Publishing and the World Wide Web - Essay Example

Introduction Information is an intellectual resource that has the capa to change the image of recipient. In the post-industrial society, it has been said that what counts is not raw muscle power or energy but information. Consequently, large investments are being made in the information technology industry for the purpose of generating, processing and disseminating information. Changes in the publishing industry have a direct impact on the information systems and services. This information technology has altered the mode of publication in such a way that though the traditional sources of information continued to be flooded with the attractive elctronic form of publications. In the changing scenerio, libraries and libraraians will have to play a crucial role in handling conventional and electronic resources. Thus the era of electronic publishing has begun affecting producers, distributors, library and Information centres and user community. Electronic Publishing is the process for production of typeset quality documents containing text, graphics, pictures, tables, equations etc,. Electronic Publishing can be represented as: Kist (1989) defined electronic publishing as "the application by publishers of a computer aided process, by which they find, capture, shape, store, and update information content in order to disseminate it to a chosen audience" (p. 600 ). Kist pointed out that this definition makes no distinction between the manufacturing process and the disseminating process. Less than a decade ago the term electronic publishing identified an activity that is now referred to as desktop publishing, in which information is stored and formatted electronically, but manufactured and distributed by traditional paper-based methods. Kist claimed that the term electronic publishing (which can include any single aspect digital storage, manufacture, or transmission of a publication) is now so broad that it is usually meaningless. Brownrigg and Lynch (1985) took a very different approach to defining an electronic publication. Their insightful article began by making a clear distinction between electronic production and distribution of information. The authors distinguished between what they called Newtonian (Gutenberg/paper-based) publishing and quantum-mechanical (electronically transmitted) publishing. They concluded that much of what is currently labeled electronic publishing is actually traditional Gutenberg-style publishing carried out by modern methods. Their thesis was that electronic publishing is a delivery medium: that publication is an action and process rather than an artifact. This idea seems to have some merit. One of the most complete definitions of electronic publishing appears in a popular electronic encyclopedia (Grolier Electronic Publishing, 1995). This wholly electronic publication defines electronic publishing this way "Sometimes used to describe the application of computers to traditional print publishing--from word processing to computerized order processing--the term electronic publishing refers more precisely to the storage and retrieval of information through electronic communications media. It can employ a variety of formats and technologies, some already in widespread use by businesses and general consumers, and others still being developed. Electronic publishing technologies can be classified into two general categories: those in which information is stored in a centralized computer source and delivered to the user by a telecommunications system; and those in which the data is digitally stored on a disk or other physically deliverable medium. The former category, including online data base services and videotext, represents the most active area in electronic publishing today". Electronic publishing brings us a host of changes. It increases the speed of communicating, disseminating and digesting knowledge. It provides new means of searching for, finding and analyzing specific information. It reduces the need for additional shelf capacities in libraries. Yes, electronic publishing can not only trim the publication process, it can also make it cheaper. All this is good for science and may increase the competition between publishers-a desirable feature for correcting overrated publication costs. 'A shake-out of the entire scholarly publishing industry seems inevitable' (Butler 1999, p. 195). Let us consider some of these points, especially speed and cost, in more detail. Speed How much can electronic publishing increase the speed of publication The time span between manuscript (ms) receipt and acceptance is determined by the length of the review process. In 'Marine Ecology Progress Series' (MEPS) we send received mss to 4 or more (up to 6) reviewers. The reviewed ms is returned to the authors, together with copies of the reviewers' reports (without revealing their names). Unless the ms is rejected at this stage, we invite the authors to consider, accomodate or convincingly refute the reviewer's comments and criticisms. Usually it takes the authors weeks or months to revise their work. The revision is again examined by reviewers (not necessarily the same ones). Depending on their recommendations, about 60% of the revisions are sent again to the authors for additional quality improvements. Sometimes this process must be repeated. As much as possible we communicate with the authors by e-mail or fax. When the editor finally accepts a ms, it is copy-edited their work is widely acknowledged), typeset (also done by carefully trained in-house personnel) and the result returned to the authors for examination. There is no way of reducing the time span between ms receipt and acceptance without losses in quality. Quality, however, is the heart of the scientific process and of the success of MEPS-the reason that this journal ranks world-wide as the Number 1 in its field, and that most marine ecologists consider it their first choice as publication outlet. Even if a ms is rejected at a later stage of the review process, the authors benefit from the comments and criticisms of MEPS reviewers; they can improve their work accordingly and thus increase the chances of acceptance by another journal. It usually takes the authors weeks to return their proofs. These are print-readied within a few days. Printing and binding take on average only 1 or 2 weeks: this is the time span that could be saved if MEPS went electronic-plus mailing time. MEPS plans to eventually have an electronic double. This would not pose technical problems but we prefer to examine the situation carefully before making a decision. In questionaires sent out in 1998 to about 100 top performers in marine ecology, of 79 returners only considered such a step urgent. Please consider the present situation: the titles of selected papers appear in MEPS' Internet pages (under 'forthcoming papers') as soon as the ms is accepted; abstracts (with searchable texts) are published on the Net the day the paper versions appear. Anyone interested can request a copy of the full paper at a relatively low cost by mail, fax, or email- in the latter two cases often a matter of hours. To speed up review procedures, some colleagues have called for direct contacts between authors and reviewers; they favor an 'open review process'. Obviously, they are aware neither of the resulting conflict potential nor of the difficulties in finding good, reliable reviewers -the cream of quality control - willing to put their own work aside in order to help others, sometimes even competitors. Reviewers deserve a big pat on the shoulder. Whether or not to reveal their names to authors must be left to their discretion. Most scientists seem to be concerned about the growing mass and questionable quality of information rather than about the speed at which new information reaches them. Do we overestimate the significance of speed The limits of information consumption are set by human, not technological, capacities. Some enthusiasts sit all day and part of the night in front of their. Electronic publishing in current publishing environment There has been a fundamental division in electronic publishing between an approach based on logical content mark-up and an approach based on form (or presentation). In print-on-paper publishing, these two approaches are so intimately bound together (in typographic conventions and the traditional layout of front and back matter of books, for example) that we rarely think about them (unless, as sometimes happens, an inappropriate typographic treatment imposes itself between the reader and the meaning of the text). However, typographic conventions prove to be unexpectedly opaque to computer interpretation. The more sophisticated manipulation of text that is possible if it is marked up for logical content is much more difficult to achieve using presentation-based electronic formats. Nevertheless, following the PDF route has some substantial advantages to publishers. PDF is extremely inexpensive and easy to produce as a by-product of the traditional print-on-paper publication process (and indeed increasingly is itself becoming an integral part of print-on paper workflows). PDF also provides publishers with a suitable format for managing content for print-on-demand applications, which are of growing commercial significance. Producing text that is marked up for form has traditionally been significantly less expensive than producing the same text marked up for content (and then formatting it for print). Although the additional cost of producing "neutrally coded" text is now much less than it was, the number of suppliers able to produce SGML of a sufficiently high quality for reliable and consistent publication remains restricted (for complex text, at least). On the other hand, there is self-evidently something of a mismatch between online publication and the use of the "printed page" presentation metaphor. PDF pages often present information rather badly on the standard computer screen and the page metaphor is arguably entirely unnecessary in an electronic environment. However, by publishing in PDF, publishers have been able to maintain complete control over the format of their electronic publications (and through this of their branding). They can also ensure complete conformance in content between print and electronic versions (at least while parallel publication continues, although increasingly electronic versions of publications include content that the printed version does not). There is another advantage to publishing in PDF that may reduce over time (but is certainly significant today). PDF allows the publisher easily to represent arbitrarily complex text (mathematics, chemistry and tabular material) in a way that standard methods for rendering marked up text cannot easily match. Although there are developments (like MathML) that may ultimately overcome these problems, publishers that have followed the "full text SGML" route to online publication currently have little option but to present complex text either as graphics or by using proprietary technology. This question of "presentation or content" remains essentially unresolved in much electronic publishing. It has reappeared once again in the ebook domain. It seems unlikely to be resolved in the near future, and publishers are likely to have to maintain multiple parallel formats for the foreseeable future. e-book revolution Although the timing of consumer acceptance of the reading of books on portable electronic devices may remain uncertain, there appears very little doubt (within the publishing community at least) that the ebook is set to have a fundamental impact on the dissemination of what we might call "book-like content" (see Section 2.1 for our working definition of an ebook). Some publishers have already made major commitments to the conversion of part or all of their backlist to ebooks; many of these (in the US in particular) are trade publishers, but the recent announcement from Taylor & Francis in the UK that they will digitise the whole of their backlist of 17,000 academic books cannot be ignored. However, despite much publicised initiatives from Stephen King and a few others, today the greater part of ebook activity is focussed on backlist titles (and therefore of little immediate interest from the point of view of deposit librarians - the titles being converted for ebook publication are already included in library collections in print-on-paper form). Several publishers have told us that this immediate emphasis on the conversion of backlist is not accidental. There is so much uncertainty about the impact that ebooks may have on front list sales that publishers are unwilling to add to the considerable uncertainty that already exists in their sales projections (with the possible impact that this could have on increasing their inventory of unsold printed books). Conversion of backlist provides the potential of revenue from an otherwise dormant asset, without creating significant risk (not least because those who wish to sell the technology are for the time being often heavily subsidising the process of digitisation). However, if ebooks become a significant medium for the consumption of backlist titles, it can only be a matter of time before market demand drives publishers in the direction of publishing their frontlist in ebook formats. "ebook-only" publishing may currently be largely confined to what many dismiss as an enhanced form of vanity publishing in the US; this is unlikely to remain the case for long. For this reason we believe that libraries cannot afford to ignore developments in ebook publishing, but should begin to think about the implications for deposit. While it may be several years before their impact becomes very significant, we believe that it is unlikely that ebooks will not be having a major impact on publishing by the end of this decade. Half of the twelve larger publisher are either already published anything solely in ebook format; and of the other five, three have no plans to publish only in ebook, and the other two say they regard it as premature to do so in 2001. In terms of their commitment to ebook publishing, the five publishers already involved range from the very tentative and experimental to the fully committed - one of them is expecting to have their complete (US) trade frontlist in ebook (in parallel with print publication) in 2001. The other publishers told us that they currently have no plans for publishing in ebook formats. Publishing and the World Wide Web When we speak of "the public Web", we mean that part of the Web that is publicly and freely accessible to any user of the Internet. Despite extraordinary growth in many other published media during the 1990s, the World Wide Web represents the easily largest single explosion in the volume of publishing in the last decade, with estimates that the total number of pages on the "public web" worldwide has now passed one billion. Most of those who post content to the Web probably do not regard themselves as "publishers" - although we would contend that they most certainly are, even if their published output occasionally reveals some lack of real publishing expertise! This explosion of publishing activity has been built on the rapid and universal adoption of a standard, and proves the power of the network effect on the adoption of standards. Experiments in "Web harvesting" for archiving in both Scandinavia and the Netherlands have demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of files harvested have been in common formats. This would suggest that this is also true for the public Web as a whole. The low cost of becoming a "publisher" on the Web has been the major facilitator of all this activity, and has significantly lowered the barriers to entry. This lowering of the significant investment barrier to becoming a publisher raises a number of new problems for all users of information - not least the deposit libraries. In the past deposit libraries were content to allow the commercial hurdle of publication to provide a primary filter in determining what should and what should not be deposited. With the Web, that primary filter is no longer in place. Most of these "publishers" are not very prolific: in the Netherlands harvesting exercise to which we have already referred, over 80% of the domains harvested had fewer than 10 pages of content - and fewer than 1% had more than 500. Much of this "publishing" is at the level of personal home pages, which are almost certainly of only passing interest - the ephemera of the digital age. However, some of what is published has lasting value - even though it may be distributed for nothing. Because of the negligible cost of distribution, the Web provides a mechanism for the publication of some content that (because of its specialist interest) would never have justified publication in print on paper form, including for example doctoral theses and a growing number of conference proceedings. At the same time, it allows Governments to provide free access to information that was previously difficult (or expensive) to find. It will not be at all easy for deposit libraries to separate that which has value from that which does not in the absence of the commercial "cues" which are available in the print world. The primary issues concerning deposit and preservation of this content are not related to file formats and similar technical production issues; rather they relate to the amount of human intervention that is required in selection, identification and description of the content. Most of these publishers will not have heard of the term "metadata"; nor will they have given thought to issues of unique identification. There are other issues to be considered, like identifying the "boundaries" of a publication in a hyperlinked environment. Where does one document start and another begin Can you only usefully preserve a document if you preserve all the documents to which it links Although the purely technical issues relating to preservation of the Web may be difficult, particularly as the Web becomes more technically complex, it seems to us that finding answers to some of these other questions may ultimately prove to be more difficult. Read More