Electronic Publishing

Discussion of texts:

Kay and Goldberg, Personal Dynamic Media
John Willinski, Toward the Design of an Open Monograph Press
Peter Suber, A Primer on Open Access to Science and Scholarship


The more I read for this class the more amazed I am of, as is pointed out in the introduction to the Kay and Goldberg reprint, the uncanny ability of some people to predict the future of technologies long before they come to fruition. I must point out, however, that there remains a fine line between a visionary and a crackpot, and for every person with a fantastical idea that actually comes true there are 99 people who are remain crazy (Xanadu come to mind specifically).

If we treat Kay and Goldberg as visionaries, though, there are several key aspects of their ideas and experiences as described in the article that perhaps help explain why they didn't end up in the loon camp. Their research letting children program computers was particularly intriguing for the results: youth walk into a project with no preconceptions of what is and isn't possible, and are far more inclined to original innovation as a result. The article states directly that the kids they worked with looked at programming for what it "ought" to do, not what it had previously done and therefore might do. I think part of what the authors brought to notebook computing was a similar perspective (as a result of this research or independent of it I'm not sure). Specifically in the line that reading on a computer "...need not be treated as a simulated paper book since this is a new medium with new properties" they show a tendency toward true innovation; they aren't just slicing bread and calling it a new creation, they're questioning if and why 'sliced' was ever the best way for bread to be in the first place. Vitally they also add the catch that the resulting product must "...not to be worse than paper in any important way", something that I'm sure many failed designs did not do, particularly those that seek to imitate the real world but collapse it into (effectively) 2 dimensions.Their genius only went so far, however, as other functions they describe are less innovative. In the painting function, for example, "a brush can be grabbed with the “mouse,” dipped into a paint pot…" and then used to draw. This fundamentally goes against the standards they set for the reading application by replicating arguably the biggest draw back to real world painting and adding no improvement to compensate for what is lost (eg. fine control of motion). Kay and Goldberg may have been visionaries, and may have been proven right by time, but they were also ultimately just a single domino in the line that has taken computing technology this far.

This topic overlaps conveniently with some very interesting discussions I've been having in my LIS course about online publication, and I can't help but incorporate some of the things pointed out in these conversations, so consider this my disclaimer that not all of what follows are my own original ideas, but rather extensions of things that have come up elsewhere.

I am suspicious of Willinski's use of statistics to demonstrate the switch from monographs to journals. Everything he states is in percentages and ratios, both of which can easily misrepresent the raw numbers. Even if the figures he gives aren't misleading however, I think it switch may be more representative of the consistent rise of the Sciences (at least comparatively if not directly to the detriment of the Humanities) in universities. Scientific research has frequent publication at a high turnover which (as pointed out in Suber's article) is better suited to journal publication. If there are an increasing number of students in scientific disciplines who need access to these journals then naturally more of them will be purchased, and in increasing proportions over time. Monographs, however, remain important for Humanities scholars, and Willinski admits that sales in many Humanities disciplines remain strong, but if the number of students enrolling in English or History, for example, remains constant, then it is only logical that the number of books purchased by libraries to support them would also remain constant.

Furthermore, Willinski's solution to a perhaps misunderstood problem is itself flawed in some respects. As he states, the benefit of a monograph format is that it can "...work out an argument in full...provide a complete account of consequences and implications, as well as counter-arguments and criticisms". The Humanities and monographs have a symbiotic relationship for this very reason: Humanities scholars go back, sometimes hundreds of years, to longstanding sources to build comprehensive arguments that can only be expressed in monograph form, as a result of this thoroughness the monograph they produce may still be of use to future scholars hundreds of years down the road who are building a similarly thorough argument. Willinski's attempts to move monograph online, where their lifespan will in all likelihood be much shorter, all but defeats the purpose of writing lengthy works to begin with. It makes the electronic monographs in many ways as transient as journals.

The push to move online as outlined in both Willinski's and Suber's articles poses several intrinsic problems, only some of which the authors discuss. The issue of peer-review, for example, is explored fairly thoroughly by Suber, and his arguments hold well enough for a reputable open source journal or repository. The nature of these projects, however, is that anyone with the effort can create an online journal, and there is no enforcing body beyond reputation to implement a thorough peer review process, but reputation takes time to accrue, and at its best can be fairly subjective. This means that researchers run the risk of either accessing an open source repository with no verification that it's contents have been properly vetted, or they access only those that are acknowledged as reliable, potentially creating an oligarchy of open source journals. This takes us to Suber's point about pay journals being more likely to be corrupt than open ones. If you have only a few trusted open source article sites, whose turn out is limited because of their screening process, what is to stop them from beginning to charge more for each article considered in order to ensure their overhead costs are covered even during times of lean submissions and publications? And why would they suddenly reduce those costs again when the number of incoming papers increases? Greed is an unfortunate portion of human nature, and I wonder if any 'open source journals' can or will maintain the values on which they were founded.

My final point is about the current importance of citation analysis in universities for hiring and maintaining professorships. The topic is mentioned in passing by Willinski, but I think it is a far larger consideration for the future of electronic publishing than either author suggests. As much as some studying bodies are moving towards an analytics approach rather than a 'times cited' model, at this point tracking source use through unindexed sites is far more difficult than in print. More importantly though (as per a LIS discussion) some institutions are apparently now setting standards as to exactly which publications count in terms of performance reviews. In this context open source repositories may let scholars 'take back' the forum of journals, but that power is for naught if what their publishing doesn't help promote their careers. I fear online publishing efforts may well hit a wall soon if this becomes a norm, and some collective agreement, however unspoken, will need to be reached about the value of open source journals before they can become more valuable.