The evolution of electronic publishing - Networked Scholarly Publishing

Library Trends, Spring, 1995 by F.W. Lancaster

Introduction

The scope of the term "electronic publishing" can be interpreted in many different ways. For example, it could be considered to include all forms of electronic aids to authors, from simple word processing capabilities to actual typesetting and/or mark-up tools (Pilachowski, 1993), as well as networking support to collaborative authorship and electronic communication among authors, editors, referees, and other participants in the publishing process.

Since "publishing" implies production and distribution, however, the term refers most obviously to the generation of publications in electronic form or, at least, with the aid of electronics. In this more restricted sense, electronic publishing can be considered to have evolved gradually over a period of about thirty years, the evolution having the following manifestations:

1. Use of computers to generate conventional print-on-paper publications. This development can be traced back to the early 1960s (e.g., the production of Index Medicus at the National Library of Medicine). The use of electronics to print on paper is not a completely pedestrian application since it allows new capabilities such as printing on demand and even the production of customized publications tailored to individual needs. 2. The distribution of text in electronic form, where the electronic version is the exact equivalent of a paper version and may have been used to generate the paper version. For secondary publications (indexing and abstracting services), electronic distribution began early in the 1960s. For primary journals, the development occurred somewhat later. Today there is considerable activity and interest in projects that make electronically accessible the text and/or graphics of journals that are also sold in print-on-paper form. Major projects of this kind (in which the electronic version is accessible online, as CD-ROM, or as a combination of these modes) include ADONIS (Stern & Compier, 1990), Red Sage (Borman, 1993), CORE (Annual Review, 1992; Borman, 1993), and TULIP (Borman, 1993). Moreover, the full text of a significant number of journals is now made accessible online by vendors such as DIALOG. 3. Distribution in electronic form only but with the publication being little more than print on paper displayed electronically. Nevertheless, it may have various "value added" features, including search, data manipulation and alerting (through profile matching) capabilities. 4. The generation of completely new publications that exploit the true capabilities of electronics (e.g., hypertext and hypermedia, electronic analog models, motion, sound). This phase of development can actually be subdivided into:

(a) the presentation of existing text and graphics in innovative ways (e.g., the Perseus Project) (Mylonas, 1993), and (b) the production of publications designed ab initio to exploit full electronic capabilities.

While these can be considered as logical steps in an evolutionary process, the actual evolution is not easy to depict since all of the steps now co-exist (i.e., the fourth phase of the evolution is already in place, but the first phase has not disappeared). Moreover, the ultimate stage (4[b]) is not yet fully realized: while some authors have produced works that were intended from conception as electronic publications (e.g., for the hypertext medium), this is by no means the norm. Some idea of the true potential of electronics in publishing can be obtained by reading in the area of "virtual reality" (e.g., Rheingold, 1991; Helsel & Roth, 1991; Pimental & Teixeira, 1993). Krueger (1983), in particular, has suggested how electronics allows completely new approaches to the presentation of information, imagination, and inspiration.

Libraries have already been profoundly influenced by the developments in electronic publishing. At the lowest level of effect, it is now commonplace for them to make electronic publications available, through online access or in CD-ROM form, and to instruct patrons in the use of these resources. Several of the larger academic libraries have gone much further by establishing departments designed to support access to publications in electronic form and to exploit their capabilities. Some of these do more than the training of users and the provision of access. For example, the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library has assumed responsibility for the SGML-tagging of certain texts that lack such encoding (Seaman, 1993). Libraries now being established may be designed from the beginning as "electronic libraries." For example, the Electronic Library at DeMontfort University at Milton Keynes (Leicestershire, England) has entered into its own negotiations with publishers to acquire text in electronic form (Arnold et al., 1993; Collier et al., 1993).

The Electronic Journal

The term "electronic journal" is almost as ambiguous as the term "electronic publishing." A very loose definition of the term - any journal existing in an electronic format - would embrace all periodicals available electronically as well as in paper copy, including the text of periodicals accessible through online networks and those periodicals distributed in CD-ROM form.