More E-publishing thoughts...

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My tuppence on the subject. We must have a lot of tuppences in this 
pot by now. Excuse this if it seems a bit rambling!

I have noticed that when people have been considering a proper peer 
reviewed E-journal (which I agree is what this is really all about), 
they are still talking in terms of 'Issues'. Surely one of the main 
advantages of this form of 'publication' is that we could get away 
from concept of papers being bundled together in issues, and just 
publish each paper separately, as and when it is ready. 
There seem to many different opinions on exactly how many people 
would be required to run such an enterprise. While I dissagree with those 
who envisage no role for an editor, I still don't see the need for more than 
one full time person  to do the job of editing and formatiing for a journal with
 throughput similar to paper equivalents. However, this brings me on to 
another point - scale. The main reason (I imagine) for the proliferation in 
paper journals is that, with increasing costs, people want to receive more 
and more specialised literature - ie not to pay to receive paper they don't want.
 An E-journal, by contrast, could be very broad in subject area, because it 
would not have the same inherent limitations in throughput that a traditional 
journal suffers from. Assuming (for now) that you are funding the thing by 
subscription, it should not cost any more to subscribe to a wide ranging, high 
throughput journal (with access to lots of papers for your money) than for a 
smaller one, with access to fewer papers. Sure, you might need more editors, 
but you should still get roughly the same subscriber to paper ratio, which is what 
controls the economics of the thing. In practice, I would imagine that it would 
actually be substantially cheaper, as economies of scale are bound to kick in.

As to how to fund the thing - well, as the above waffling makes 
clear, I see no problem with subscription, allowing full access to
all papers (including back 'issues' of course) for a fixed term. 
Access could be on a password basis - there might be problems 
with people 'sharing' passwords, but you could at least insitute a 
check that no user is accessing the journal from two places at once, 
which would go a fair way towards curtailing the problem. In any 
case, I don't see this as more of a problem than the photocopying 
of paper journals. If only a few broad ranging E-publications exist, 
each obviously good value (rather than a multiplicity of expensive paper
equivalents), most workers would be inclined to play fair, 
and to take out individual subscriptions. The knowledge that you can 
access pretty well all (electronic) publications on your subject AND 
related fields direct from your desk would be a very powerful draw!

A system of pay-by-paper is possible of course. It would not _need_
E-currency (though that would be smoother), as you could 
simply bill people by normal post every year (or maybe get them to 
pay in advance by normal means, and deduct from their account). The 
problem with such a system is that it might discriminate against 
less well read papers - there would be financial pressures on editors 
to turn down work that they don't imagine enough people accessing. 
You could argue the point, but I suspect that most would agree that
this would be a BAD thing! 

As I see it, the only big problem in the way of such a journal is the 
ICNZ rules, which don't recognize taxa published without paper. Does 
anyone know how practical it would actually be to adhere to the 
letter by publishing in some minimal way on paper, whilst putting the 
real paper on the net? How many copies would need to be distributed? 
Would people be happy with such 'rule bending'? 

Mark Sutton
UWCC/NMW
Cardiff