pkarp@NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV (Peter Karp) (08/07/90)
Well I wish someone had mentioned this idea of posting abstracts earlier because I had about 10 of them online that we used to prepare the printed proceedings from, but I deleted them after the meeting. I guess I can get them from a backup tape. I assume the plan is to put them on Dan's server rather than mail them to the list! I would be interested to hear a summary of Patricia Morgan's (from Science) comments, particularly since we don't have a hardcopy abstract from her. My recollection is that she offered two arguments against the viability of electronic publication: current electronic publishing cannot handle the halftones needed to publish photographs, and the process is simply too expensive for current libraries to afford. It occurs to me that probably less than 5% of the papers in any computer science journal (except for computer vision) contain photographs, so the importance of the first argument is probably discipline dependent. Also, when I mentioned the second argument to a friend they commented, "who needs libraries anyway?". That is, we could have direct distribution from publishers to readers. Peter
hunter@nlm.nih.gov (Larry Hunter) (08/07/90)
Peter Karp (pkarp@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov): I would be interested to hear a summary of Patricia Morgan's (from Science) comments, particularly since we don't have a hardcopy abstract from her. My recollection is that she offered two arguments against the viability of electronic publication: current electronic publishing cannot handle the halftones needed to publish photographs, and the process is simply too expensive for current libraries to afford. It occurs to me that probably less than 5% of the papers in any computer science journal (except for computer vision) contain photographs, so the importance of the first argument is probably discipline dependent. Also, when I mentioned the second argument to a friend they commented, "who needs libraries anyway?". That is, we could have direct distribution from publishers to readers. Another interesting point that Morgan made was that the feasibility of electronic distribution of a scientific journal depends crucially on the cost of receiving equipment. For the most part, only computer scientists have machines that provide better than 80 char x 24 line screens. I would have a hard time reading a journal distributed that way (let alone trying to include even simple figures). This situation is changing (slowly) with the aquisition of Macs and Suns by nonCS scientists, but this is precisely Morgan's point: it costs potential readers ~10k to get the equipment. (Yes, of course you can do a lot more with a Sun or a Mac than read an electronic journal, but you have to pay for all the capabilities at once.) The cost is also relevant in light of Chris Field's comments about our responsibility to scientists in less developed countries. I'd like to mention another interesting point that was raised in the discussion phase of that panel. Electronic "journals" don't have to be like current paper ones. I'd point to two examples: First is the combination of Current Contents (and similar services) with the ability to rapidly receive xeroxes of articles at reasonable cost. I can scan bibliogaphic databases, electronic tables of contents, etc. and just get the articles I want from many journals. While I enjoy reading most of (say) Science, I get less out of many more specialized journals, even though they regularly carry articles that I want to read. This hybrid or electronic browsing plus paper delivery is very attractive (one could even imagine higher resolution fax delivery). Services along these lines are just getting established, and I suspect they may be quite successful. Another alternative to traditional publication can be found in the usenet newsgroup sci.psychology.digest (known as PSYCOLOQUY on the bitnet listserver). This group is edited by Stephan Harnad, the editor of Behaviorial and Brain Sciences, a peer commentary journal. This mode (target article ~30 pages + about 20 short peer comments + author response to the commentaries) lends itself well to an multidisciplinary, complex field, and has translated reasonably well to the world of bboards. Traffic has been a little on the slow side, but the quality of the squibs and commentaries has been pretty high. Larry Lawrence Hunter, PhD. National Library of Medicine Bldg. 38A, MS-54 Bethesda. MD 20894 (301) 496-9300 (301) 496-0673 (fax) hunter@nlm.nih.gov (internet) hunter%nlm.nih.gov@nihcu (bitnet/earn)