Subject: Electronic Publishing

From: "Rainer Stumpe 100012,1163" <[email-masked]>
Date: 01 Feb 94 15:14:41 EST

To:   >internet:[email-masked]
>From [email-masked] Rainer Stumpe
Subj: Re: Electronic Publishing

Dear Fellow Netters,

I received a couple of messages on the subject to my private
mail box. I will answer publicly, however, and more generally.

No, I do not have access to WWW nor do I use Mosaic. It is now
only a few months that we have direct access to Internet. It
took years of discussions with the operating organizations to
get that access (there was a lot of suspicion that we would
misuse public information media for commercial purposes).

Yes, we have an obsolete main frame in-house computer system.
There are only few high-tech workstations available to the
Springer staff. It is not so much the cost for such equipment,
it is a problem of training people. Our employes have to work
for products that we can sell and earn their salaries. One can
expect learning to master new systems in their free time only
from a few, but they are there, others will follow.

Can e-publishing lower the cost of information? Well, should
it? Publishing is an economic factor (scientific publishing is
only a fraction of the total value of publications). There are
more than just publishers, who earn their living in the
industry: paper mills, typesetters, printers, mail services,
book sellers, journal agents, librarians, etc. If you think
about it, e-publishing will also feed many people: system
developers, communication line vendors, computer operators,
sysops, archivars, reformatters, etc. All what e-publishing
will do is shift the number of people working in an established
industry to an emerging industry. By making a job description
obsolete (e.g. the typesetter or the mailman who delivers your
favorite scientific journal) does not decrease the number of
mouths to feed! So, I do not believe information will become
less expensive in the end.

We at Springer think at a global and unified scale. We feel
obliged to the whole scientific community, regardless of
nationality or state of technical advancement. We are very
alert to new developments and we participate in the most
advanced technological developments (mainly in Germany and the
US). And when e-publishing leaves the state of limited
experimental applications, we will have e-journals etc. What
makes that transition expensive is that old and new technology
will coexist for quite some time. And we will have to provide
both kind of products if we take our goals seriously: support
free and unlimited flow of information.

Will publishers survive? Yes, some will. Those will, who adopt
fast enough to the changing environment - but that is true for
any profession, is it not? I am convinced commercial publishers
will survive, because they have something to add to the whole
information process. And that is not just layout and promotion.
That profession would otherwise not have survived for 200
years.

All this discussion started with the question of color plates.
Let me comment my personal view. And I am limiting myself to
sciences (not arts, not medicine). Color may distract attention
or focus it on a minor issue (I use color transparencies in
presentations if I have something to hide). Black-and-white
line drawings have their advantage over multicolored area
graphs (not only in sciences): the viewer cannot easily be
cheated, the psychology is better known (e.g. using logarithmic
scale). I do believe, color should be used sparsely and applied
only where necessary. Would you prefer watching the movie
"Casablanca" in color?

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Rainer Stumpe
Sciences Editorial
Springer-Verlag
Tiergartenstr. 17
D-69121 Heidelberg

Phone: +49-(0)6221-487 310
Fax:   +49-(0)6221-487 366
Internet: [email-masked]