Re: An Electronic Journal?

[James Mahaffy <mahaffy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Folks,

Let me add two new wrinkles to the discussion of electronic
publishing.  

1. You really have to have an electronic journal that has
articles of enough significance that it gets cited (or we cheat
the system and cite articles form the electronic journal in our
articles).   I really like the idea of having scholarly
information more readily available, but there is a trend in the
journal business of going in the opposite direction.  Unless a
scholarly journal is able to get significant research from
leaders in the field, folks won't publish their good work in it,
especially if they are being evaluated by a University and the
electronic journal will be considered second rate.  

I didn't realize how important this was till last year when I was
following a parasitology newsgroup (for the undergrad zoology
course I teach) and someone mentioned the price of one of their
journals (normally $2,000), I growled about the difficulty that
the cost of some of the better journals that publish in my area
(Carboniferous palynology) by the same publisher.  Our library
can't afford them (as it is we spend more for biology than any
other area) and I have to travel four hours to a major University
to read journals I should be up on.  It seems that some journals
try and get the better people to write for their journals so they
become must get journals (at least for the major Universities)
and then charge very high rates assuming that most big libraries
will still buy their journals.  I suggested to the group that
this trend (which I didn't like) was contrary to the philosophy
of many of the society journals that have subscription under or a
few hundred dollars and maybe we should support them.  Some folks
agreed that we should help society journals, but a number said
that you won't get tenure unless you publish in well cited
journals.  And I suspect that if you can get your article is a
more prestigious journal, most of us would just as soon publish
there.  After all who reads the Proceedings of the International
Carboniferous Congress (where I published an article). And given
a choice of a well known paper journal and an electronic journal
on www, wouldn't most of the better articles migrate to the paper
journal.  Didn't GSA try publishing with microfilm for a bit?  Is
that still going on or did that fizzle?

2.  Again I like the idea of having information at my finger
tips.  It would be nice to read those journals, instead of taking
off for a couple of days in the summer and driving to Minneapolis
or Ames.  But, even if the cost of publishing is left, would
there be enough folks still buying the paper versions to allow
the journals to recoup the costs?  Could even journals of the
society philosophy survive?  There is still some cost to keeping
and archiving journals electronically.  


-- 
:
James F. Mahaffy                   e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department                 phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College                      FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250