, a video script by Laura Kipnis, and a number of poems and book reviews. 2.0 Distribution When an issue is published, its table of contents is distributed (using the Revised LISTSERV program) to all of the journal's subscribers. This file contains the journal's masthead, information about subscription and submission, the names of authors published in that issue, and titles, filenames, and abstracts for each item in the issue. Subscribers can then choose to retrieve one essay, several essays, or the whole issue as a package, using a few simple LISTSERV commands (it is not necessary for individual subscribers to have a copy of the LISTSERV program running at their site in order to issue these commands). Essays can be retrieved as files or as mail, and all essays are stored in a file list maintained on the NCSU mainframe, so readers can get copies of material published in back issues at any time. + Page 69 + We have found the LISTSERV program to be an extremely flexible and effective way to publish in this medium. It is widely used, and it is generally familiar to those who already participate in network discussion groups. It is also well-documented, and support for list owners is available both locally (from the postmaster and support staff at one's site) and through an electronic discussion group moderated by Eric Thomas, who wrote the program. LISTSERV lists can be set up in different ways. For instance, one can set up a list so that all mail posted to it is automatically distributed to all subscribers, or so that all mail posted to the list is sent to the list editor for screening and/or compilation. Subscription to the list can be open or restricted, as can access to the names of other subscribers and to any files stored in association with the list. Furthermore, the ability to edit files on the file list can be limited to the editors, permitted to a designated group of readers, or permitted to all readers. List maintenance and list editing can be performed by different people (or by a number of people) at the same site or at different sites, and one can automate certain functions, such as the distribution of a designated set of files for new subscribers. Postmodern Culture is open to public subscription, and its archived files are available for retrieval. Mail cannot be sent directly for distribution to the list. Only the editors post and edit items and maintain the list. 3.0 History Some of our earliest discussion focused on the format in which we might distribute the journal. We considered various analogues and models for what we wanted to do, including interactive software such as electronic bulletin boards (for example, the Electronic College of Theory), hardware- or software-specific journals such as TidBITS (a HyperCard, Macintosh-based journal), and network discussion groups (such as HUMANIST). + Page 70 + We decided that restricting ourselves to the lowest common denominator would increase our accessibility and make us available to a wider pool of subscribers. For these reasons, we settled on ASCII text transmitted by electronic mail as our format. ASCII text can be imported into almost any word processing program, and electronic mail can be delivered free of charge through Internet and BITNET, networks which connect thousands of sites around the world. Our next logistical decision was to set up PMC-Talk, a discussion group which supplements the journal with an open channel for critique, informational exchanges, and the publication of non-juried submissions. Finally, we elected to make the journal available on disk and microfiche, so that libraries which could not devote the hardware to making the journal available in its electronic mail form could still subscribe, and so that individual users who had no access to electronic mail could still have access to us. During the Spring of 1990, we mailed several hundred letters to artists, scholars, and critics in a wide variety of fields. These letters met with a remarkably positive reception, and enabled us to assemble a first-rate editorial board and a very interesting first issue within a period of months. The response to our mailings is a strong indication that many humanists are prepared for the advent of electronic publication, and are eager to learn more about the possibilities of the medium. The response we met with at our own institution has been equally encouraging. We have received financial and technical support from several parts of North Carolina State University (NCSU): the Computing Center, the Humanities Computing Lab, the Social Sciences Computing Lab, the Department of English (which has agreed, for instance, to give course reductions to the editors), the Department of Foreign Languages, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the NCSU Libraries. + Page 71 + 4.0 Standards and the Medium One of the questions we have considered in the course of putting together the first three issues is whether the medium in which we publish is particularly appropriate to a certain kind of essay. Is the "finished" work more appropriate in the print medium, while works in progress, collaborative essays, and interviews are more appropriate for an electronic journal? Or, is there room for both in this medium? Might the common sense of what it is that constitutes a finished work itself be transformed when the journal invites and publishes responses to the essay, and these appear only days after the essay had been published? Postmodern Culture can serve to encourage more experimental scholarly writing. For example, we publish works-in-progress, such as Bell Hooks's investigation of the interrelations and contradictions of African American culture and postmodern theory, which invite discussion and allow scholars to open their work to criticism as they write, so that texts may in fact evolve as collaborative ventures between readers and writers. We have also published works which fall between or outside traditional generic categories, like a video script by Laura Kipnis, which literalizes the metaphor of the body politic, mixing a biographical account of Marx's health problems during the writing of Das Kapital with a discussion of contemporary anorexia and bulimia. We've also had to grapple with some more mundane questions which are nonetheless still quite important, since there is very little in the way of history or tradition to draw on. For example, how should we format the essays published in the journal so that they can be easily imported into whatever word processing software the reader might have? Margins, spacing, the designation of units of text, typographical conventions for underlining, boldfacing, italics, superscript, and subscript (these are not possible with ASCII text), must all be developed and tested with different users before we will know what works, what is clearly readable and understandable, and what users prefer. + Page 72 + There are several other technical questions as well. For example, every issue of the journal will have to navigate the sometimes obscure connections between different networks--particularly between the non-commercial academic networks and the more widely available commercial carriers of electronic mail, such as MCI, AT&T, Sprint, and CompuServe. CompuServe, for example, limits the size of electronic mail transmissions which can be received into individual accounts, and that limit is well below what would be necessary to receive the journal. We are concerned that the journal should be available to non-academic subscribers, so we will be working to make existing connections work and to open new ones. We will also be exploring possibilities for using visual materials, which include faxing graphics to subscribers on request or transmitting through the networks compressed graphics files in commonly used formats. As the networks update their own hardware (especially with the introduction of fiber-optic cables for data transmission), new possibilities in the use of interactive software will also become available. All of this makes it likely that the format and the nature of Postmodern Culture will continue to evolve, even in the immediate future. We have learned from print publication to work around problems and limitations in production and dissemination, but these problems do not pose as serious a threat to electronic publishing. Electronic technology is evolving so quickly--compare current desktop technology with that available ten years ago--that today's problems (e.g., distributing graphics over the nets) will in all likelihood be solved soon. We do not need to develop standards and techniques that accept today's limitations, but to build into our medium a flexibility that will anticipate and accommodate upcoming change. 5.0 The Future of Electronic Serials In order for a publication in electronic media to succeed in serving even the most traditional purposes, such publication obviously needs to be available to the public--to students, to researchers, and to interested readers. + Page 73 + An electronic publication can keep its back issues on a file list (an electronic log of reserved files) where network users may retrieve them, but not everyone has access to the networks, and there is no guarantee that a file list maintained by a given electronic mail account-holder will always be there. If a journal moves to another institution or ceases publication, how will researchers have access to essays published by the journal? In the same way they do for print journals, libraries should provide that access. Many libraries have local area networks and can make electronic publications available to patrons on those networks; many more libraries have online card catalogs, and might use some of those terminals to provide access to electronic texts. It makes sense for libraries to use computer resources to deliver publications which originate as electronic text, since computerized access brings with it powerful capabilities for searching, indexing, and analyzing texts even from remote sites. However, until most libraries have the facilities to present full text online and most readers have the skills to use such services, we feel that it is important for electronic publications to be available in several formats. Electronic publications are likely to proliferate sooner than most now expect. Although electronic text may never replace print, it is likely to dominate where information storage, retrieval, and manipulation are more important than the aesthetic qualities of a printed text. Economic reasons alone will force letters out of their time-honored sanctuary in wood-products and into the electronic ether. It will soon seem as illogical to print archives, data banks, government and business documents, and much scholarly material as it already is to catalog the holdings of large libraries on three-by-five cards. Today, we still produce limited numbers of books whose physical well-being must be guarded at regulated institutions around the world. We must have these objects shipped to us or travel to centers where they are collected. Compare this to a situation where a library would not house a given number of volumes, but would provide access to all books in an international network of libraries. In this scenario, all books would be available to anyone with a library card. Even the aesthetic appeal of electronic text is bound to improve as computer equipment becomes more portable, more sophisticated, and simpler to use. + Page 74 + Such revolutionary flexibility holds dangers too--technological freedom and the control of information may be flip and flop of the same switch. For example, if commercial organizations step into academic electronic publishing, then they may come to limit redistribution of such publication or insist on copyright restrictions that may serve their financial interests but not the interests of the research community. In effect, this is the case with print publication: much of it is determined by the financial interests and possibilities of commercial presses--a condition which seems so inevitable that it is virtually transparent. Highly developed technological flexibility may depend on private-sector support in the long run. The government now subsidizes the networks, but threatens to cut its support by the end of the decade. It is hard to say if and how the financial support and interests of commercial enterprises will affect the contents and availability of electronic serials. The nets now offer an ideal international venue for small-budget, limited-interest discussion groups and serials that may not have had a chance for wide distribution in print, but all this may change if the nets go private. 6.0 Conclusion Electronic publishing needs the encouragement and participation of the profession so that it leads where we want to go. Libraries should take an active role in making electronic publications--journals now, books in all likelihood later--available to their users; universities should recognize scholarly activity in the electronic field and see their support of such developments as wise investments; and the profession should recognize the legitimacy of electronic publications where issues of tenure and promotion are involved. For their part, the publishers of refereed electronic journals--and of other electronic work in the future--should both work to maintain professional credibility and take into account the needs of an audience that is likely to be diverse and large. + Page 75 + Selected Bibliography Bailey, Charles W., Jr. "Intellectual Property Issues." Electronic mail message to the Association of Electronic Scholarly Journals list, 1 January 1991. BITNET, AESJ- L@ALBNYVM1, GET AESJ-L LOG9101 to LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1. Engst, Adam C. "TidBITS#30/Xanadu_text." Electronic mail message to the Machine-Readable Texts list, November 1990. BITNET, GUTENBERG@UIUCVMD, GET GUTNBERG LOG9011 to LISTSERV@UIUCVMD. Herwijnen, Eric van. Practical SGML. Geneva, Switzerland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. Jennings, Ted. "Electronic publishing." Electronic mail message to the Association of Electronic Scholarly Journals list, 30 December 1990. BITNET, AESJ-L@ALBNYVM1, GET AESJ-L LOG9012 TO LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1. Kulikowski, S. "Network Reference and Publication." Electronic mail message to Educational Technology list, October 1990. BITNET, EDTECH@OHSTVMA, GET EDTECH LOG9010 to LISTSERV@OHSTVMA. Lambert, Jill. Scientific and Technical Journals. London: Clive Bingley, 1985. Ulmer, Gregory. "Grammatology Hypertext." Postmodern Culture 1, No. 2 (January 1991). BITNET, GET ULMER 191 PMC-LIST to LISTSERV@NCSUVM. + Page 76 + About the Authors Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth Postmodern Culture Box 8105 North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27695 PMC@NCSUVM ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Eyal Amiran and John Unsworth. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 177+ ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 177-181. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- LaQuey, Tracy L., ed. The User's Directory of Computer Networks. Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1990. ISBN: 1-55558-047-5. $34.95. Reviewed by Dave Cook. ----------------------------------------------------------------- In the introduction to her book, The User's Directory of Computer Networks, Tracy LaQuey points out that this is not a book to be read from cover to cover, but rather one to be consulted and used as "a central reference guide." The User's Directory of Computer Networks is a directory and, therefore, is primarily useful for finding discrete pieces of information on networks and networking. However, a good deal of it can be read with interest and pleasure, especially by those with an historical interest in computer-mediated communication and computer networks. Sections of it should be read with care to facilitate its use a directory and an information source. The book was influenced by John Quarterman's book The Matrix and by his earlier article on networking distributed on the networks and published in Communications of the ACM in 1986. The LaQuey and Quarterman books are basic works for a reference section on computing, CMCS, and networks. The Directory is itself based on earlier, annual publications and is an updated expansion of the 1989 guide published by the University of Texas at Austin. The earlier editions are still available online and can be consulted by those who wish to check the general outline and approach to the present edition. The address is EMX.UTEXAS.EDU; login anonymous. Use the NET.DIRECTORY for the introductory material and the NET.DIRECTORY/1988.NETBOOK for the several files of the text proper. The Directory is organized in broad sections, each representing a major network system (i.e., BITNET, DECnet Internet, Internet, JANET, and USENET). There are also sections on UUCP, domains, the OSI/x.500 standards, electronic mail, and a list of organizations. The selection criteria were the size and scope of the network listed and, interestingly, the responsiveness of the network contact. + Page 178 + There is no index, but its lack is not as important as might be thought at first glance. The detailed "Contents" section outlines the major networks and lists the subnets associated with them. It is quite easy to find the particular one you're looking for. The "List of Organizations" section is useful both as a list and as a finding aid. The international scope of the Directory is very apparent here. It is a surprise to realize just how many institutions, both academic and commercial, are integral components of these networks and, one assumes, are using them as a standard part of their institutional life. The "List of Organizations" is also a cross-referenced finding aid that can be used to locate the network associated with the institution you are interested in. Brief instructions on how to do this are mentioned in the "Introduction" and should be read first by anyone wanting to make full use of the directory. You are advised to look up your own organization in the "List of Organizations" and to trace its connectivity through the appropriate sections of the book. It's good advice, and it does reveal the practical design of the book and how useful it can be in real situations. The entries give a lot of information in very little space: a description of the equipment, network, and mail addresses; a contact person; and, useful when all else fails, a phone number. Finding a personal address is still not easy; you are left knowing the address of your correspondent, but still guessing at his or her ID. The solution to that problem will have to wait for a phone book to be published rather than a directory of sources. The Directory is not a phone book, but it does take you several steps along--the right-hand side of the address and the syntax are now apparent and the postmaster's ID is listed. Much of the information for the Directory came from the information databases maintained at the individual Network Information Centres. The editor mentions an "accelerated editing process" which means that some of the detail was not checked or verified further. Readers are encouraged to send corrections to the NIC's for their network (the address is provided) and to send corrections, suggestions, or comments to the editor to be used in future editions of the book. In imposing a uniform format on the entries and collecting the data in one large volume, the editor has created one place to look for detailed information and has created a very useful tool for e-mail and network enthusiasts. The consistent format adds considerably to the ease of use of the Directory. + Page 179 + LaQuey also stresses a concept called "Directory Services." That is, the creation of a resource guide that can be used for more than basic address information. The Directory has been designed to help the user to locate resources in the broader sense: contact names, database information, computer resources and the availability of OPAC's and catalogues. Explicit data in these areas is not provided, but the information given will allow the individual researcher to take the initial steps towards locating more information. Art St. George's work on OPAC's and the various "Lists of Lists" for computer conferences on the networks will still be primary sources in this area. The LaQuey book expands their usefulness by detailing and explaining the framework within which they operate. There is another dimension to the Directory that makes it interesting to read as well as informative. Short essays have been included to introduce each of the major sections. The one on BITNET is representative, with lots of technical information written an a non-technical, easy to read style. A brief, historical overview and a detailed geographic map showing the sites and the interconnecting store-and-forward routes gives a useful overview. A description of the general services provided, a list of network information materials and instructions on how to retrieve them, and an explanation of the commands and syntax for IBM and VAX users are useful. An extensive list of BITNET representatives is also included. This introduction is another area where an international dimension to networking is very apparent. EARN, NetNorth, and BITNET form one logical network and the degree of international cooperation that underlies that political fact is striking. The section on the Internet follows the same pattern in combining history (and a glimpse at the future) with descriptions of technical processes providing a non-technical overview. The page on protocol suites gives an explanation of concepts, such as TCP/IP, and it provides a place to look it up when I, once again, forget the details. + Page 180 + These introductory essays are often written by experts--John Quarterman on electronic mail and Eugene Spafford on The USENET and UUCP, for example. Quarterman's article and his idea that electronic mail is the glue that holds networking systems together will be familiar to readers of The Matrix. The brief summary here is appropriate and the explanation of domains and gateways is helpful. One can only agree with the author the "the current mess [mail addressing conventions] is not ideal" and that "A generally accepted addressing syntax is the only real solution." Eugene Spafford writes clearly on USENET and UUCP. Those of us who have absorbed BITNET and Internet procedures as the networking norm will find the idea of no central authority and no backbone structure a bit mystifying. The apparent anarchy of no (or very few) rules for members or participants does have a charm of its own. The processes are so complex and the scale is so vast, that the wonder is that the system works at all. The User's Directory of Computer Networks is useful, of course, in the reference section of any library or academic department concerned with local, national, or international networking. It should also be useful for non-academic users. For example, managers of large, national bulletin board systems who incorporate network mail and conferences into their services. Computer enthusiasts looking for help with the next step in their development of personal knowledge and skills will also find the Directory a great help. + Page 181 + About the Author Dave Cook McMaster University Library Hamilton, Ontario, Canada COOKD@MCMASTER ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Dave Cook. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 161 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 161-163. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Provocations: An Informal Column ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Depth vs. Breadth: Enhancement and Retrospective Conversion" by Walt Crawford 'Way back in 1987, I wrote: "Most patrons will use only one catalog, particularly if they find any results. Adding more material to the online catalog is more important than adding more information to existing records. Budgetary realities suggest that libraries can either include more items in online catalogs or enhance the contents of some items, but probably not both" [1]. I don't believe the budgetary realities have changed all that much since 1987; if anything, they've grown worse. The miracle cure for retrospective conversion has proved as elusive as other miracle cures: doing it right takes time and money, period. The same goes for any miraculous means of enhancing access (e.g., adding chapter titles, tables of contents, or back-of-book index entries to OPAC records). Thus, the easy answer to the question, "if we knew 20 years ago what we needed to do to improve subject access, why haven't we done it" is that it doesn't--and shouldn't--have first priority. If It Isn't in the Catalog, It Isn't in the Collection That's the simplest statement of one problem, but it's at most a very slight exaggeration. If you don't agree with that premise, then there's nothing more to say: we're living in different worlds. + Page 162 + Is it more important to have in-depth access to a small part of the collection, rather than normal bibliographic access to all of it? Some people apparently think so. Some of the most dogged advocates of enhanced access have suggested eliminating all subject access for materials more than 10 years old--and possibly taking 20-year-old materials out of the catalog altogether. So much for retrospective conversion--and you can save big bucks by shutting down preservation departments as well! To be fair to these advocates, I think they're trying to solve a different problem--the fact that precision goes down as recall goes up, and at some point lack of precision makes recall worthless--but the effect is the same: they're proposing something akin to discarding older materials in the interest of better access to the new. I'm a bit suspicious of the idea that every discipline (or, for that matter, any discipline) reinvents itself every decade. Perhaps that's because my degree is in rhetoric, but even cellular physicists might be a tad uncomfortable with the idea that nothing published prior to 1981 is worth reading. Let's not talk about where that leaves librarianship; at least all those who have never read Ranganathan, Cutter, or Dewey would no longer be bashful about it. If we're not willing to off the old books, then we must grant them the respect they're due, which means inclusion in the online catalog. Once that's completed, and once we're sure that new materials will get into the online catalog promptly, then we can and should spend more time enhancing certain categories of records. The USMARC format already provides good storage mechanisms for some such enhancements; all it takes is time and money. Meanwhile, I find it hard to fault real-world libraries for their current priorities: putting it all into the online catalog at current levels of access, rather than giving some material (who chooses?) special treatment while leaving other material out altogether. That's responsible librarianship. Notes Walt Crawford, Patron Access: Issues for Online Catalogs (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1987), 21. + Page 163 + About the Author Walt Crawford The Research Libraries Group, Inc. 1200 Villa Street Mountain View CA 94041-1100 BR.WCC@RLG.BITNET ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Walt Crawford. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 164 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 164-170. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Recursive Reviews ----------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright, Digital Media, and Libraries by Martin Halbert Running a branch library devoted to computational materials, I am frequently amazed at patrons' lack of understanding of copyright issues. One patron, an otherwise very intelligent research scientist, was baffled concerning the restrictions inherent in checking software out of the library. The magnitude of his misunderstanding came home to me when he asked if our restrictions meant that he didn't need to bring his own disks to copy the software onto. He thought, in all honesty, I finally realized, that copying the software was what checking out software was all about. After a very long discussion with him about copyright and why it is illegal to copy software, he went away somewhat shocked, but at least informed. While most librarians have a better understanding of the concept of copyright than my patron, how many of us have really thought about all the ramifications of copyright and new digital media technologies? Librarians are ostensibly supposed to be experts on the proper use of the collections of information they administer. This month's column is devoted to a brief bibliography on the subject of copyright and digital media. I know that I had never considered many of the issues raised in the sources reviewed below, so I think they will be of interest to all librarians who have added any kind of digital media (e.g., software and CD-ROM databases) to their collections. + Page 165 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Intellectual Property Rights in an Age of Electronics and Information. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1986. OTA-CIT-302. ----------------------------------------------------------------- This 1986 report by the Office of Technology Assessment is the best existing review and discussion of how new technological developments have impacted the concept of intellectual property in the United States. Many discussions of the topic begin with a review of this source (see below), which is justifiable considering its quality. The 300-page report concisely covers the conceptual framework and goals of intellectual property rights, how current laws have tried to accommodate technological change, enforcement issues, and the role of the federal government as a regulator. The conclusion of the report is that the new technologies, especially functional works like software, have rendered the existing concepts and implementations of domestic intellectual property law obsolete. An entirely new approach to the issue of what constitutes intellectual property and how to regulate it will have to be developed by congress. The OTA report raises profoundly troubling issues for librarians and the entire information industry. ----------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Computer Software and Intellectual Property--Background Paper. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1990. OTA-BP-CIT-61 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Drawing on the 1986 OTA report and others, this OTA background paper further analyzes software issues. It goes into greater detail concerning questions peculiar to software, such as addressing the following questions. Can an interface be copyrighted? Can the concept of an algorithm be unambiguously defined? Patented? Is a neural net to be considered a software system or a hardware system? The paper includes a few developments which happened after the 1986 OTA report, but fundamentally the paper only raises questions and provides a context for discussing the problem. Real answers may be a long way off. + Page 166 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- Duggan, Mary Kay. "Copyright of Electronic Information: Issues and Questions." Online 15, no. 3 (May 1991): 20-26. (ISSN 0146-5422) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Because developments in the law have lagged so far behind technological developments, many issues of copyright and digital media are being resolved in practice, if not in legal fact. Duggan discusses emerging views about what constitutes "fair use" of electronic information sources. She concludes that while some consensus is developing about use of search results from CD-ROM and dial-up databases, little agreement has yet been reached about LAN and WAN access to databases and other network information sources. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Garret, John R. "Text to Screen Revisited: Copyright in the Electronic Age." Online 15, no. 2 (March 1991): 22-24. (ISSN 0146-5422) ---------------------------------------------------------------- John Garret is the director of market development at the Copyright Clearance Center. Taking a very different view from most of the other sources reviewed in this column, he maintains that current copyright laws are perfectly capable of dealing with the new electronic environment. He calls into question many of the assumptions about computer systems and monetary funding that (he claims) underlie the move to overhaul the copyright system. He describes a variety of small-scale pilot projects that the Copyright Clearance Center has undertaken in conjunction with publishers and researchers "to provide owner-authorized, text-based information electronically for internal use to various sets of users, and to determine what they use, when they use it, why, how often, and to what end." He further claims: "For these pilots, and for other, larger-scale programs that will be developed in the future, existing copyright law provides a perfectly adequate context for the development and elaboration of systems to manage computer-based text." + Page 167 + While one has to wonder whether Mr. Garret is unbiased in this matter given his position, he does make a convincing argument for the limited case of electronic access to text-only databases. However, his points do not address the larger issues raised in the OTA intellectual property studies. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander, Adrian W., and Julie S. Alexander. "Intellectual Property Rights and the 'Sacred Engine': Scholarly Publishing in the Electronic Age." In Advances in Library Resource Sharing, ed. Jennifer Cargill and Diane J. Graves, 176-192. Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1990. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Adrian and Julie Alexander give a fine overview of the 1986 OTA report, as well as a conference on intellectual property rights held in 1987 by the Network Advisory Committee of the Library of Congress. They conclude with a broad discussion of the potential for electronic publishing for the scholarly research and publication process, which echoes many of the themes discussed at recent meetings of the Coalition for Networked Information. They maintain, as some CNI speakers have, that electronic publishing represents an opportunity for universities to recapture their intellectual property from the expensive and fruitless cycle of sale back and forth to publishers. They also point out that publishers want to capture this potential publication medium as well. + Page 168 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- Shuman, Bruce A., and Joseph J. Mika. "Copyrighted Software and Infringement by Libraries." Library and Archival Security 9, no. 1 (1989): 29-36. (ISSN 0196-0075) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Shuman and Mika provide a good overview of the current state of software piracy and copyright infringement, with a few additional comments that describe the situation of libraries which circulate software. They are quite critical of the practice of "shrink-wrap" licensing which many vendors have taken up. This is the familiar tactic of pasting a license agreement with many restrictions on the outside of a shrink-wrapped software package, with a statement to the effect of "if you open this package, you thereby agree to this license." They describe the many problems involved in trying to police the use of software by library patrons, and state that: "Librarians will continue to find themselves between copyright holders and license-vendors, eager to recover the money they feel entitled to, and patrons (and sometimes library employees) who wish to 'liberate' programs, whether out of simple greed, a love of the challenge, altruism, or a 'Robin Hood' complex." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Denning, Dorothy E. "The United States vs. Craig Neidorf." Communications of the ACM 34, no. 3 (March 1991): 24-32. (ISSN 0001-0782) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, I would like to conclude this column with an example of the kinds of troubling legal actions that are surely brewing on the horizon. The March 1991 Communications of the ACM was partly devoted to a debate concerning electronic publishing, constitutional rights, and hackers. The article by Dorothy Denning was a description of the trial of Craig Neidorf, a pre-law student at the University of Missouri. Neidorf was charged by a federal grand jury with wire fraud, computer fraud, and interstate transportation of stolen property. + Page 169 + All this because he published a document (containing what turned out to be public domain information) in an electronic journal he edited. The electronic journal was called "Phrack," a contraction of the terms "Phreak" (the act of breaking into telecommunications systems) and "Hack" (the act of breaking into computer systems). The document in question concerned the E911 system of Southwestern Bell, and it contained only information that was already in the public domain. The charges against Neidorf were dropped when this was brought up during the trial, but Neidorf was left with all his court costs, amounting to $100,000. Now, regardless of what one thinks of Neidorf or the ethics of hacking, the fact that the U.S. government can bankrupt an individual (or institution!) by making groundless accusations of publishing "secret" electronic documents bears attention! Neidorf's case may potentially mark the beginning of entirely new types of censorship revolving around electronic media. Denning's article points out that currently the government can seize all computer equipment and files of an individual or organization, and hold them for months. This kind of search and seizure (again on mistaken grounds) devastated one small company called Steve Jackson Games. Denning discusses this incident as well, and it is chilling to imagine happening by accident to one's own organization. Problems of copyright and the new digital media are only now beginning to surface, but they have been inherent in the new technologies since at least the sixties. Libraries and society as a whole will increasingly have to face these issues, either in legislation by a forward-looking congress, or more likely in painful court trials like the United States vs. Neidorf. + Page 170 + About the Author Martin Halbert Automation and Reference Librarian Fondren Library Rice University Houston, TX 77251-1892 HALBERT@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Martin Halbert. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 39 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Harnad, Stevan. "Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 39-53. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 The Evolution of Human Communication and Cognition There have been three revolutions in the history of human thought, and we are on the threshold of a fourth. The first took place hundreds of thousands of years ago when language first emerged in hominid evolution and the members of our species became inclined--in response to some adaptive pressures whose nature is still just the subject of vague conjecture [1]--to trade amongst themselves in propositions that had truth value. There is no question but that this change was revolutionary, because we thereby became the first--and so far the only--species able and willing to describe and explain the world we live in. It remains a mystery--to me at any rate--why our anthropoid cousins, the apes, who certainly seem smart enough, do not share this inclination of ours. At any rate, this divergence between our two respective species was a milestone in human communication and cognition, making it possible for culture to develop and be passed on by oral tradition. That momentous adaptation seems to have had a neurological basis. Injuries to certain areas of the left side of the brain--Wernicke's area and Broca's area, to be exact--result in language-specific deficits in speaking and understanding [2, 3]. So whatever the evolutionary changes underlying language were, they were imprinted as permanent modifications of our neural hardware. The second cognitive revolution was the advent of writing, tens of thousands of years ago. Spoken language had already allowed the oral codification of thought; written language now made it possible to preserve the code independent of any speaker/hearer. It became, if you like, an implementation-independent code. No one knows for sure whether there was any corresponding change in our cerebral hardware. There is nominally a region in the left frontal lobe--Exner's area--that is dubbed the "writing center," and there are certainly specific neurological problems associated with "dyslexia" or reading disorder. But all of this neurology is complicated and ill-understood, and no "pure" alexia (inability to read), without any other associated visual or motor problems, has been found. So it is more likely, I think, that writing and reading were cognitive and motor skills that we acquired without any organic evolutionary change in our brains; they were merely learned adaptations of the same hardware we had all along. + Page 40 + No precise starting point can be assigned to either science or literature. The former began with the first true proposition about the world and the latter either with the first such true proposition that was also formulated elegantly, or perhaps with the first untrue proposition. In either case, the oral tradition was already equipped to produce both science and literature, although perhaps science, being a little too constrained by the limits of memory and accuracy in the word-of-mouth medium, was the greater beneficiary of the advent of writing, with the incomparably greater reliability and systematization it conferred in preserving the words, and hence the thoughts, of others. But there were constraints on writing too. For whereas spoken language conformed well to both the transmitting and receiving powers of human thinkers (perhaps as a reflection of its specific dedicated neurology), writing was somewhat out of synch with thought. It was slow. And worse than that, it had a much more limited scope, for whereas a spoken proposition could be heard by several people, even by multitudes, a written one could only be read by one at a time. This could be done serially by limitless numbers of readers, of course, and this was the real strength of writing, but it was purchased at the price of becoming a much less interactive medium of communication than speech. The form and style of written discourse accordingly adapted to this lapidary new medium--again, not neurologically, but consciously and by convention--constraining the writer to be more precise in some respects, but also allowing him more freedom to redraft and reformulate his text in composing it. In becoming less interactive, writing also became less spontaneous than speech, more deliberate, and more systematic. One might also say it became less social and more solipsistic, although its ultimate social reach became much larger, limited only by the slow pace of copyists in providing the text to disseminate. The third revolution took place in our own millennium. With the invention of moveable type and the printing press, the laborious hand-copying of texts became obsolete, and both the tempo and the scope of the written word increased enormously. Texts could be distributed so much more quickly and widely that again the style of communication underwent qualitative changes. If the transition from the oral tradition to the written word made communication more reflective and solitary than direct speech, print restored an interactive element, at least among scholars, and, if the scholarly "periodical" was not born with the advent of printing, it certainly came into its own. Scholarship could now be the collective, cumulative, and interactive enterprise it had always been destined to be. Evolution had given us the cognitive wherewithal and technology had given us the vehicle. + Page 41 + Of course, there had already been a prominent exception to the impersonal trend set in motion by writing, namely, private letters. These made it possible for people to communicate even when they were separated by great distances, although again the pace of the communication was much slower and less interactive than live conversation, and it continued to be so, even after the advent of print. Many minor and major technological changes followed, but none, I think, qualify as revolutionary. The means of transportation improved, so the written word could be circulated more quickly and more widely. The typewriter (and eventually the word processor) made it much easier to generate and modify one's texts. Photocopying made it possible to duplicate, and desktop publishing to print, even texts that weren't worth duplicating and printing. And the telephone all but did in the art of letter writing altogether, probably because it restored the natural tempo of spoken communication to which the brain is constitutionally adapted. Of course, phoning had the disadvantage of not leaving a permanent record, but for that there were tape recorders, and so on. The reason I single out as revolutionary only speech, writing, and print in this panorama of media transformations that shaped how we communicate is that I think only those three had a qualitative effect on how we think. In a nutshell, speech made it possible to make propositions, hand-writing made it possible to preserve them speaker-independently, and print made it possible to preserve them hand-writer-independently. All three had a dramatic effect on how we thought as well as on how we expressed our thoughts, so arguably they had an equally dramatic effect on what we thought. The rest of the technological developments were only quantitative refinements of the media created by speech, writing, and print. The purist might, with some justification, even hold that print was just a quantitative refinement of writing, but let's argue about that another time: the historic evidence for the impact of print is considerable. + Page 42 + The two factors mediating the qualitative effects were speed and scale. Speech slowed thought down, but to a rate for which the brain made specific organic adaptations. Our average speaking rate is a biological parameter; it is a natural tempo. Hand-writing slowed it down still further, but here the adaptations were strategic and stylistic rather than neurological. In writing, the brain was underutilized. Evidence for this comes from the fact that when the typewriter and the word processor allowed the pace of writing to pick up again, we were quite ready to return to a tempo closer to our natural one for speech. On the other hand, the constraints of the written medium are substantive, and they affect both form and content, as anyone who has tried to use raw transcripts of spontaneous speech can attest. What is acceptable and understandable in spoken form is unlikely to be acceptable and understandable in written form, and vice versa. In a sense, there are only three communication media as far as our brains are concerned: the nonverbal medium in which we push, pull, mime and gesticulate [4]; and two verbal media--the natural one, consisting of oral speech (and perhaps sign language), and the unnatural one, consisting of written speech. Two features conspire to make writing unnatural. One is the constraint it puts on the speed with which it allows thoughts to be expressed (and hence also on the speed with which they can be formulated), and the other is the constraint it puts on the interaction of speaking thinkers--and hence again on the tempo of their interdigitating thoughts, both collaborative and competitive. Oral speech not only matches the natural speed of thought more closely, it also conforms to the natural tempo of interpersonal discourse. In comparison, written dialogue has always been hopelessly slow: the difference between "real-time" dialogue and off-line correspondence. Hopeless, that is, until the fourth cognitive revolution, which is just about to take place with the advent of "electronic skywriting." + Page 43 + 2.0 Scholarly Skywriting: A Personal Glimpse of the Potential Panorama I must now turn from impressionistic history to personal anecdote. My own skyward odyssey in the newest communication medium, the airwaves of electronic telecommunication networks, had its roots in a long-standing personal penchant for scholarly letter-writing (to the point of once being cited in print as "personal communication, pp. 14-20"). These days few share my epistolary bent, which is dismissed as a doomed anachronism. Scholars don't have the time. Inquiry is racing forward much too rapidly for such genteel dawdling--forward toward, among other things, due credit in print for one's every minute effort. So I too had to resign myself to the slower turnaround but surer rewards of conventional scholarly publication. In fact, a decade and a half ago I founded a scholarly journal in the conventional print medium, though Behavioral & Brain Sciences (BBS) is hardly a conventional journal. 2.1 Behavioral and Brain Sciences Modelled on Current Anthropology (CA, which was founded by the anthropologist Sol Tax, who in turn modelled it on the extreme participatory democratic practices of the native North American peoples he studied), BBS's unique feature is "creative disagreement" [5]. Specializing in important and influential ideas and findings in the biobehavioral sciences, BBS, after a round of particularly rigorous peer review (involving five to eight referees representing the multiple areas that candidate manuscripts must impinge upon), offers to the authors of accepted papers the service of "open peer commentary." Their manuscript is circulated to specialists across disciplines and around the world, each invited to submit 1,000-word commentaries that discuss, criticize, amplify, and supplement the work reported in the target article, which is then published along with the commentaries (often twenty or more) and the author's formal response to them [6]. BBS's open peer commentary service has evidently been found valuable by the world biobehavioral science community, because already in its fourth year its "impact factor" (citation ratio) had become one of the highest in its field [7, 8]. + Page 44 + 2.2 Limitations of Print Journals Like other print journals, BBS is prisoner to the temporal, geographic, and (shall we call them) "internoetic" constraints of the conventional paper publication medium. In that medium, new ideas and findings are written up and then submitted for peer review [9, 10]. The refereeing may take anywhere from three weeks to three months. Then the author revises in response to the peer evaluation and recommendations, and when the article is finally accepted, it again takes from three to nine months or more before the published version appears (perhaps earlier, when circulated informally in preprint form). That's not the end of the wait, however, but merely the beginning, for now the author must wait until his peers actually read and respond in some way to his work, incorporating it into their theory, doing further experiments, or otherwise exploring the ramifications of his contribution. After all, that's why creative scholars publish-- not to put another line on their resumes, but to collaborate with their peers in expanding our collective body of knowledge. It usually takes several years, however, before the literature responds to an author's contribution (if it responds at all) and by that time the author, more likely than not, is thinking about something else. So a potentially vital spiral of peer interactions, had it taken place in "real" cognitive time, never materializes, and countless ideas are instead doomed to remain stillborn. The culprit is again the factor of tempo: the fact that the written medium is hopelessly out of synch with the thinking mechanism and the organic potential it would have for rapid interaction if only there were a medium that could support the requisite rounds of feedback, in tempo giusto! Hopeless, as noted earlier, until the forthcoming fourth cognitive revolution makes it possible to restore scholarly communication to a tempo much closer to the brain's natural potential while still retaining the rigor, discipline, and permanence of the refereed written medium. + Page 45 + 2.3 Discussion Groups on the Net I will try to illustrate with an account of my own first (unrefereed) glimpse of the Platonic world of scholarly skywriting. Most of the world's universities and research institutions are linked together by various international electronic networks such as BITNET and Internet (called, collectively, the "Net"). Electronic mail ("e-mail") can be sent via the Net, usually within minutes, to London, Budapest, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, lately even Minsk. But the feature that has the most remarkable potential is multiple reciprocal e-mail: electronic discussion groups in which every message is immediately disseminated to all members. These groups first formed themselves anarchically, on various networks, the biggest of them called USENET, and were devoted partly to technical discussion about computers and information, the technologies that had built the Net, and otherwise to "flaming": free-for-all back and forth messages by anyone, on any topic under the sun. Next, discussion groups devoted to specific topics (e.g., computers, politics, language, culture, and sex) began to form, and these in turn split into "unmoderated" and "moderated" groups. Anyone with an e-mail address whose institution was connected to USENET could post to an unmoderated group, and the message would automatically be sent to everyone who was "subscribed" to the group. It was because most of the unmoderated groups were quite chaotic that the moderated groups were formed. In these, all submissions had to be channeled through a "moderator," but this was usually someone with no special qualifications or expertise, so the quality of the information on the moderated groups was still very uneven, and, with a few exceptions (principally technical discussions about computing itself), these groups were mostly havens for uninformed students and dilettantes rather than respectable scholarly forums for learned specialists in the subject matter under discussion, a subject matter that by now ranged across the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. + Page 46 + This was the status quo on the Net--a communication medium with revolutionary intellectual potential being used mostly as a global graffiti board (in all fields other than computing itself)--when I first sampled the skyways several years ago in a large (unmoderated) USENET group called "comp.ai" (devoted to the topic of artificial intelligence, a subfield of my own specialty, cognitive science). I had heard that there was a lot of ongoing discussion on comp.ai about something that had appeared in BBS--Searle's "Chinese Room Argument" [11]. The content of that discussion is not relevant here. Suffice it to say that about a profound and complex topic a great deal of nonsense was being posted on comp.ai by people who knew very little (mostly students and computer programmers). This initial demography, and the unscholarly level of discussion that prevailed because of it, was and still is one of the principal obstacles to the Net's realizing its real potential. For what true scholar would condescend to join these innocents in serious scholarly discussion, and in such an anarchic medium! Well, draw your own conclusions, but that did not stop me. Whether it was my partiality for letter-writing or for creative disagreement, I decided to test out the airways, but consciously applying self-imposed constraints, since the medium would not provide them for me. My postings to comp.ai would be conscientiously thought out and carefully written, as if they were for a serious refereed journal, with a sophisticated scholarly readership--for posterity, in fact. Hardest of all, I would treat the contributions of my interlocutors as if they had been serious and scholarly ones too, and when these were uninformed or in error, I would endeavor to correct them in a dignified and respectful way that would be informative and instructive to all, solemnly trying to correct the Nth instance of the same egregious mistake with a Nth new aspect or dimension of the problem under discussion, always with the objective of advancing the ideas for all skygazers. Indeed, critical to my efforts at sobriety and self-discipline was maintaining for myself a conscious fantasy that, silent among the thousands of eyes trained skyward, were my peers, and not just the rookies I was jousting with. + Page 47 + Lest it be thought that this was all just some sort of altruistic exhibition, however, let me hasten to report that I found myself by far the greatest beneficiary of this exercise. For the remarkable fact is that even under these primitive demographic conditions my own ideas profited enormously from the skywriting interactions. The problem under discussion (and it only became evident to me during the discussion just what that problem was) I dubbed, in the course of the skywriting, "the symbol grounding problem," and it has since generated not only a series of (alas, conventional, ground-based) papers [12, 13, 14], but also a cottage industry in the form of a theme for workshops and symposia [15], and soon, no doubt, dissertations. All this as a consequence of aerobatics with mere rookies. "So what would it have been like," I then asked myself, "if the best minds in the field were on the Net, skywriting away with the rest of us?" 2.4 Psycoloquy When I founded BBS fifteen years ago, I had been inspired by the remarkable potential of "open peer commentary" as revealed through an article by Gordon Hewes [16] in Sol Tax's commentary journal, CA. That article was on the origin of language, a topic that had been under an informal moratorium (as breeding only idle conjectures) imposed by the Paris Societe Linguistique a century earlier. Hewes and his animated commentators across disciplines so piqued my own interest in the topic that I: (1) co-organized an international conference under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences [17] (a conference that effectively put an end to the moratorium on the topic and went on to spawn an uninhibited series of language-origins conferences, e.g., Raffler-Engel et al. [18]); and (2) I founded BBS, convinced that Sol Tax's "CA Comment" principle could be generalized beyond its discipline of origin. A decade and half later my own rewarding experience with electronic skywriting has convinced me that this newest medium's unique potential to support and sustain open peer commentary must now be made generally available too, so I have founded Psycoloquy, a BBS of the air, unfettered by the temporal and spatial constraints of the earthbound print medium. + Page 48 + Originally initiated in 1985 by Bob Morecock of the University of Houston as an electronic bulletin board called the "BITNET Psychology Newsletter," Psycoloquy was transformed in 1989 into a refereed electronic journal (ISSN Number 1055-0143). It is now sponsored on an experimental basis by the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association. I am Co-Editor for scientific contributions, and the Co-Editor for clinical, applied and professional contributions is Perry London, Dean of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. One of Psycoloquy's principal scholarly objectives is to implement peer review on the Net in psychology and its related fields (cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral biology, linguistics, and philosophy). All contributions are refereed by a member of Psycoloquy's Editorial Board (currently 50 members and growing), but the idea is not just to implement a conventional journal in electronic form. Psycoloquy is explicitly devoted to scholarly skywriting, the radically new form of communication made possible by the Net, in which authors post to Psycoloquy a brief report of current ideas and findings on which they wish to elicit feedback from fellow specialists as well as experts from related disciplines the world over. The refereeing of each original posting and each item of peer feedback on it is to be done very quickly, sometimes within a few hours of receipt, so as to maintain the momentum and interactive quality of this unique medium, just as if each contribution were being written in the sky, for all peers to see and append to. Skywriting promises to restore the speed of scholarly communication to a rate much closer to the speed of thought, while adding to it a global scope and an interactive dimension that are without precedent in human communication, all conducted through the discipline of the written medium, monitored by peer review, and permanently archived for future reference. Scholarly skywriting in Psycoloquy is intended especially for that prepublication "pilot" stage of scientific inquiry in which peer communication and feedback are still critically shaping the final intellectual outcome. That formative stage is where the Net's speed, scope, and interactive capabilities offer the possibility of a phase transition in the evolution of knowledge, one in which we break free from the earthbound inertia that has encumbered human inquiry until now, soaring at last to the skyborn speeds to which our minds were organically destined [19]. + Page 49 + Psycoloquy appears in two forms. Its USENET version, called "sci.psychology.digest," is "gatewayed" to the Net from Princeton. Its BITNET version, formerly stored at Tulane University and archived at the University of Houston, is now at Princeton too. The BITNET version currently has around 2,500 individual subscribers and redistribution lists. The USENET version (which is transmitted to sites rather than individuals, and hence is not directly monitored for number of subscribers) may well be reaching an order of magnitude more readers. Psycoloquy is fully international, with subscribers in the Americas, Europe, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, the Middle and Far East, and growing parts of the third world (where electronic journals promise to be a godsend for the libraries and scholars who have hitherto been information deprived because of currency restrictions and budget limitations). Subscription to Psycoloquy is free. To subscribe, anyone with a login on any of the networks can send the following one line e- mail message to LISTSERV@PUCC.BITNET: "SUB PSYC First Name Last Name" (omitting quotes and substituting your own first and last name). The message must originate from the e-mail address at which you wish to receive Psycoloquy. Subsequent postings are sent to PSYC@PUCC.BITNET or to PSYC@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU. Psycoloquy currently appears about once a month, but we are prepared to publish it much more frequently as the submission rate and demand increase. Back issues of Psycoloquy are archived at Princeton, and they can be retrieved from any Internet e-mail address directly by a simple procedure called "anonymous FTP." Princeton also has a service called "BITFTP" that allows issues to be retrieved indirectly from BITNET by e-mail (other services exist, for example, for JANET subscribers in the United Kingdom). Soon, with the help of an experimental searchable database provided by Bellcore and some collaborative efforts with the American Mathematical Society, it should be possible not only to retrieve items, but to do interactive full-text searches of the Psycoloquy archive from both BITNET and Internet. + Page 50 + 3.0 After the Revolution This fourth revolution has not yet taken place. Some of the impediments have already been noted: (1) the current demography of the Net and the stereotype it has created of the medium as not suitable for serious scholarly communication; (2) the ingrained habits of a scholarly community adapted to the paper medium for centuries; (3) the foot-dragging of the paper publishing industry, with all its interests vested in the ground-based technology; and (4) many prima facie doubts and objections (e.g., about quality, academic credit, and security), all of which are easily and decisively answerable [20], even though they keep getting raised again and again. (An attempt to lay to rest these prima facie objections once and for all is in preparation [21].) It is a foregone conclusion that the revolution will come. My selfish concern is with getting it underway while I am still compos mentis and in a position to partake of its intellectual benefits! Allies in hastening its coming will be the libraries, whose budgets are overburdened with the expenses associated with the print medium; learned societies, whose primary motivation is to get carefully refereed scholarly information disseminated to the peer community as quickly and fully as possible; and the scholarly community itself, who will surely realize that it is they, not the publishers who merely give it the imprimatur, who are the controllers of the quality of the scholarly literature through peer review--not to mention that they are also the creators of the literature itself. (A strategic pro-revolutionary alliance may be in order.) But the most important factor in hastening the onset of the fourth cognitive revolution will surely be the unique capabilities of the medium itself. Electronic journals should not and will not be mere clones of paper journals, ghosts in another medium. What we need, and what Psycoloquy will endeavor to help provide, are some dazzling demonstrations of the unique power of scholarly skywriting. I am convinced that once scholars have experienced it, they will become addicted for life, as I did. And once word gets out that there are some remarkable things happening in this medium, things that cannot be duplicated by any other means, these conditions will represent to the scholarly community an "offer they cannot refuse." We are then poised for a lightning-fast phase transition, again a unique feature of the scale and scope of this medium, one that will forever leave the land-based technology far behind, as scholarship is launched at last into the post-Gutenberg galaxy. + Page 51 + Notes 1. S. Harnad, H. D. Steklis, and J. B. Lancaster, eds., Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1976): 280. 2. S. Harnad, R. W. Doty, L. Goldstein, J. Jaynes, and G. Krauthamer, eds., Lateralization in the Nervous System (New York: Academic Press, 1977). 3. G. A. Ojemann, "Brain Organization for Language From the Perspective of Electrical Stimulation Mapping," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6, no. 2 (1983): 189-230. 4. P. Greenfield, "Language, Tools, and Brain: The Development and Evolution of Hierarchically Organized Sequential Behavior," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14, no. 4 (1991), in press. 5. S. Harnad, "Creative Disagreement," The Sciences 19 (1979): 18-20. 6. S. Harnad, ed., Peer Commentary on Peer Review: A Case Study in Scientific Quality Control (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 7. S. Harnad, "Commentaries, Opinions and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge," American Psychologist 39, no. 12 (1984): 1497-1498. 8. R. A. Drake, "Citations to Articles and Commentaries: A Reanalysis," American Psychologist 41, no. 13 (1986): 324-325. 9. S. Harnad, "Rational Disagreement in Peer Review," Science, Technology, and Human Values 10, no. 3 (1985): 55-62. 10. S. Harnad, review of A Different Balance: Editorial Peer Review, by Stephen Lock, in Nature 322 (3 July 1986): 24-25. 11. J. R. Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Programs," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 3 (1980): 417-457. 12. S. Harnad, "The Symbol Grounding Problem," Physica D 42 (1990): 335-346. + Page 52 + 13. S. Harnad, "Other Bodies, Other Minds: A Machine Incarnation of an Old Philosophical Problem," Minds and Machines 1, no. 1 (1991): 43-54. 14. S. Harnad, "Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling Cognition," in A. Clarke and R. Lutz, eds., Connectionism in Context (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992), in press. 15. S. Harnad, S. J. Hanson, and J. Lubin, "Categorical Perception and the Evolution of Supervised Learning in Neural Nets" (Presented at American Association for Artificial Intelligence Symposium on Symbol Grounding: Problems and Practice, Stanford University, March 1991). 16. G. W. Hewes, "Primate Communication and the Gestural Origin of Language," Current Anthropology 14, no. 1/2 (1973): 5-12. 17. S. Harnad, H. D. Steklis, and J. B. Lancaster, eds., Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech, 280. 18. V. von Raffler-Engel, J. Wind, and A. Jonker, eds., Studies in Language Origins, Volume II: Papers from the 3rd International Meeting of the Language Origins Society (Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 1991). 19. S. Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 342-344. 20. Ibid. 21. S. Harnad, "Prima Facie Arguments Against Electronic Journals: Replies," College and Research Libraries (1992), forthcoming. + Page 53 + About the Author Stevan Harnad Department of Psychology Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 HARNAD@PRINCETON.EDU ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Stevan Harnad. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 25 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Harrison, Teresa M., Timothy Stephen, and James Winter. "Online Journals: Disciplinary Designs for Electronic Scholarship." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 25-38. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction The decade of the 80's has witnessed the advent of a revolution in scholarly communication. The explosive growth of wide-area academic computer networking using BITNET/EARN, Internet, and an extensive array of regional networks has brought us beyond the point of asking whether the networks will be used for scholarly communication. The important questions now center around how computer-mediated scholarly communication will take place. Increasingly, speculation has focused upon the ability of electronic media to replace paper as the primary delivery medium for scholarly journals. A prima facie case for the desirability of online or electronic scholarly journals seems already to exist. Advocates have based their cases on the advantages of computer networking and electronic media over print publication, such as the speed of dissemination, the relatively low costs of production and dissemination, and the ability to make more scholarship available than before [1]. Noting that publishers receive the economic benefits of research produced at public expense, Okerson has suggested that an electronic publishing component within the National Research and Education Network would enable scholarship to remain financially accessible to the public [2]. Other arguments have been based upon the ways that electronic publication might improve the practice of scholarship within academic disciplines. For example, advocates have described the superior possibilities for information retrieval that may be achieved when scholarly articles are interconnected in flexible databases [3, 4]. Yavarkovsky [5] and Lyman [6] have suggested that electronic publication can facilitate certain types of scholarship that generate products better represented in graphics, or in three-dimensional, animated, or moving visual representations. Other researchers have argued that electronic journals might be aimed at facilitating informal communication processes through which original ideas are generated and refined and preliminary information about research is disseminated [7, 8, 9]. + Page 26 + Although the future of electronic journals seems promising, their adoption by scholars will not be determined solely by the number of technical innovations or by the medium's ability to tip the scales in a comparison of costs and benefits with print media. The decade of the 90's will no doubt witness many attempts to introduce models for electronic academic journals. Whether these journals succeed or fail will depend on the extent to which a particular journal's design is consistent with the social practices of the discipline it serves and the extent to which it reflects the discipline's needs for information and communication. If this is true, it follows that no single journal model will serve as a prototype for all disciplines. Instead, designers of electronic journals would do well to understand how their particular disciplines' social practices may block or delay the acceptance of an electronic journal. The journal must be designed and introduced in a way that overcomes these hurdles, while offering an approach to "publication" that improves the discipline's ability to satisfy information and communication needs. In this article, we describe the approach we have taken in the design of the Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication (EJC/REC, ISSN 1183-5656). We begin by noting differences between disciplines that argue for a variety of approaches in electronic journals. Then, we focus on the considerations that were most important to us in planning the development of EJC/REC, and we describe how we have attempted to address them. Our strategy has centered upon the idea of introducing EJC/REC within the context of an electronic service known as Comserve--a broader disciplinary project whose aim is to promote the use of electronic media in communication scholarship. Finally, we call attention to challenges that designers of electronic journals will face in attempting to institutionalize the medium within the academy. + Page 27 + 2.0 Disciplinary Differences in the Design of Online Journals Electronic media makes feasible a dazzling array of innovations with the potential to transform the nature of scholarly communication. Developers are eager to incorporate these features into the design of electronic journals. However, these innovations will not be equally attractive in all disciplines. Although journals in the sciences, humanities, and the social sciences appear to be fairly similar, there are systematic differences in the kind of information they include and the way that information is presented [10]. These variations in journal design and presentation reflect more fundamental distinctions across the disciplines in journal publication processes, the way that journals are used, and the types of contributions journal articles represent. Those planning to develop electronic journals must be sensitive to these differences. 2.1 Electronic Archives Some of the most radically innovative proposals for online publications have focused on the improvements in information retrieval that can be obtained when journals and their contents are interconnected in archival databases. Designers of these "electronic archives" (the category "journal" no longer seems apt) plan to incorporate certain characteristics of traditional journals such as editorial boards and peer review, but use technology to transcend the limitations of print. Their aim is to create information retrieval features that enable users to access a single article as well as a body of literature that is relevant to it, to place comments and rebuttals to specific articles within the archive, and to generate instructions that will identify additions to the system that are of interest to particular users [11, 12, 13]. + Page 28 + One would expect such a model to be attractive in the natural and applied sciences where scholars often pursue particular questions systematically within established theoretical programs. Research such as this, occurring in fields like medicine, engineering, physics, and biology, is often supported by large grants or contracts. In such contexts, new knowledge accumulates rapidly and supersedes existing knowledge; scholarly credibility depends upon the ability to portray one's work as integral within this stream. However, this type of process is barely evident within most humanities and social science disciplines. Further, we question whether the economic resources devoted to disciplinary inquiry will be sufficient for the construction and use of such elaborate information retrieval capabilities. 2.2 Non-Traditional Electronic Journals It has also been popular to suggest that, instead of replacing traditional journals, online publications might address other aspects of scholarly communication. For example, online journals might be used to disseminate brief summaries of research and information about research in progress [14], to engage in more limited exchanges of information [15], or, more ambitiously, to support and institutionalize informal scholarly communication activities that typically take place in interpersonal contexts [16]. Informal scholarly communication, which is regarded as important for generating ideas and communicating information about ongoing research, takes place at conferences, at colloquia or symposia, and through correspondence. It is typically restricted to small numbers of individuals. Electronic media would enable these activities to take place on an ongoing basis with greater levels of participation. Some of these proposals spring from fears about whether electronic journals will command the credibility of traditional print publications. For example, Turoff and Hiltz's focus on developing electronic alternatives to traditional journals was motivated by their discovery that scholars were reluctant to place their work in the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES)-maintained journal [17]. They surmised that this reluctance was due to perceptions that articles in this journal would have a smaller chance of being cited by others. + Page 29 + In the natural and applied sciences, where informal communication is the scholar's primary means of keeping up to date on research advances, computer-mediated information exchanges may be valued, though it is not clear if electronic journals that carry out such functions will ever command the same prestige as traditional publications. Peer review and broader network access to these journals would surely help to overcome some of their limitations. However, what is true of one discipline may not be true of others. In many humanities and social science disciplines, informal communication may play a greater role in generating ideas than disseminating information about research in progress, and journal article publication is itself viewed as a less important contribution to knowledge than publication of a book [18]. In such disciplines, electronic journals may never achieve the credibility of print. Indeed, Katzen's suggestion that scholarly communication functions are likely to be split between electronic and print media seems to proceed from the assumption that humanities scholars will find it very hard to break their allegiance to print [19]. Electronic journals are viewed as impermanent, less satisfying to read, and it is feared their contents will change as the journals are disseminated. Therefore, these journals may be suitable for reflecting what is transient in scholarship; what is permanent and authoritative should be preserved in print. We do not doubt that electronic media will stimulate the development of new forms of scholarly discourse; however, we were reluctant to introduce both a new genre and a new medium of journal publication. Historically, the journal article evolved as a genre of scholarly discourse from the first published scientific communication, which consisted of letters sent to the editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [20]. In the same way, we expect that new genres of electronic scholarly discourse across the disciplines will evolve after the medium in which they appear has acquired the imprimatur of scholarly legitimacy. + Page 30 + 3.0 The Design and Introduction of EJC/REC One might expect that those who study human communication would be the first to embrace the advantages of new communication technologies. However, while there are many communication scholars who are interested in communication technologies, there are many others who have little experience in computing and who are just as likely as other scholars to question the viability of new publication systems. Any new serial is going to face issues of permanence (will it still exist in three years?), accessibility (will it get into the hands of other scholars?), and credibility (will articles be peer reviewed and cited by others?). It was apparent that the new medium would make it more difficult to provide the usual assurances. Further, we recognized that the medium posed challenges not experienced in print publication that would have to be overcome. Thus, before any of the advantages of online journals could be realized, we believed that it was necessary to overcome the obstacles presented by the medium. 3.1 Comserve: An Electronic Publisher One of the first decisions made was to offer EJC/REC under the auspices of Comserve. Comserve is an electronic information and discussion resource that, since 1986, has used national and global computer networks to provide disciplinary services to communication scholars and students. Individuals interact with Comserve using accounts on local mainframe computers that are linked to BITNET, Internet, or any network connected to them. Comserve functions as a software robot with its own network address, watching for and taking action on commands that users send to it. + Page 31 + Comserve's primary purpose is to promote the use of electronic networking and computer-mediated communication in the service of communication scholarship. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at no charge to users, Comserve offers four basic types of resources: (1) An interactive "white pages"--an electronic directory of names, electronic mail addresses, and research interests of individuals in the discipline. (2) Electronic indexes to disciplinary journals that can be searched for bibliographic citations. (3) A database of over 1,000 files containing research, teaching, and other professionally useful information. (4) A suite of 20 online conferences addressing research, teaching, and professional topics in communication studies. By associating the publication of EJC/REC with Comserve we hoped to dispel some of the inevitable doubts about the permanence of the journal. When the first issue of EJC/REC was published, Comserve was entering its fifth year of operation, making it one of the oldest disciplinary services on the networks. Comserve had received financial support from several of the discipline's professional organizations as well as from many individual departments of communication throughout North America, thus indicating that it had achieved some measure of recognition and visibility within the discipline. + Page 32 + Furthermore, by associating EJC/REC with Comserve, we hoped to provide some assurances about EJC/REC's accessibility. Users have generally found it easy to learn how to access Comserve's resources, as indicated by the speed of diffusion among students and faculty. Over 20,000 individuals from nearly every major academic institution in the United States, Canada, and Mexico (as well as in 35 other countries) have sent over 250,000 commands to Comserve. Approximately 4,500 individuals maintain subscriptions to one or more of Comserve's electronic conferences. In the same way that many scholarly associations act as publishers of their own disciplinary journals, Comserve acts as an electronic "publisher" for EJC/REC. As an electronic disciplinary forum, Comserve offers an array of incentives for faculty and students in communication studies to learn how to use computer-mediated communication for scholarly discourse. The services described above fall within the realm of informal scholarly communication. EJC/REC, a mechanism for formal scholarly communication, complements these efforts to institutionalize the use of electronic communication within the field. Together, Comserve and EJC/REC are helping to create an electronic community of scholars. Within such a community, we believed that an electronic journal has a significant chance to develop disciplinary stature. 3.2 EJC/REC: Form and Content In its first year of publication, EJC/REC has delivered two issues and is in the process of producing its third. Technically, subscriptions are managed automatically through a special electronic conference devoted to the journal that is managed by Comserve. Interested individuals may subscribe to the journal by sending the following command on the first line in the body of an electronic mail message to COMSERVE@RPIECS (BITNET) or COMSERVE@VM.ECS.RPI.EDU (Internet): SUBSCRIBE EJCREC First_Name Last_Name (Example: SUBSCRIBE EJCREC Mary Smith) + Page 33 + The journal's 320 subscribers automatically receive the journal's table of contents, abstracts for each article in the issue, and the names of files containing each article in the issue. Files are named by author and volume/issue number. Those interested may then request files containing desired articles by sending the appropriate command to Comserve (at either of the addresses noted above). For example: SEND MCKEOWN V1N190 refers to an article by Bruce McKeown of Westmont College entitled "Q Methodology, Communication, and the Behavioral Text," appearing in volume 1, number 1 of EJC/REC in 1990. Articles appearing in back issues will continue to be available through Comserve and may be requested at any time. All articles are in ASCII format. With respect to editorial policies, EJC/REC seeks to be broadly representative of the field of communication studies and invites submissions related to the study of communication theory, research, practice, and policy. Manuscripts reporting original research, methodologies relevant to the study of human communication, critical syntheses of research, and theoretical and philosophical perspectives on communication are encouraged. Manuscripts are reviewed by relevant individuals within a thirty- member editorial board consisting of scholars representing diverse interests in the field from Europe, Canada, and the United States. To establish a credible publication history, attract readership, and encourage submissions, we have devoted initial issues of EJC/REC, edited by scholars with established reputations, to special topics within the communication field. Thus, the first issue addressed the topic of "Q Methodology and Communication: Theory and Applications" and was edited by Irvin Goldman of the University of Windsor and Steven Brown of Kent State University. Goldman and Brown, acknowledged heirs to the scholarly legacy of psychologist and communication theorist William Stephenson, who invented Q methodology, identified noted scholars in the area, invited contributions to the issue, and supervised the reviewing process. + Page 34 + Since EJC/REC originates in Canada, there have been efforts to create a journal that is bilingual in certain aspects of its presentation and in some of its focuses. Editorial duties are distributed between James Winter of the University of Windsor (English-speaking editor) and Claude Martin of the University of Montreal (French-speaking editor). Articles may appear in English or French. Although articles will not always be translated into both languages, messages from special issue editors, article titles, and article abstracts are presented in French as well as in English. 4.0 EJC/REC: In the Future We recognize that we have not resolved all doubts about the permanence, accessibility, and credibility of EJC/REC. Ultimately, these doubts can only be resolved, and the journal's future assured, when EJC/REC is incorporated within the recognized body of scholarly knowledge. This means ensuring that the journal is readily available through university and college libraries. Although libraries may currently subscribe to issues of EJC/REC distributed through the network, we plan to improve availability by distributing the journal to libraries on diskettes (at well below current costs for print journals) as soon as a full volume becomes available. We are also exploring possibilities for including the journal in standard citation services and other secondary bibliographic resources in the humanities and social sciences. Finally, one important hurdle we, and other designers of electronic journals, must attempt to address is the onerous experience of reading an online journal. It is necessary to display the contents of online or electronic journals in ASCII format because there are few word processing systems compatible with the many different kinds of computing equipment that can be used to display text. As most already know, reading large quantities of text on video display terminals is not a comfortable way of consuming scholarship. Many editors of online journals are resigned to the fact that their readers will download articles of interest and print them in order to read them. Thus, the electronic medium is viewed as suitable for delivering, but not for experiencing, text. + Page 35 + We are impressed by the results of an experiment conducted by Standera that assessed reader responses to a journal appearing in five different formats, including an electronic version read on a video display terminal [21]. He concluded that before readers will be willing to change their preferences for print: "Designers (of electronic publishing systems) must provide improved legibility, easy browsing, more friendly procedures, ready availability of indexes, portability, and less fatigue" [22]. Some improvements in legibility will occur with advances in video display technology. But needed now, or in the very near future, are more fundamental improvements in the reader's ability to "handle" or manipulate text. The allegiance to print is in great measure an unwillingness to give up advantages conferred by the materiality of paper. Until they can do with electronic text what they currently do with text on paper, scholars will retain their devotion to print and resist converting to electronic media. Notes 1. Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress Report," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 33 (July 1982): 195-202. 2. Anne Okerson, "Incentives and Disincentives in Research and Educational Communication," EDUCOM Review 25 (Fall 1990): 15. 3. William Gardner, "The Electronic Archive: Scientific Publishing for the 1990s," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 333-341. 4. Sharon J. Rogers and Charlene S. Hurt, "How Scholarly Communication Should Work in the 21st Century," Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 October 1989, A56. 5. Jerome Yavarkovsky, "A University-Based Electronic Publishing Network," EDUCOM Review 25 (Fall 1990): 14-20. + Page 36 + 6. Peter Lyman, "The Library of the (Not-So-Distant) Future," Change 23 (January/February 1991): 34-41. 7. Stevan Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 342-344. 8. D. J. Pullinger, "Chit-Chat to Electronic Journals: Computer Conferencing Supports Scientific Communication," IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications PC 29 (March 1986): 23-29. 9. B. Shackel, "The BLEND System: Programme for the Study of Some 'Electronic Journals'," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 34 (January 1983): 22-30. 10. May F. Katzen, "The Changing Appearance of Research Journals in Science and Technology: An Analysis and a Case Study," in Development of Science Publishing in Europe, ed. A. J. Meadows (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1980), 177-214. 11. A. Bookstein and M. J. O'Donnell, "A Scholarly Electronic Journal on the Internet: The Chicago Journal of Computer Science" (Paper presented at the Association of Research Libraries Conference for Refereed Academic Publishing Projects, Raleigh, North Carolina, 8 October 1990.) 12. Lynn Kellar, "Functional Overview of the Electronic Science Journal." (Paper presented at the Association of Research Libraries Conference for Refereed Academic Publishing Projects, Raleigh, North Carolina, 8 October 1990.) 13. Gardner, "The Electronic Archive: Scientific Publishing for the 1990s," 333-341. 14. May Katzen, "Electronic Publishing in the Humanities," Scholarly Publishing 18 (October 1986): 5-16. 15. Turoff and Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress Report," 195-202. 16. Stevan Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," 342-344. + Page 37 + 17. Turoff and Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress Report," 195-202. 18. Blaise Cronin, "Invisible Colleges and Information Transfer: A Review and Commentary with Particular Reference to the Social Sciences," Journal of Documentation 38 (September 1982): 212-236. 19. Katzen, "Electronic Publishing in the Humanities," 5-16. 20. Katzen, "The Changing Appearance of Research Journals in Science and Technology," 177-214. 21. O. L. Standera, "Electronic Publishing: Some Notes on Reader Response and Costs," Scholarly Publishing 16 (July 1985): 291-305. 22. Ibid., 299. About the Authors: Teresa M. Harrison and Timothy D. Stephen Co-Directors, Comserve Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY 12180 James Winter Editor, Electronic Journal of Communication University of Windsor Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4 + Page 38 + ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Teresa M. Harrison, Timothy D. Stephen, and James Winter. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------- + Page 77 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hugo, Jane and Linda Newell. "New Horizons in Adult Education: The First Five Years (1987-1991)." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 77-90. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Overview of the Journal's History The Syracuse University Kellogg Project began in 1986 with a mission to provide broader access to the university's adult education materials and to facilitate the exchange of information and learning using the very latest technologies where possible. In the fall of 1987 the Project initiated an electronic journal, New Horizons in Adult Education. The electronic journal, as initially conceived, was to (a) provide a means of disseminating, via computer, current thinking within the field of adult education; (b) develop new avenues for connecting adult educators worldwide; and (c) generate dialogue among researchers and practitioners. It was decided from the onset that the journal would be student run [1]. This clear statement of the purpose and direction of New Horizons glosses over the serendipity and the hard work that was the process out of which New Horizons emerged. The graduate student who took on the job of initiating the journal, Michael Ehringhaus, set about the task of clarifying the purpose and structure of the journal, identifying students to serve on its editorial board, gaining a command of the technology that would be required to support such an effort, and establishing publication procedures. Each of these formative activities consisted of many decisions, all of which had consequences that the student editor had to consider for this innovative venture. 1.1 Clarifying the Purpose and Structure of the Journal At the time New Horizons started, there were few templates to follow other than those offered by traditional, print journals. Kellogg Project staff interested in the journal concept discussed what the journal should look like, not in terms of its visual appearance, but rather in terms of the locus of control, who would publish it, and what relationship the journal might have to the field of adult education [2]. + Page 78 + Some wanted a radical journal that would serve to rattle the established views of academic adult education. Others suggested something more like a bulletin board. Using electronic mail (e- mail) communication networks, the student editor extended this conversation to other students and faculty in the field of adult education. The ensuing dialogue brought forth several issues. The consensus was that the journal should be student-run, yet remain open to all for refereed publication. In addition, students, many of whom already felt marginal within the field of adult education, recommended that the journal not increase this feeling by positioning itself in opposition to the field at large (e.g., being a "radical" journal) or by being a student-only publication. It would be important that contributing to New Horizons be perceived by the field as something that would benefit both student authors, who were being initiated into the publication process, and seasoned professional writers. In other words, the journal needed to have credibility with academic adult educators. Concern over these issues led the editor to define the journal in these ways: (1) The journal would be student-run with graduate students serving as editors and on the editorial board. As such, it would serve as a unique learning environment for students. It would be a chance to blend the technological skills that must be developed to obtain computer proficiency with an added opportunity to learn more about the theoretical and practical aspects of adult education. (2) The journal would use a double-blind review process to adjudicate articles. (3) The journal would consider submissions on a range of adult education topics (research based or not) from academics, students, or practitioners outside of academic settings. + Page 79 + Since the fundamental purpose of the journal was to expand the boundaries of what electronic information was available to adult educators and to develop new avenues for connecting adult educators worldwide, part of clarifying the purpose and setting the structure had to deal with financial issues. Would the journal be free or not? The decision was made to make it free, and it would be distributed via a BITNET list server. Unfortunately, while the Kellogg Project and Syracuse University could absorb the costs related to managing, assembling, and disseminating the journal, they could not control the policies in place at other sites accessing BITNET or related networks. For example, educators in New Zealand and Australia were charged per page by those controlling the electronic traffic at their end of the transmission. The Kellogg Project could not absorb those costs. The result was two-fold. First, prohibitive costs on the receiving end eliminated some readers. Second, the editor and editorial board had to grapple with the question of producing paper copies of the journal. In the end, the desire to disseminate the ideas presented in the journal superseded the desire to have a purely electronic journal. In cases where the reader's context made access to the journal impossible or costly, the editors printed copies from mainframe files and mailed them out. 1.2 Identifying Students to Serve on the Board The first editor of the journal selected graduate students to serve on the editorial board. In order to be eligible for the editorial board, students needed to be able to use mainframe communication networks. Journal discussion, decision making, and article reviews were to be done electronically over BITNET. "To take advantage of the medium," wrote the first editor, board members "must have a fairly sophisticated knowledge of their mainframe computer and how to manipulate lengthy electronic files" [3]. + Page 80 + The names of potential board members came from the early e-mail discussions about the structure of the journal. In 1986, finding graduate students with either network access and experience or with a willingness to learn and institutional support for network access was difficult. For example, a member of the original board had to share a mainframe account with a professor in her department, and another woman who wanted to be on the board could not participate because her institution did not have the computer support services to assist her. Following the leads that his sometimes serendipitous e-mail turned up, the editor garnered the names of enough students from around the United States and Canada to constitute the initial editorial board, which had seven members. Many of them had limited technical sophistication when they started, but acquired skill as they participated. Electronic mail played a key role in the journal's development: E-Mail has been used to exchange information about technical problems, set up editorial board meetings at national conferences, discuss various topics, get feedback on the journal, and survey the board for their views concerning the operation, management, and substance of New Horizons [4]. A by-product of this national and international interchange was that people began talking about the journal, giving the journal some visibility and publicizing its existence and purpose. One unanticipated challenge underlying both issues discussed thus far was the founders' naivete about how much formative work was involved in getting an electronic journal started. This was clearly brought home as the New Horizons editor and editorial board learned to use the technology and developed the journal's infrastructure. + Page 81 + 1.3 Gaining Command of the Technology Getting the journal into an accessible form on the network was like "nailing jelly to a tree," according to the Kellogg Project network specialist Dan Vertrees [5], who assisted the editor in identifying and solving technical problems. When they began, there were few tools to do it with and little communication with the technical experts who had the tools. However, Kellogg Project staff established a vital liaison between themselves and the campus computer network services. This liaison was responsible for breaking electronic logjams having to do with collecting, moving, formatting, uploading, and downloading files; insuring adequate mainframe space for journal activities; and working with different computer systems. Because electronic communication is rapid, there is an accompanying myth that anything connected with such communication would be rapid. Surely, putting out an electronic journal would be a streamlined, fast process! This expectation exemplified the naivete surrounding the development phase of the journal. As the founding editor commented in a recent conversation: Push a button and it's [the journal] in Australia, [or] in Vancouver. We can disseminate instantly. We can receive instantly. [However], the actual process of electronic formatting doesn't fit the myth of the speed of an electronic product [6]. Gaining command of the technology involved not only learning which communication packages to use and which commands did what, it also involved formative tasks such as training others, experimenting with the technology at each phase of publication, exploring the consequences of doing file transfers instead of using e-mail, and helping board members, authors, and readers grapple with technical problems on their end of the process. A spirit of playfulness and adventure were key qualities the editor brought to this aspect of the journal's development. + Page 82 + 1.4 Establishing Publication Procedures and an Editorial Policy It was not the intention of the Kellogg Project to clone a print journal. However, those involved with shaping the journal wrestled with the pros and cons of taking advantage of electronic publishing while at the same time keeping recognizable formats that were the boundaries set by print journals. There were few models to follow for developing an electronic journal in an academic context where credibility, equitable access, and bibliographic retrieval are important. "It was too early in electronic journaling," noted Dan Vertrees, "to push too many of the boundaries because people were just beginning" [7]. Most of the journal's policies and procedures evolved over time from discussions with people in the field of adult education, computer technology, and library science. For instance, the editor did not set a publication frequency because it wasn't known how long the entire publication process (from submission to final publication) would take using e-mail and mainframe-PC communication. In addition, as a student-run journal read mainly by those in academic settings, it became apparent that New Horizons' publication cycle needed to mesh with the academic calendar, taking into account things like exam periods, vacations, and the special demands of the beginning and end of semesters. After a little over a year's experience with the journal, a formal editorial policy was codified. The editorial policy guidelines, published in the third issue (Fall 1989) of New Horizons, were designed to be as encompassing of "high tech" and "low tech" options as possible in order to highlight the journal's overall commitment to access. The following areas were addressed within this policy statement: (1) Purpose of the Journal New Horizons in Adult Education was founded to enhance international dialogue within the field of adult education. (2) Nature of the Publication Categories of acceptable submission forms were broadly defined to include research articles, thought pieces, book reviews, point/counter-point articles, case studies, and invitational columns written by graduate students, professors, and practitioners involved in adult education and allied areas. + Page 83 + (3) Manuscript Submission Requirements New Horizons in Adult Education would accept articles in a variety of formats including computer disk (ASCII files), e- mail, fax, and paper copy. Submissions could be sent to an electronic address or by regular mail to the journal's office. There were no explicit length limitations, although authors were informed that the editorial board reviewers would evaluate each piece to determine if the subject and substance warranted the length. Authors were also advised to use written text explanations of concepts and data rather than diagrams or graphics; simple tabular data, when necessary to article content, could be included. (4) Submission Style While the electronic medium would not accommodate strict adherence to the rules governing manuscript style and references outlined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), APA was the preferred style of New Horizons and was recommended as a model for manuscript preparation. 2.0 A General Description of New Horizons As one of the first electronic journals distributed via computer networks, New Horizons had to blaze the trail and establish a variety of editorial and operational procedures that were appropriate for the new electronic medium. 2.1 Frequency of Publication, Scope, and Content Since its inception, five issues of the journal have been "published" or distributed across AEDNET (the Adult Education Network). AEDNET, an electronic network sponsored by the Syracuse University Kellogg Project, is a VM/CMS-based list server, networked to BITNET, CSNET, Internet, NSFNET, and NYSERNet. Several participants also connect to AEDNET via FidoNet and CompuServe. In 1991, a biannual publication policy with Fall and Spring issues corresponding to the academic year was instituted in response to an increase in the number of submissions to the journal. + Page 84 + The manuscript acceptance rate for this journal has been 32%. Article submissions have been both theoretical and practical in focus, and they cover many fields of inquiry. The complex mosaic of submissions to date share common threads of interest to education scholars, practitioners, and students alike who are concerned with topics relevant to the field of adult education. For example, past issues have carried articles on adult development, propaganda and adult education, feminist research methodology, functional literacy in Nigeria, women and literacy in Tanzania, physical learning environments, adult education in Nicaragua, and a comparison of computer and audio teleconferencing. 2.2 Reader Access The editorial staff of New Horizons has attempted to facilitate access in two ways. First, the journal is sent out free of charge to over 400 adult educators in ten countries, including Australia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, through AOLIN (Australian Open Learning Information Network), another 95 individual participants as well as the members of seven organizations have access to AEDNET. Back issues of the journal, in both electronic and paper form, are available free of charge. Although most back-issue requests have been for paper copies, there is an increasing demand for electronic copies. Second, since the Kellogg Project was concerned about access for readers who were not on the network, it approached the ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. New Horizons has been indexed and abstracted by ERIC. To further enhance bibliographic access, an ISSN number has recently been applied for. + Page 85 + In his recent editorial on a journal readership survey conducted over AEDNET, Ehringhaus [8] highlighted the concerns regarding access to the technology that were expressed by respondents to an e-mail questionnaire: Network access is not pervasive throughout the world or within those areas of institutions in which adult education departments are housed. Some readers of New Horizons, for example, have to share computer accounts with colleagues while other readers find it next to impossible to gain the necessary institutional support (both technical and training) to engage in the level of mainframe communications necessary to interact with AEDNET, in general, or with New Horizons, in particular. Any publication distributed via an electronic network is, therefore, limited in its readership to those who have means and institutional support necessary to log on and use the system. It is issues of equity and access such as this, which the editorial staff of New Horizons has tried to consider from a number of possible angles, that will remain a challenge to electronic journal publication in the future. 2.3 The Editors and the Editorial Board New Horizons has been edited and published by a total of five graduate students from Syracuse University: (1) Michael Ehringhaus, 1987-1990; (2) Jane Hugo, 1989-1990; (3) Linda Newell, 1989-1991; (4) Joan Durant, 1990-1991; and (5) Mary Beth Hinton, 1990-1991. Also, David Price of the University of Missouri-Columbia left his position on the editorial board in 1990-1991 to join the editorial staff. The editorial board, which was initially comprised of seven graduate students from across the United States and Canada, has now grown to fourteen members. The editorial board members represent a wide range of disciplinary interests within the field of adult education. Like the editors, they are nontraditional students who bring many years of adult education theory and practice to their position. Selection criteria for the editorial board include graduate student status (once a board member completes his or her degree, she/he is no longer eligible to participate as a reviewer) and access to a personal computer and mainframe account. + Page 86 + New Horizons offers a unique informal learning opportunity for the graduate students who volunteer to serve on the editorial board. Although most of the editorial board members are graduate students in adult education, two board members have been from related disciplines. 2.4 The Editorial Dynamics A series of snapshots of the editorial responsibilities would include the following activities as the major operational components. 2.4.1 Requests for Information Staff must respond to ongoing written, electronic, and telephone requests for information about the journal. 2.4.2 Promotional Materials Promotional materials such as letters, calls for manuscripts, newspaper articles, and newsletter articles must be prepared on a regular basis. 2.4.3 Communication with the Editorial Board The editors must engage in frequent e-mail communication with editorial board members to provide information updates on the receipt of new submissions and the status of work-in-progress. 2.4.4 Article Submission Authors can send articles to either the journal's e-mail address, HORIZONS@SUVM, or to its regular mail address: New Horizons in Adult Education, Syracuse University Kellogg Project, 310 Lyman Hall, 108 College Place, Syracuse, New York 13244-4160. (After August 1991 when the Syracuse University Kellogg Project ends, the electronic mail address for New Horizons will remain the same; however, its regular mail address will change to New Horizons in Adult Education, Department of Adult Education, 350 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, New York 13244-2340.) + Page 87 + Once submitted articles are received, staff create office files for all submissions, including author's original paper or electronic disk copy, duplicate editorial copies, and copies of all correspondence with the author. An article submission checklist has been prepared to capture the sequential details of this process. 2.4.5 Article Annotations Staff prepare brief annotations of each article for use by the editors and the editorial board. Such documents give the editorial board members a more detailed picture of what the submission is all about than a title alone could provide. 2.4.6 Preparation of Electronic Review Documents Articles submitted in an electronic format need to have identifying materials removed (e.g., author's name and institutional affiliation) from the original