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Although the current system for publishing scientific studies through paper journals has been in use since the late 1600's, in recent years the sky rocketing cost of many print journals has limited the ability of many university and research libraries to offer a "complete" selection.1–4 This fact, coupled by the coming of age of the internet, has lead many academics to envision a system that will lead to the end of print journals as a primary means of disseminating and archiving research information. In this brave new vision, scientific libraries would be entirely virtual, but available anywhere in the world where there is web access. (Just imagine: a base camp physician-scientist working on Mount Everest using a satellite web link to learn more about the management of high-altitude pulmonary edema in an afflicted climber).
The time required for publication in the print literature has changed little in the last 200 years, whereas scientific discovery continues to proceed at a dizzying pace. The result is what Robertson5 calls "a growing disjunction between the efficiency of science and the inefficiency of scientific reporting". Electronic publication is often proposed as a logical solution to this problem.
This vision does not exclude the use of paper as a medium where it is preferred. Paper is widely recognized at the preferred standard for ease of reading, and those individuals who prefer to read paper documents would simply be able to print them out, page formatting fully intact, using a printer attached to their computer to produce a "dead tree edition". With the use of the Adobe Acrobat software package,6 documents in dozens of native formats can be converted to PDF format ("Portable Data Format") for publication on the web or elsewhere, with options for screen-friendly and printer-friendly versions as desired. The main advantages of this paperless vision are in eliminating the cost of printing and mailing, in bringing the information to the world more quickly, and in allowing electronic searching of the published documents. An additional practical point that is often unrecognized is that it transfers the cost of any colour printing to the end user rather than costing the publisher or the author. This is an important point since colour printing in paper journals can be exceedingly expensive, and frequently the author-scientist is expected to cover the additional cost, an amount often exceeding $1000.
However, not all people exploring this vision like what they see. Some individuals fear a drop in the quality of scientific publishing with the entry onto the academic scene of a large number of poorly run electronic journals sporadically publishing minimally acceptable material and fighting to maintain their existence. They fear a system where peer-review is haphazard or even absent and where any kook can publish.7
Yet the existing journal system itself has an uncertain future. Morris succinctly summarizes the matter this way:8 "Journals provide much that is of immense value to the researcher and practitioner. Yet the economics of journals are unsustainable; the amount of publishable research is increasing more rapidly than the funds available to buy it. Various alternative models are emerging, none of them without problems. The way forward is not clear, but change is inevitable."
Solomon has addressed these specific concerns in a noteworthy online journal article.1 He discusses six concerns about problems related to moving from a classical, paper-based means of scholarly publication to one based purely on electronic means. (Of these concerns, many have been previously discussed by Harnard).9 Solomon lists these concerns as follows:
[i] "With constantly changing digital formats and the rapid proliferation and demise of electronic journals, important scientific material might not be preserved."
[ii] "For reading extended amounts of text, paper is much more convenient than computer screens."
[iii] "It will be difficult to maintain the rigorous quality control provided by peer-review and limited acceptance rates in the prestigious traditional journals."
[iv] "The credit, recognition and advancement (academic credit) provided by publishing in prestigious journals would not be available in electronic journals."
[v] "Electronic media will facilitate and encourage plagiarism."
[vi] "People in remote areas and in developing countries will not have access to electronic publication."
Solomon very effectively debunks these concerns with carefully reasoned arguments. He views these purported problems mostly as either solvable or as "non issues".
For instance, the first concern (that some digital materials might not be preserved should an electronic journal go out of operation) is dismissed (appropriately, in my view) as primarily a technical matter and could easily be addressed with the development of a national system for archiving electronic materials just as the US Library of Congress currently maintains archival copies of all print materials published in the US. Indeed, the US National Institute of Health is exploring exactly this option, with the intended goal of preserving copies of electronic publications in the health sciences, and adding redundancy by employing one or more mirror sites.
Solomon dismisses the second concern (that paper is more convenient) as a "non-issue", noting that "it is simply a matter of printing off the material one wants to read and only the material one wants to read at the point in the space-time continuum that one wants to read it".
Similarly, the third concern (regarding quality control) is said to be "spurious" in that "peer-review and a rigorous selection process are media-independent and can be as easily implemented in an electronic as paper form".
Solomon similarly discusses the remaining three concerns from the naysayers and makes the case that these concerns are greatly exaggerated. He attempts to establish that the main issue in this debate is a power struggle between authors and publishers, especially with respect to copyright ownership. He envisions a system of publication where the copyright is kept by the author rather than being transferred to the publisher as the usual condition of publication.
Solomon's paper concludes with a vision of the future involving the conversion of written material from paper to electronic media in a process extending over several decades. In this process he predicts that control of scientific publication will shift away from scientific publishers to the author-scientist who wrote the material in the first place. Solomon admits that this may result in a number of publications of marginal quality. In the words of the author:1
"Virtually anyone who chooses to do so can publish electronically and make their material available to the world. While this has the potential of drowning us in garbage, it certainly does not mean it is all garbage. Publishers currently have a monopoly on the most prestigious scientific journals but they do not have a monopoly on quality scientific thought. In theory all it would take is a shift in attitudes and conventions among the scientific community for the current publishers to be cut completely out of the equation. In a very real sense the internet has provided the scientific community with the ultimate trump card in determining who controls scientific communication."
The debate surrounding electronic publication will continue for some time. All we can be sure of is that change is inevitable, at least for the time being.
References
1 Solomon DJ. Is it time to take the paper out of serial publication? Med Educ Online 1999; 4: 7. [Available from http://www.Med-Ed-Online.org ]
2 Walker TJ. Free Internet access to traditional journals. Amer Sci 1998; 86. Available from http://www.amsci.org/amsci/articles/98articles/walkerweb.html
3 Odlyzko AM. Competition and cooperation: libraries and publishers in the transition to electronic scholarly journals. J Scholarly Publishing 1999; 30: 163–85. Available from http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/eworld.html
4 Branin JJ Case M. Reforming scholarly publishing in the sciences: a librarian perspective. Notices of the AMS available from http://www.ams.org/notices/199804/branin.pdf
5 Robertson D. Electronic publishing of science: better late than never. Am J Med 2001; 110: 370–2.[Medline]
6 http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html
7
Kassirer JP, Angell M. The Internet and the journal. N Engl J Med 1995; 332: 1709–10.
8 Morris S. The future of journals: where will electronic publishing take us? Hosp Med 2001; 62: 301–4.[Medline]
9 Harnad S. On-line journals and financial fire-walls. Nature 1990; 395: 127–8. Available from http://www.princeton./edu/~harnad/nature.html
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