Scientific Publisher (redone)

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Dave:


The attached article is one of two that I have had scanned in from
yesterday's Independent - one of the UK's "quality" national papers.


Cheers




PS I love the casual remark that Oxford University Press have been
publishing journals since 1478! :-)


==========




Scientific publisher feels on-line heat.


Growing use of Internet as a research exchange has put Oxford University
Press on the electronic highway, writes Phil Dourado (The Independent,
13.11.94)


ALARMED that scientists are exchanging research on computer-linked
electronic bulletin boards, rather than publishing their results in the
traditional way, Oxford University Press is to begin distributing its
journals on Internet, the global information network.


The experiment is part of a wider bid among academic publishers to claim
Internet as a formal paid-for publishing medium. At present users pay for
communications links to Internet, but the information is free.


Internet represents a new way of acquiring information, with thousands of
gigabytes of data exchanged over the network daily without the intervention
of publishing companies. OUP, which has been putting out paper journals
since 1478, argues that publishers need to move into the medium to bring
order to the chaos that would result from computer users taking over the
world of academic information exchange.


"Initially we will be using the Internet early next year to publish
headline material - which won't be charged for- to enhance the profile of
our journals," explained Mike Stout, OUP's manager of electronic journals.
"We will then use the feedback from that exercise to model a system of fees
for distributing journal information electronically."


Publishing on Internet will allow OUP to customise the previously stable
paper information into a more dynamic product, with each user ordering what
he or she wants and paying accordingly. To reach this level of flexibility,
OUP is first moving to publishing its 140 journals on CD-Rom as well as
paper.


OUP's plans to publish on Internet should help it attract the most
important research papers, since the date of publication confers
acknowledgement that a scientist has reached a discovery first. With its
twice monthly Nucleic Acids Research, for example, OUP will cut three weeks
from the current 12-week cycle from acceptance of a paper to publication.


The company made history when it published the Oxford English Dictionary on
CD-ROM, but printing electronic and paper journals simultaneously i5
another departure. At present, most CD-Roms are published after the paper
versions, with, say, one year's issues on a single C13-Rom. But from next
year, Human Reproduction Update, the journal edited by Professor Bob
Edwards of the pioneering in vitro fertilisation team of Steptoe and
Edwards, will be published simultaneously in electronic and paper forms as
a multimedia journal, with headline extracts posted on Internet.


Users of the CD-Rom version will be able to look at video clips of the
latest surgery techniques, to illustrate the research papers they are
reading. It is thought to be the first UK scientific journal to be
published in this way.


OUP has installed a system from Interleaf, the electronic publishing
company, to handle the journals. "Publishing journals electronically
requires a different process from electronic book publishing," said Mr
Stout. "Arriving on bookshelves six months late with an encyclopaedia may
be OK, but a monthly publication requires the ability to originate,
manipulate and distribute masses of information very quickly, in a format
users will find acceptable."


Rather than working back from the printed page to produce an electronic
version - with duplication of the costs and the retention of overheads
associated with paper publishing - the Interleaf system makes it possible
to integrate the two tasks. This will save several weeks on a typical
publication, according to Martin Richardson, director of journals for OUP.
"The ability to process the material as one database, and then publish both
the printed page and electronically gives us a real advantage."


OUP's move marks a wider recognition among publishers that their product is
information, not books or journals, and that electronic publishing
technology gives them the power to manipulate that body of information.
Academic journals have a relatively stable market, so, rather than
expanding the subscriber base, the added value is intended to keep existing
customers loyal.


OUP says subscription prices will not be markedly different but the CD-Rom
journal will be easier to use than its paper counterpart. According to
OUP's own market research, only S per cent of the information in any
journal is directly relevant to an individual scientist. And readers of
paper journals waste time obtaining that 5 per cent. The search facilities
in the CD-Rom version relieve users of the mechanical burden of skim
reading-giving them access to an index which, in effect, is limitless and
interactive. Tasks which might have taken days-for example, finding all the
1993 references to the structure of a particular protein - will take
seconds.


"Via Internet, we will eventually be able to send abstracts and headline
information for each of our journals. Users can then order the papers they
want that fit their specialism, rather than having to take a complete paper
journal," said Mr Stout.








Dept. of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Anke.Jackson () newcastle ac uk   PHONE = +44 91 222 7926
FAX = +44 91 222 8232