CITE Journal Article

Willis, J., & Bull, G. (2000). Setting the priorities: Electronic scholarly publishing for instructional technology and teacher education. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial]. Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss1/editorials/article2.htm

Setting the Priorities: Electronic Scholarly Publishing for Instructional Technology and Teacher Education

Three journals were dedicated to publishing scholarly and professional papers in the field of educational technology and teacher education at the beginning of the year 2000:

These three journals, plus the proceedings of the annual meeting of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, constitute the primary publication outlets for work in the area of technology and teacher education. Many other journals, of course, publish papers on the topic, but these four publications are the only ones dedicated solely to the topic of technology and teacher education.

Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education ( CITE Journal ) is an online journal that will serve as an electronic counterpart to the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education . The CITE Journal will complement rather than replace the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education . The rationale for an online journal is governed by three factors: demand, format, and participants.

Demand

JTATE, the print counterpart of the CITE Journal , was established in 1990. At that time a number of the leaders in the field expressed doubts about the need for a new refereed journal devoted specifically to the field of technology and teacher education. One individual argued strongly that there were only a few papers in the field, and after one or two issues there would be no more papers and thus no more journal.

However, JTATE was founded as the flagship publication of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE). Today, a decade later, the journal and its two sister journals receive substantially more submissions it can possibly publish. Papers of high academic quality are rejected each year because of lack of space in the existing journals.

There is a growing recognition that educating teachers in appropriate uses of technology is crucial. In the United States, for example, federal funding is being provided directly to schools, colleges, and departments of education to facilitate integration of technology in teacher education programs for the first time. The U.S. National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) established a Task Force on Technology and Teacher Education, recommending policies and standards for integration of technology into teacher preparation programs. Similarly, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) established a best practice award recognizing exemplary teacher education programs that provide leadership in this area.

European Commission research programs have included significant teacher training and Information Technology components (known as telematics or multimedia). In England, comprehensive provisions for both information technology and its assessment are administered by the Teacher Training Agency. In the Netherlands the national funding aims to create innovative and exemplary new approaches, such as that described by Westhoek, Egberts, and Aardse (2000). Further discussion of such developments can be read in several editorials of the Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education (Davis, 1998, 1999).

Several countries in the East, including Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore, have inaugurated significant programs for teacher education and related research in this area. Recognition of the need for incorporation of information technology in teacher education has also arisen in each of the Australian states.

In consequence of the growing recognition of this area, subscriptions to the three existing journals are healthy. There is both a demand for a publication outlet and a readership interested in papers about technology and teacher education. Having established, to our satisfaction at least, that there is sufficient academic demand for additional publication outlets, we would like to turn now to the second reason, format.

The issue of format will require a bit more discussion, grounded in the context of the evolution of academic and scholarly publishing. As scholarly societies were established in the 17th century, they began publishing proceedings and journals (Ornstein, 1928, cited in Parrot, 1995 ). According to Ornstein, the first was Gesta Lynceorum, which the Italian Academia dei Lincei published in 1609. It was the proceedings of the organization's meeting and is the first publication of a scientific society.

A half century later, the evolution toward more organized and formal communication between scholars took another step when the Journal des Scavans began publishing in Italy ( Parrot, 1995; Gu e don, 1994) . A second journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, began publishing the same year, 1665. Guedon saw the rise of the journal as more than a mere technological advance. He pointed out that it changed the function of writing. Before journals, scholarly writing served a primary role as a "prop for memory." But after journals became established, writing "evolved into a virtual discussion space." That is, instead of communicating the accepted cannon of "truth," writing became a way of discussing issues.

Scholarly publishing continued to grow and evolve during the 18th and 19th centuries. This was followed by a substantially increased acceleration in rate of growth in the 20th century. The increase in the number of new scholarly publications produced in the 20th century is remarkable by itself; that century also produced transformational changes in the very nature of scholarly publishing.

Notable trends in the 20th century included a shift from nonprofit publishers (such as associations, societies, and universities) as the primary publishers of academic journals, books, and monographs, to for-profit publishers. Some have argued that the increasing dominance of for-profit publishers in the field of scholarly publishing is the major reason for another recent trend—the spiraling costs of journals. The Scholarly Societies Project (1995) at the University of Waterloo concluded, "In the last couple of decades, the subscription costs of many scholarly journals (especially those published by certain powerful commercial publishers) have escalated at a rate far exceeding the cost-of-living rate of inflation." This study titled, The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing, included a number of cost comparisons clearly indicating that, "as a rule, journals published by commercial publishers are more expensive than those published by scholarly societies." This journal is a response to the trend toward higher and higher subscription rates. It is published by a nonprofit organization, and it is available without charge to anyone who wishes to subscribe.

The trends in scholarly publishing, however, are not all that make this an interesting time. Another is the information revolution—the shift from print-based communication to electronic channels of communication. Some (Odlyzko, 2000) believe electronic journals are likely to overwhelm print journals in the near future. He suggested that traditional scholarly journals will likely be transformed within a decade or two. ( Odlyzko, 1994 in a paper titled "Tragic Loss or Good Riddance? The Impending Demise of Traditional Scholarly Journals") . Today’s headlines make it clear that this transition is already well along in many sectors of publishing.

"We're doing quite a bit in the e-book and online areas," says Ted Nardin, a vice president at McGraw-Hill. "We are converting a number of our print products to digital form" . . . . He believes the early demand will be for reference books. Readers will want "a travel book when they go to Italy; a computer book when they want to learn a skill; a business book on a plane flight."

This technological shift will inevitably lead to changes in American publishing. In the way that amplification forever altered American music, so digital technology will change publishing. "Paper, printing and binding goes away," Nardin says matter-of-factly. "Physical distribution goes away."

As an example, Nardin points to Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, a two-volume, 2,688-page reference text ($149) that has sold well for years. McGraw-Hill has also converted Harrison's into a subscription-based Web site. "We have transformed the book entirely into a continuously updated product," Nardin explains. The site is easily searchable, and also lucrative. A subscription costs $89 a year. (Weeks, 2000a, p. C01)

In many instances, printed and electronic versions may co-exist for some time to come. In other instances, the physical printed version may no longer exist. Within the next five years many types of physical books—travel, science, sports, for example—may disappear altogether.

Erik Engstrom, president of Random House, is one levelheaded publishing executive who entertains this notion. Take his company's popular series, Fodor's travel guides. More and more the travel advice traditionally found in the books will be dispensed on the Internet, he believes. Other types of books with information that changes rapidly will follow.

"You've already seen a dramatic change in the encyclopedia division," Engstrom says. In fact, as online reference works proliferated, Encyclopaedia Britannica reduced the company's famous door-to-door sales force from 2,300 to 0 in seven years. They were booksellers. Since 1996, the electronic versions of the encyclopedia—CD-ROMs, DVD disks and the Web site—have been the company's "main source of revenue," says Tom Panelas of Britannica.com, the made-over encyclopedia company. (Weeks, 2000b, p. C01)

Today there are hundreds of electronic journals —scholarly publications that are available on-line via an electronic network. Many such journals have only published a few issues thus far, but they demonstrate the viability of the concept, and they bring many new possibilities to the scholarly publishing table. In addition, a number of electronic journals have been in publication for several years with considerable success.

Extrapolating from the success of journals currently published, it is clear that electronic media will capture a large share of scholarly publication in the next five years and that printed media may not be competitive in journal publication beyond a few more decades. Conversion and startup costs will delay the dominance of electronic media, but the improvement in marginal cost makes it inevitable. (O'Donnell, 1995, p. 183-184)

O'Donnell made his prediction even though he was not uncritically enthusiastic about electronic journals. Amiran and Unsworth (1991) also said that “electronic publications are likely to proliferate sooner than most now expect." A major reason they cite for the proliferation is economics. "Economic reasons alone will force letters out of their time-honored sanctuary in wood-products and into the electronic ether." Amiran and Unsworth were concerned, however, about the possibility of commercial organizations controlling academic electronic publishing.

They may come to limit redistribution of such publication or insist on copyright restrictions that may serve their financial interests but not the interests of the research community. In effect, this is the case with print publication: much of it is determined by the financial interests and possibilities of commercial presses . . . Bailey (1994) was also concerned about control by for-profit publishers.

Commercial publishers have the skills and the resources to produce high-quality electronic publications . .. However, given the ongoing severe crisis in the cost of library materials, we should be hesitant to let them dominate network-based scholarly electronic publishing to the extent that they do print-oriented scholarly publishing without substantial changes in some of their publishing practices. . . . Current trends in the commercial electronic information area do not bode well for the future.

There are, already, a surprising number of electronic journals. The sixth edition of the Directory of Electronic Scholarly Journals, Newsletters, and Discussion Lists, published by the Association of Research Libraries (1995), listed over a thousand electronic journals, and many more have appeared since that directory was published. There are many reasons for the rapid growth in electronic journals. Aside from new technology that makes electronic journals both possible and relatively easy to disseminate, many of the reasons relate to problems with traditional print journals. Treloar (1995) and Treloar (1996) identified five major problems:

Treloar's first and last problems, the time lag in publication and the cost of journals, are the two most frequently cited as a reasons for seriously considering a move from print to electronic journal publishing. These same problems, and several others, were identified as critical issues by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in its proposal to revise its large publishing program to include many more electronic resources ( D e n ning & Rous, 1994 ). The ACM, with 78,000 members, publishes 17 periodicals and over 17,000 pages of proceedings a year.

After a thorough review of their publishing enterprise, they concluded, "The traditional scientific publishing system is now facing a variety of breakdowns that must be overcome if the system is to survive." One aspect of their plan to deal with the problems is to "move aggressively toward having the entire ACM literature in an on-line digital library." ACM is now well on its way to accomplishing that goal.

It is not yet clear whether the future, particularly the immediate future, will be characterized by the demise of all but a few printed scholarly publications as electronic publications come to dominate the field. All the possible futures are, however, more complex than a simple shift from print delivery to electronic delivery of similar scholarly materials. The future into which we actually evolve will be determined by many factors, some technical, some social, some political, and some organizational.

In this paper, we will examine some of the issues associated with this "bridging period" between a print-dominated scholarly publishing environment and one in which new electronic forms of communication play a major, if not dominant, role. We will outline choices we have made for CITE Journal and acknowledge other viable options.

Here we are concerned with only one part of the publishing industry. It is what Harnad (1995a) has called "esoteric scholarly publishing," which is publishing that involves scholarly material for which the author does not expect to be paid. Esoteric material is created to be disseminated to other specialists with similar interests. There is no expectation that the author of the material will be paid for the paper or share in proceeds from the sale of a publication through royalties. While it is usually applied to journals, the term "esoteric scholarly publishing" can probably be extended to scholarly monographs and books for which there is a limited audience, since the primary goal is communication and not profit. A scholarly book that sells 400 copies and costs $35 would generate a royalty of $1,400 if the contract called for a 10% royalty on the retail price. If you assume the author invested 900 hours in writing the book, that works out to $1.75 an hour. Teaching an overload course (or mowing yards) would yield more money for less effort.

We are, therefore, not dealing with popular publications such as Scientific American that are aimed at a broader audience. Esoteric scholarly publishing is essentially an effort by an author to communicate with a few others rather than many others. Franks' (1993) article on electronic journals dealt with essentially the same type of publication, but he characterized them as "a publication whose authors and editors are unpaid."

Electronic scholarly publishing presents scholars with several options. Although considerably oversimplified, Table 1 divides the scholarly publishing options into two types: media options and content options.

Table 1. An Options Matrix for Scholarly Publishing in the 90s.
Content of Publication	The Media of Dissemination
	Traditional Print	Electronic
Traditional Content	printed journal	electronic journal
New Media	content not possible	new media journal

Decisions must involve consideration of both content and media. Content involves decisions about whether you retain traditional content – text and simple graphics, photographic images, etc., or expand the potential content of scholarly publications to include material such as video, audio, complex animations, and sound, as well as virtual worlds and other media that are exotic today but will soon be commonplace. The medium of publication has traditionally been print materials (such as books and journals), but the explosion of electronic formats makes publishing journals on CD-ROM and as World Wide Web sites, electronic lists, or Gopher sites possible.

Tens of thousands of highly respected printed journals play a critical role in the dissemination of scholarship for a particular discipline. Hundreds of electronic journals also include traditional content but deliver it to readers electronically.

Many electronic journals play an influential role in their field, but some members of the scholarly community continue to view electronic journals as being less substantial than print journals. The issue of status is something that must be addressed before electronic journals become a viable means of knowledge dissemination in many fields.

(There has been an interesting recent development in this area, however. In the United Kingdom universities receive funds for research on the basis of their performance on a government-sponsored Research Assessment Exercise that makes comparative evaluations of the quality and quantity of the research and publications at UK universities. A few years ago the United Kingdom government agency that determines research standings decreed that "refereed journal articles published through electronic means will be treated on the same basis as those appearing in printed journals." Because central government policies influence higher education in the UK more than in the US, the full acceptance of electronic journals may develop in the UK before it does in the US.)

A new type of electronic journal, the new media journal, is more a concept than a realization today. Most of the work in electronic scholarly publishing involves the creation of electronic versions of traditional content – text, graphics, and photographs. Once the concept of electronic journals becomes established and accepted, we believe new media journals will rapidly emerge as viable publication outlets that may well have significant advantages over other types. New media journals could, for example, accept the following:

While these are only illustrations of what might be included in a new media journal, they do illustrate the point that many important topics in the scholarly literature can be discussed more effectively through the use of new media. There are a number of electronic journals published today that go well beyond the typical text and black and white illustrations found in most print journals. The Journal of Postmodern Culture , for example, accepts papers that include all of the following: still images, sound, animations, and full motion video. The editors require that in-line images must be in .GIF format with appropriate HTML markup to indicate placement of the image. Sound files should be in the .au format (or WAVE files), again with proper html markup. Video can be accepted in Quicktime or MPEG. The author guidelines also ask authors to:

bear in mind that your document still needs to be intelligible without the multi-media elements, since many of our readers will not be able to see these elements. Also, do remember that you must have appropriate permissions in order to use photographs, drawings, sound, or video that was originally produced by someone other than you: the same intellectual property rules apply to the Web as apply in print.

Garelick's (1995) article on diet infomercials, for example, contains a 3.2 megabyte Quicktime movie clip from a Richard Simmons exercise infomercial.

The range of media accepted by the Journal of Postmodern Culture and the comments to potential authors about both technical and broader issues are an indication of the work that must be done before the electronic scholarly journal becomes an essential aspect of work in many disciplines. Many issues must be addressed. Some of them are outlined in the following section, which is followed by a more detailed discussion of some of the critical issues that must be addressed in the "bridging" period between print and electronic scholarly communication.

In spite of the many issues associated with the inclusion of new media materials (such as sound, animation, and video), we have decided to make the CITE Journal a new media journal. It will accept a range of media including sound files, video, and color still images.

We believe the CITE Journal is one of a new type of journal that will gradually replace most print journals over the next 20 years. We are in a "bridging" period. Before the 21st century, paper-based journals were the dominant means of disseminating scholarly material for almost 400 years. We are now in a bridging period between paper-based dissemination and electronic dissemination. During that period, we must deal with a wide range of issues. Those issues fall generally into three broad categories: technical, social and cultural, and economic.

For some designers of electronic journals, the critical questions are technical. Do we have the electronic tools to do it? Which ones should be used? Can we come to agreement on a standard such as HTML, SGML, or Acrobat PDF? What browsers are most useful? These issues will probably be with us for some time, because the relative merits of different electronic formats change drastically from month to month. HTML, for example, was originally quite limited, while the Acrobat PDF format lets you disseminate documents that look much like a traditional print journal article. Today, with the availability of many types of support or "helper" software, as well as advanced versions of the HTML standard, the choice between HTML and PDF may actually favor HTML. And, of course, the emergence of JAVA as a format and programming option clouds the picture further. We will not deal with the technical issues of publishing an electronic journal in this paper, except to note that virtually any paper on this topic that is more than six months old is out of date. For the present, we have elected to publish the CITE Journal in HTML with external support for a range of multimedia content. This is, however, an open decision that is always subject to change and adjustment, because the software and hardware of electronic publishing change rapidly.

For others interested in electronic journals, the important questions are really social, and cultural. Are electronic journals within the comfort zone of scholars? Will published papers in an electronic journal be perceived to be of the same value as those in traditional print journals? Will promotion and tenure committees treat electronic journal publications differently than traditional journals? Are current intellectual property rights laws, including copyright, adequate and appropriate for this bridging period? The editors (Hagler, Rutledge, March, & Batchman, 1998) of the IEEE Transactions on Education, which is distributed on CD-ROM and on-line, encountered a number of these questions as they launched the electronic version of the journal.

There is still some resistance to electronic publication. One author indicated that e-mail notification of the results of the review process was not acceptable for his tenure and promotion files. The tenure committee at that institution required notification on official letterhead with an original signature. Others have noted that their peers view electronic publication as lesser than traditional formats. One author explained that the rapid review and increased volume of papers published was a sign to his colleagues that the CD-ROM papers had not received the same careful scrutiny as the others. It may take time for the community to gain enough experience with electronic publication to alleviate those concerns. Participation in the process as authors, reviewers, and/or readers may be the best (and only) way to achieve this.

You may find the article by Haggler et al., as well as Valauskas (1997) , useful if you are interested in the influence of social and cultural context on the patterns of scholarly publishing in different disciplines. In consideration of the social and cultural context, we have made several decisions concerning the CITE Journal . First, it is supported by a coalition of respected scholarly and professional organizations. That should give it some status from the beginning. In addition, it is a refereed journal with a strong group of editors and reviewers. Again, that should give it some status.

We have also elected to provide authors and readers the option of printing a copy of an article in a format that will look the same as a traditional print journal, including page numbers. This is something many electronic journals may do in this bridging period before electronic publication becomes the dominant form of dissemination.

Concerning intellectual property rights, we have some simple rules. Copyrighted material cannot be included in your papers without the permission of the copyright owner unless the use falls under the "fair use" or "educational use" exclusions. Authors, on the other hand, give the journal the right to publish their paper in the journal and in any paper versions of the journal, as well as in publications that are derived from the journal (e.g., "best papers of 2003”). Authors, however, are free to make copies of their papers and use them as they see fit.

Still others consider the political and economic questions associated with electronic journals the most critical. This group generally observes that for much of this century the percentage of journals published by scholarly societies has decreased, while the percentage produced by commercial publishers has increased. This concentration may have encouraged the unprecedented increases in journal prices that are at the heart of the financial problems many research libraries face today. One possible solution to this problem is to reduce the percentage of journals published by commercial publishers, while increasing the percentage published by societies and universities (Guernsey, 1998).

However, colleges and universities are also dealing with budget problems themselves, and the likelihood of sizable grants for innovative projects is probably less today than in the past. One way to do this economically is to publish journals electronically over the Internet. Franks (1993) noted that, even when the decision to publish electronically is made, political and economic issues may influence decisions about what form the publication will take. He observed that several of the models for electronic publishing "differ primarily in the extent and method of their efforts to prevent the contents of an electronic journal from being read by those who have not paid for it."

He concluded that efforts to keep people who have not paid for a subscription from reading articles in an electronic journal can account for a substantial portion of the cost of publishing the journal. "All this is especially ironic since the authors and editors derive no benefit from the attempts to restrict access. On the contrary, the best interests of the authors and editor are served by the widest possible distribution (even to non-subscribers)." Franks recommended alternative forms of support, including subsidization by a scholarly organization, university, or department, that would make the journal available to everyone with access to the Internet.

The CITE Journal will be freely available to anyone who has access to the Internet. For the first two years of operation, the journal will be supported by a grant from the U. S. Department of Education and matching contributions from its publisher (AACE) and the professional societies (SITE, AETS, AMTE, CEE, and CUFA) that jointly conceived it.

All three aspects of electronic scholarly publishing—the technical questions, the social and cultural issues, and the political and economic context—are important and relevant. They also interact with each other. Guedon (1994) argued that any technological innovation will interact with complex social constructs and, as a result, the smallest eddy or draft, however minuscule, can deeply perturb the flow of history—the phenomenon is called the butterfly effect in the fashionable circles of chaos theory. In any case, knowing what the ultimate logical goal is rarely says much about the best path to reach it.

The literature on all three topics is rich with papers, books, and monographs, and we will not attempt to summarize the debates and positions in that literature. There are many possible futures for electronic scholarly publishing—from interesting oddity to dominant model, and the near-term future is probably the most difficult to predict. It seems clear, however, that the far-future of scholarly publishing (the "far-future" being about 15 years in this case) will probably be dominated by electronic dissemination systems. If that is true, then the next 15 years or so are the bridging years between the old and the new, and they are likely to be tumultuous years for all the stakeholders.

One way to look at this bridging, or transition, period is to consider who will be responsible for each aspect of the process of scholarly publishing. The old or standard model generally follows the pattern illustrated in Table 2. The process is roughly divided into seven steps—from conducting the research and generating the paper to archiving the printed journal or monograph. The term "archiving" is used here to mean safely storing the scholarly material and providing for convenient access, as well as creating ways for scholars to find relevant material.

Table 2. The Traditional Model of Scholarly Publishing
Function	Conducted By	Paid For By	Value Added
Conduct Research	Faculty	University or Grant	New Knowledge
Generate Report	Faculty	Faculty	Dissemination
Gate Keeping	Faculty	Faculty	Quality
Publishing	Publisher	Subscriber	Structure
Marketing	Publisher	Subscriber	Awareness
Distribution	Publisher	Subscriber	Convenience
Archive	Libraries	Institution	Accessibility

Note: Research is generally supported by grants from a variety of sources, by faculty, and by the university, organization, or institution where the researcher works.

In the standard model, the work is relatively evenly divided—three functions are generally performed by faculty and three by the publisher. One, archiving, is usually the province of the library. Faculty not only create the new knowledge contained in scholarly publications, they also perform the critical role of gatekeepers. Scholars and libraries subscribe to journals, in part, because they know the articles published in them have been evaluated by others and judged to be worth reading. In an era when it is easy to disseminate information, the gatekeeping role becomes more and more critical.

Some of the problems of the current system arise, however, because the major stakeholders—faculty and universities (including the library) on one side and commercial publishers on the other—participate in the process for different reasons and have unequal power. The research is created and written up by faculty with the support of universities. They are generally concerned with the free dissemination of knowledge and would prefer the most open, lowest-cost (to them and the reader) approach possible. Commercial publishers, on the other hand, are in the business to make a profit. They want to be paid for disseminating scholarly material. The two major groups of stakeholders thus come to scholarly publishing with somewhat different purposes and motivations. Today the wishes of the commercial publisher often prevail because of the unequal balance of power. The "paid for by" column of Table 2 illustrates one of the problems—faculty and universities directly and indirectly support the first three steps in scholarly publishing and then they pay again via subscription fees for access to the information they paid to create in the first place.

When faculty members submit a paper to a journal, they generally sign over virtually all publication rights to a publisher, who makes the decisions about the subscription rates. In return for that, the publisher handles virtually all the tasks involved in publishing, marketing, and distributing the material. Several writers have argued that this approach has outlived its usefulness and must be changed.

The seven steps in Table 2 are similar to the five roles described by O'Donnell (1995). There are, however, alternative models of scholarly publishing. One of many possible "new models" is illustrated in Table 3. This model would be based on the World Wide Web (and whatever advanced technology replaces it).

Table 3. An Alternative Model of Publishing Via the World Wide Web
Function	Conducted By	Paid For By	Value Added
Conduct Research	Faculty	University or Grant	New Knowledge
Generate Report	Faculty	Faculty	Dissemination
Gate Keeping	Faculty	Faculty	Quality
Publishing	Non-profit	Indeterminate	Structure
Marketing	Non-profit	Indeterminate	Awareness
Distribution	Web	Internet	Accessibility
Archive	Digital Library	Institution	Accessibility

Note: Research is generally supported by grants from a variety of sources, by faculty, and by the university, organization, or institution where the researcher works.

In this new model, the first three aspects of scholarly publishing remain the same. All three would be completed by faculty just as they are in the traditional model. Another aspect—distribution—would be accomplished over the Internet via a World Wide Web site. While the cost of distributing traditional print journals can be substantial, the equipment costs for creating a Web site on a computer connected to an existing university network is surprisingly small, as little as $1,000 but typically $5,000 to $50,000. A well-equipped medium-size workstation supported by the staff of a university library could house many different journals. And at many universities, Web sites can be created on central site computers that are maintained by the academic computing staff. Some universities could thus support electronic journals without any additional hardware or software. Realistically, however, there are both hardware and personnel costs associated with maintaining a Web site where an electronic journal resides. It would not be difficult today to slip a journal onto an existing site, but if a university found itself providing space for 10 or 20 or even a hundred such sites, the costs would be more obvious.

The same is true of the last step in scholarly publishing—archiving. Storing one electronic journal on a site in a library is easy; storing 10,000 so that they are available 75 years from now is neither easy nor inexpensive. We believe libraries will continue to take the lead in archiving, just as they have done for centuries with paper publications.

One of the possibilities, an electronic journal Web site supported by university library staff, brings us to the two aspects of scholarly publishing that might change the most under this new model – publishing and marketing. In Table 3 both of these functions are listed as performed by a "non-profit" institution, but that term is little more than a placeholder. In reality, the non-profit organization could be a professional society, a commercial publisher, a university press, or another entity that provides the editing and design infrastructure needed to support an ongoing scholarly publishing activity. Franks (1993) considered this issue when he asked, "Who might underwrite the costs of electronically publishing a journal if there are no subscription revenues?"

Just who will become the "non-profit" institutions of the future is probably the unanswered question today. Will commercial print publishers become the Web publishers? And will they continue to charge sizable subscription fees for access? Thus far the answer for many commercial journal publishers is “yes” and “yes.” Will university libraries take on the role of midwives to the creation and nurturing of electronic journals? Will university presses, which generally are not as profit-driven as the commercial publishers, become Web publishers? It is even possible for an individual faculty member, or a small group of faculty who share common interests, to become the “non-profit” entity that publishes an electronic journal.

The model illustrated in Table 3 leaves open the question of who pays for the publishing and marketing costs (and profits in the case of a commercial publisher). Electronic journals available over the World Wide Web are supported via traditional subscriptions in some instances. That is the case with several journals published by Johns Hopkins University Press , including Modernism/Modernity, Modern Fiction Studies, the American Journal of Mathematics, and Reviews of American History . A one-year library subscription to Modern Fiction Studies, for example, is $55 for the print version, $49.50 for the electronic version, and $71.50 for both. This approach, termed uncoupling , lets subscribers buy either the print or electronic version of a journal, or both. It is appealing, but this pricing model is not the one the major commercial publishers have adopted. Elsevier Science, which publishes 1,200 journals, requires a library to subscribe to the print version of a journal before it will sell, for an additional charge, the electronic version (Guernsey, 1998).

Another option is to make the journal freely available, with the cost of publishing and marketing borne by a scholarly society, organization, or university publisher. An example is the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , which is a joint project of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California and the Information Systems Division of the School of Business Administration at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The journal is available via the Web from sites at USC in Los Angeles and Hebrew University in Israel. The journal site contains archives of the journal issues, as well as other resources and links of interest to scholars interested in computer-mediated communication.

Table 4. Publishing Model Adopted for the CITE Journal
Function	Conducted By	Paid For By	Value Added
Conduct Research	Faculty	University or Grant	New Knowledge
Generate Report	Faculty	Faculty	Dissemination
Gate Keeping	Editorial Board	University	Quality
Publishing	AACE	Indeterminate	Structure
Marketing	Societies	Indeterminate	Awareness
Distrtibution	Web	Internet	Accessibility
Archive	Digital Library	Institution	Accessibility

Five teacher educator professional associations have selected editors for their respective section of the journal, which currently address the core content areas—science education, mathematics education, English education, and social studies education—and educational technology. Each editorial board will select reviewers who will evaluate papers submitted to their section of the journal.

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), will publish the journal. This function includes all of the roles traditionally assumed by publishers, including distribution of manuscripts (electronically, of course) to reviewers, copy editing, and publication via the World Wide Web. During the start-up phase, a grant from the US Department of Education is supporting software development within the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. Marketing is a joint function of the publisher and the professional associations participating in development and creation of the journal. The journal will be archived by the Digital Library system at the University of Virginia.

The decision to publish a journal electronically is not the end of the decision-making process. It is the beginning. Many of the most critical and most contentious decisions involve issues related to electronic publication. A few of the more critical decisions about which there is considerable debate will be explored in this section of the paper. The topics selected seem to us to be the most important for the transition period between print-dominated and electronic eras in scholarly publishing.

We agree with O'Donnell (1995) about a value added by scholarly publication: "The article is certified as a significant contribution to a particular scholarly discipline, saving individual readers the work of filtering out insignificant texts" (p. 184). A number of electronic newsletters and "journals" now published via the Internet are not refereed or are refereed lightly. The quality varies considerably, as does relevance. There are, in fact, growing complaints about newsgroups and lists on scholarly and professional topics that are unmoderated or lightly moderated, because readers must wade through many irrelevant messages to find important information.

The process of evaluating the significance and importance of a scholarly paper may well be the single most important element in scholarly publishing, because it frees the reader from the burden of looking for needles in haystacks, and it provides feedback to scholars on how they can improve their work (or informs them that they need to find another scholarly community that values the work they are doing). In addition, the published paper is almost always a better paper than the original version submitted for publication. Valauskas (1997) took a similar position in his evaluation of the place of electronic journals, "I would argue that electronic scholarly journals are, like their print relatives, decidedly not about communication per se, but about validation and acceptance, so that a given idea expressed in a paper is legitimized by its publication." The gatekeeping role of editors and reviewers is a vital one. The decision is not, however, a simple refereed or not refereed choice. In his discussion of the European Research Papers Archive, Nentwich (1999) suggested there are several levels of “quality control.” These levels range from no quality control effort to stringent quality control involving full reviews.

The CITE Journal is a refereed publication; the editorial board has agreed to adopt a stringent approach to quality control that sets the bar at least as high as the corresponding print journals published by the sponsoring teacher educator associations. The professional associations sponsoring each section of the journal have assumed responsibility for appointment of editors for their respective areas of the journal. These editorial boards, in turn, will appoint reviewers. The section editors will compile the comments and recommendations made by reviewers, make a decision, and communicate that decision to the authors. This process is similar to the traditional method for print journals, with two exceptions.

First, rather than being transmitted to a reviewer by surface mail, articles will be placed on a Web site, and the reviewer will be given the address of the paper. When the reviewer is ready to read the paper, he or she will simply go to that web address and read the paper there or download and print the paper locally. Second, the entire process is electronic. Each step, from submission to reviewer to notification is via the Internet. Elimination of mechanical delays could speed up the process considerably (Harnad, 1997), but the delays imposed by tardiness in the responses of reviewers will remain as great a challenge as it is for a printed publication.

A growing number of electronic journals are published only in electronic format. One of the best known examples of this is PSYCOLOQUY . Many journals, however, are published in both print and electronic form. This approach is taken by The On Line Educator. Subscriptions to the print and electronic versions are priced separately – $25 for the print version and $20 for the electronic version. The journal CATALYST, published by the National Council on Community Services and Continuing Education, is another publication that offers both print and electronic versions. A print subscription costs $40 per year for libraries and is one of the services offered to members (annual dues are $35) of the organization. However, the electronic version is available to anyone via a Web site.

The print/electronic options need not, however, be limited to print, electronic, or both. The bimonthly Web Journal of Current Legal Issues published by the University of Newcastle is only available electronically, but the publisher, Blackstone Press, produces a printed Annual of selected material.

On the question of whether a publication should be electronic, print, or both, there are traditionalists who maintain that real scholarly journals are ink on paper. There are also early adopters who believe the sooner the demise of the print journal arrives the better. In this transition period, social, organizational, economic, and political realities will probably dictate that some journals will remain print only, some (particularly new ones) will be electronic only, and some will be published in both formats. However, since even the current advocates of electronic journals passed through their critical periods of scholarly development in a papyrocentric world, many still have an emotional attachment to printed material that is akin to imprinting. Technology does not address that emotional attachment. As Roy Johnson (1995) put it, "The more books one reads on electronic publication, hypertext, and digital technology, the more one realizes how convenient, comfortable, portable, and aesthetically pleasing the printed book remains—produced by what Nicholas Negroponte describes as ‘squeezing ink onto dead trees.’"

The rationale for the printed page is more than tradition, however. There are valid ergonomic reasons to prefer printed documents in some circumstances:

As result of these and other ergonomic factors, a number of studies have concluded that reading comprehension can be higher for the printed page than for the same materials displayed on an electronic screen. Information technology specialists who are unfamiliar with this body of research sometimes dismiss the desire for printed output as irrational, but in fact some of the reasons for the printed page are grounded in both physics and human physiology, even if users are not always able to articulate the reasons they sometimes prefer the printed counterpart of electronic documents.