Web journal thoughts

[TomDeVrie@xxxxxxx]

Would large institutions pick up the cost of staffing a "Web-ready" in-house
publishing office, capable of producing manuscripts according to a limited
set of formats adopted by journals?

What about the individual without an affiliation to such an institution?
 That person would have to master the publishing skills required for
Web-ready copy.  That would not be a more onerous task, however, than
learning darkroom techniques in the absence of a photography department.

Layout, in electronic media, might be simpler than paper form.  Figures and
photos would not have to physically sit side-by-side with text.  Margins,
columns, etc. would be more easily handled.

Special service bureaus could download and print high-quality paper copies
for libraries and individuals willing to pay the price (like they do now for
out-of-print issues and volumes of many journals).

To succeed, and not overwhelm editors, electronic publishing will require
more of the author. Frankly, though, the next generation of scientific
authors are being trained right now in those skills; yesterday, I witnessed
fourth-graders learn from scratch how to build their own home pages.
 Scanning, image editing, word processing, page layout, and graphics
production are standard fare now in US middle school and high school
classrooms.  These skills are not limited to US students; we have an exchange
student from the Czech Republic who ran his own 3-D rendering business.
 Peru, not the most financially prosperous of countries, has full-fledged
multimedia labs in many of its universities and the staff who knows how to
use them.   Technology will be a great leveler, I believe, and will not be an
obstacle to third-world access to publishing outlets.  If anything, greater
access to international forums will be afforded by electronic journals than
offered by the present system.

Any perceived technological obstacles to electronic publishing are only in
the eyes of those beholders who have to engage this computer age as adults,
rather than as children.