A reply to a paper by Jaap Jasperse extolling the virtues of CD-ROM publishing.
Jasperse's main thesis is that the Web has no quality control and is impermanent. His solution is
to publish on CD-ROMs. I disagree strongly. He is mixing the medium with the message.
Beware the "hammer syndrome."
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Dr. Jasperse admits he looks at the world through the center of CD-ROM disks. I believe this has limited his vision somewhat. Since his perception is shared by some other people, I think it is instructive to set some of these issues straight. He equates electronic publishing on the Web with self-publishing. This is an erroneous assumption.
There is no reason that electronic publishing can not meet the highest standards of scholarship. I will use his paper as an outline for discussion, but this should not be interpreted as an attack on him. Indeed, the concerns which underlie his paper are valid. Scholarship is in short supply on the Web, but I believe there are some encouraging developments. At the American Astronomical Society, we have shown that responsible scholarly publishing on the Web can be done, but it takes a publisher (or publishing organization) to do it right. Self-publishing will not work
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This is an important issue. A lot of hastily constructed messages do appear on the Internet, both in Newsgroups and on the Web. However, there is nothing inherent in the Web which precludes quality. We must not assume that the ability to self-publish (which has been with us, even in the paper world) precludes using the same medium for publications of the highest quality scholarship.
There are several very high quality, scholarly journals being published on the Web. Our own electronic Astrophysical Journal Letters is one of them#. It is, for now, an electronic counterpart of one of the world's most prestigious scholarly journals covering the discipline of astronomy; one which is beginning its second century of publication. The peer review will continue to be rigorous, and the copy-editing and typography, both on screen and on paper will continue to adhere to the highest scholarly standards. Other reputable scholarly journals are doing the same thing. The paper and electronic versions will soon diverge as the electronic version acquires important additional features, such as links to outside references, but the quality will remain at its current high level.
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Another critical issue, presentation is important to consider if you want to transmit information reliably. The screen version will be more effective if careful thought is given to the presentation and to features which make the journal easy to read on the screen. For instance, the inclusion of images as thumbnails in the text, with the use of navigation links both forward to the figure and then back to where the reader was, so he (or she) can pick up the thread of the text, are important features. The same goes for references. Many of our readers like first to load the reference page, find the references to their own paper and jump directly to the text to see what the author says about their paper. You can't do this with traditional paper journals! And, although the CD-ROM can have this type of link, it is much more problematic to incorporate links to outside references within a CD-ROM.
I agree completely with Jasperse that simply printing out the HTML pages does not work well. It is for this reason that we give readers the chance to download the Acrobat PDF format for printing out locally copies which look exactly like the typeset paper pages (except for minor degradation in resolution such as you would find if you photocopied the article). Our printouts are complete with high quality fonts and expert page layout. The PDF format, while taking longer to transmit than HTML, is superb for paper delivery of articles. We find that our readers access five articles on the screen for every one they print out. The screen version serves as the selection mechanism, and the PDF printout is for delivery of their own paper copies of the articles important for them.
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With the electronic versions of journals able to come out faster, even produced article by article, a recognized, scholarly electronic journal offers major improvements in speeding up the announcement of priority. I predict that, within a year, we will see the good scholarly publishers accelerating the electronic production to the point where the important papers can be distributed over the Web within two weeks after acceptance by the scientific editor. That is our plan for our Letters journal. At this point the need for self-publishing will virtually disappear.
Traditional publishers will have to acknowledge the Web as a valid publishing mechanism and evolve their practices and policies to the new reality. This is a warning to the publishers to get on board and help uphold scholarship in the electronic future.
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This is an important topic for the scholarly community. Many people may not be aware of the some of the aspects of archiving in the electronic world. First is the assurance of integrity of the documents, second is the assurance of access with current technology, third is comprehensiveness of the archive and finally comes the question of survivability.
It should be understood, yet bears repeating, that scholarly works have to be time and date stamped when accepted by the peer review system. That authentic version of the paper becomes the definitive version which must remain unchanged, typos, misstatements and all. It becomes the job of the organization which "publishes" the document to ensure the integrity of the material delivered to the readers. This is not hard even now, and the emerging digital signature technology will make this easy, even for self-publishers. Readers will know what version they are reading and what it's pedigree is. CD-ROMs have no great advantage over the Web, provided that the Web is used responsibly, and responsible organizations work to ensure the integrity of scholarship on their part of the Web.
As Jasperse says, the scholarly archive should be a "...reliable, mostly cumulative permanent record of scientific endeavor for all to see and build on." After seeing punch cards and seven track magnetic tape disappear as storage media over the last two decades, it is unrealistic to expect that the current CD-ROMs will be readable fifteen years from now. If you doubt that statement, just recall that only fifteen years ago the eight inch floppy disk was the preferred storage medium for PC computers. I still have some around, but they can't be read anywhere. The popular market for video and audio has seen the Beta format, eight track cartridges and all phonograph records disappear despite a large installed base.
The only solution is to be able to migrate the archive into whatever new medium becomes standard. This takes commitment, planning and money. We know this can be done. The American Astronomical Society has taken appropriate steps to plan for future translations. We hope other responsible organizations, either publishers or libraries (such as the National Libraries of each country) join in this enterprise. We have already factored archival maintenance costs into our journal's subscription price. We will update our journals every five years, moving them to the current standard technology to ensure continued easy access.
What about the historical record? Working in conjunction with the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) we are building a searchable, permanently accessible archive of bitmap images of the historical astronomical literature which is linked to our journal, and other peer-reviewed journals as they come on line. References to articles are by permanent names, not URLs. The file structure can (and has) changed without breaking the links. Forward referencing is installed in our journal, and will be installed in the ADS archive of historical journal articles within six months. When complete, this will be a real, usable electronic archive whose worth to the research community will be so great that it will be continued indefinitely. A CD-ROM archive will not provide the storage capacity, the navigation featuresof on on-line archive or the capability to update links easily.
Of course, we believe that multiple sites, mirror archives around the world and the standard disaster recovery mechanisms will be necessary for any archiving scheme. But we have to balance the integrity of the archive against the desire to make many local copies which may not be subject to the oversight necessary to ensure the integrity of the electronic documents.
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In summary, the Web is a wonderful, evolving information delivery mechanism fully capable of supporting the highest quality scholarly publishing. It is up to us to use the Web wisely. There is no inherent reason why the Web is any less a scholarly environment than the traditional library. Instead of wringing our hands about some of the current Web practices, and looking to stifle innovation, we should, instead, employ the solutions which exist today to bring high standards of scholarship to the electronic world. Better yet, we should, as scholars, band together to help each other develop new tools and methods which will further our business of disseminating accurate, high quality information to the widest set of users.
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Boyce is the Senior Associate in charge of electronic publishing at the American Astronomical Society (AAS). He was the Executive Officer for sixteen years and led the Society's pioneering efforts to publish their scholarly journals on the World Wide Web. The AAS has been using the Internet for electronic publishing since 1992. Email: pboyce@aas.org#
The Astrophysical Journal Letters publishes about fifteen four-page articles every ten days. The electronic version has received favorable comments by Calvin and Hitchcock, et.al. For further information on the features and the philosophy behind the AAS electronic publishing see the articles in Physics Today, January 1996, p.42 and Serials Review, to appear late 1996.* * * * *