Subject: Re: Color Plates in Electronic Journals

From: [email-masked] (David J. States)
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 23:24:31 +0600

|> I believe that there are no *technical* barriers to fully electronic
|> scientific journals today.  The barriers are largely political.  If the
|> text and graphics are compressed with the best currently available (not
|> to mention free) software, then conventional networking, storage, and
|> display hardware is adequate for the task.  Much of it is already in
|> place.
|> 
|> The profusion of journal titles, many of which are egregiously
|> overpriced, has forced us into a situation where something has to
|> give.  What gives today is usually our access to the scientific
|> literature.
|> 
|> George Seibel, SmithKline Beecham
|> [email-masked]

Whether technical or sociological, there are still some issues to be
dealt with:

1) stability - the published record is accessible for decades through a
system of libraries and other collections around the world.  The
average gopher site has a half-life of months.  Digital standards also
come and go with surprising rapidity.  Want to display a decade old
WordStar or Wang Labs document anyone?  nroff/troff is an extra cost
option on SGI workstations and not accessible at all to most Mac/PC
users.  Libraries need to come up to speed as repositories of the
digital record.

2) review and certification - everyone knows what an article in JACS or
J. Mol. Biol. connotes.  An article retrieved from usenet or a gopher
site may be anything from a high quality research report by a
distinguished faculty member to the ravings of an irate undergraduate.
Academic societies are in an excellent position to play a valuable role
by providing a review function and certifying the quality of
information that they distribute.

3) access and standards - given appropriate language skills and access
to a library, anyone can read a hardcopy journal.  Digital standards
still have a ways to go.  PostScript, in particular, is a very
non-standard standard.  LaTex is free to those with the time and
expertise to install it on their systems, and completely inaccessible
to those who do not.

Bottom line:  The publishing houses are tied into a high cost,
personnel intensive method of operation.  The expense of supporting
this through publication and subscription fees is an unnecessary drain
on available scientific funds.  Academic societies should immediately
renegotiate their copyright agreements and initiate steps toward doing
their own electronic distribution.  With time and the need, library
support and standardization will develop.

David States
Institute for Biomedical Computing / Washington University in St. Louis