Slide 1

							  E-Journals

Mary Katherine Barnes
    Marcus Donie
     Kathy Fain
    Sarah Ziegler
In the Beginning….




           Well, maybe not that far back…..
History of E-Journals
Setting the Stage

  Printing developments
     Gutenberg’s printing press
     Newspapers
       Early versions appeared in China in the 7th
       cent.
      1594 – 1st European paper appeared in
       Germany
     Age of Reason- heightened interest in
     science
         – Formation of scientific societies
Earliest Journals
            Earliest Journals
        –      1st scientific journal-like publication
               »    Jan 1665
               »    Le Journal des Scavans
               »    Founded by M. de Sallo
               »    20 pages long
               »    Contained 10 articles and some letters

        –      2nd journal-like publication
               »    Late in 1665
               »    Royal Society of London
               »    Called Philosophical Transactions
               »    Monthly journal of articles that recorded experiments of
                    their member
               »    16 pages of 9 articles

            Growth of Scientific and Medical journals being published
        –      By the end of the 17th century – 30-90
        –      By the 18th century- 775
The 1970’s – The Beginning
   Some publishers realized that journal prices were not
   sensitive to the law of supply/demand since
      There was no substitute for the given product
      Limitless and free source of supply (scientists
      must publish or “perish”)
      Product user (scientists) is not the product buyer
      (libraries) thus the user is not inspired to work to
      control prices
   Thus publishers used a 3-fold strategy to increase
   profits
      Increase price by 10-20% each year
      Reduce discount for agents
      Expand market share by taking over publications
      of scholarly societies
   This worked well during the 1970’s – library budgets
   kept pace with increased prices
The 1980’s – The Turning Point
Technological changes
   Technology began to be developed to allow for e-journals
 –     Word processing
 –     Publishing software
 –     Introduction of the internet through local area networks
       (LAN)
 –     PC’s and workstations
   Telecommunication technologies improved
 –     Satellites
 –     Fiber optics
 –     General networking capabilities
Other factors
   Journal prices doubled while library budgets declined
   Libraries worries about lack of library space
 –     Technological improvements made it easier to store
       more information in a smaller space and to access that
       info more quickly
Thus libraries began looking for something better
          Progression through
                the 1980’s
Earliest form- ASCII text files sent to
subscribers via e-mail as part of an
electronic discussion list
CD ROM’s became popular (superseded
as online access became more desirable
and feasible)
Then Electronic format texts with identical
paper copy appear
In the late 1980’s – electronic journals with
no paper copy appear
    The 1990’s – The Internet
         Changes Everything
Journal prices continued to increase annually while
library budgets declined or had only modest increases
    Libraries began to cut journals- publishers
    responded by offering electronic formats
World Wide Web emerges and brought together all the
elements
    -made e-journals approachable, accessible &
    affordable
E-journals exploded onto the scene
    September 1990 – Post Modern Culture – appeared
    (considered the first true electronic journal)
    July 1991 – “Directory of Electronic Journals and
    Newsletters” listed
   – 30 electronic journals titles
   – 60 newsletters
   – 15 “other” titles
    1995 – estimated 100 refereed e-journals
  The 2000’s – Into the Future

Spring 2000 – “NewJour” (an
internet archive of online electronic
journals and newsletters) listed
8,593 electronic journals
In 2005, UNC-Chapel Hill currently
subscribes to _____ journals
                Advantages & Disadvantages

Disadvantages
  Inconsistencies in what is available electronic
and in print (varies from institution to institution)
   Easier to read things on print versus
computer screen
   Distrust of the electronic publishing environment and the
problem of providing permanent access to journal articles
   Even though electronic publishing is actually more
economical and cheaper, Publishers do not offer price
incentives to buying their journal electronically
   There’s no guarantee of an electronic back file, where
as journals that we own in print, we own forever. If we
stop subscribing, we lose all those back issues, if the
journal is only available electronically
(More) Disadvantages

   Variations in Vendors’ Search Engines
  Double subscriptions: searchable databases with
  full text articles and also individual subscriptions to
  the e-journals or print journals that are included in
  that database. Additionally, some journals we
  receive both in print and electronically…Price is
  definitely an issue…go to this link in order to see
  examples:
  http://library.tsa.ac.za/resources/hosts.htm
  Easier for Journals to change names (THE
  examble…acronym that stood for a journal we
  subscribed to, but “the” is a stop word that our
  catalog ignores). Electronic Journals are also
  more unstable and we don’t know what what could
  happen
Advantages
   Price of Memory is falling (making
  e-journals economical and more applicable)
  Convenience--more people are able to access
  journals easier and through PIN and password
  barriers they can access e-journals on or off
  campus making researching more versatile
  More and more journals are available online with
  full text provided in both HTML and PDF formats.
  Searches are available through full text articles
  making research easier
  Journals provide more and more back issues that
  are fully searchable
  E-journals take up less shelf space than their print
  counterparts
Is a Hard Copy Necessary?
  Should journals be exclusively
  available online or should their be a
  hard copy as well?
Copyright Laws

                 Grant economic rights
                   Reproduction
                   Distribution
                   Adaptation
                   Public Performance
                   Broadcasting
                   Rental
Moral Rights

  Paternity
    Right of the author
    of a work to be
    identified as such
  Intgegrity
    Right to oppose any changes in the work
    that might distort it or alter it in a
    detriment to the honor or reputation of
    the author
Infringements

  Loss of author info
  Manipulations
  Misleading links
Free vs Paid Access

Strict moral rights would
prevent gross misuse of
info (stealing)
   Also ensures the work is authentic
Flexibility is needed for user’s freedom
& author’s integrity
Computer Ethics
Non-Disclosive
   Usually clear what practices have arisen
   & how technology has made them
   possible
Disclosive
   Not necessarily clear
   what kinds of ethical
   problems have arisen
4 Steps to ID Ethical Problems
  Define the problem
  Determine whether it is an ethical problem
  Isolate the ethical dimensions
  Ask if it is a case of conflicting interests or
  question of rights & fairness
Cultural Hospitality

  Knowledge representation & organization
  system can ideally accommodate the
  various warrants of different cultures &
  reflect appropriately the assumptions of
  any individual, group or community
The Future of Electronic Journals

    In the mid 1990s, scholars
    predicted that most journals
    would be electronic by 2005


                               From a 1999 study by the
                               ARL Directory of Scholarly
                               Electronic Journals and
                               Academic Lists
                               (click here for the article)
The Question of Perpetual Access

Librarians want stable,
archiveable content

Publishers can’t promise perpetual
access
  Content is just leased to libraries
  No ownership of information
  anymore

Experts say that it will take a national
effort to gather this electronic
information to make sure it is secure for
One Solution to Perpetual Access…

LOCKSS: “Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe”
   A persistent access preservation program
   Introduced in 2000 at Stanford University
   “Allows libraries to take custody of the material to
   which they subscribe, in the same way they do for
   paper, and to preserve it.”
   Now 80+ libraries and 50 publishers worldwide are
   using the software
   Click here to read more about the program
Now What?
In the future, all core titles will be online
Big publishers will control most e-journals
There will always be some print periodicals
      Tiny local publications, historical societies, amateurs, etc.

How will this affect scholarly research?
   Will people come into the library for research in
   the future?
   Who should have the responsibility of preservation?
   When will serials departments merge with electronic
   acquisitions departments?