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Harrison, Teresa M., Timothy Stephen, and James Winter.  "Online
Journals: Disciplinary Designs for Electronic Scholarship."  The
Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 25-38.
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1.0  Introduction

The decade of the 80's has witnessed the advent of a revolution
in scholarly communication.  The explosive growth of wide-area
academic computer networking using BITNET/EARN, Internet, and an
extensive array of regional networks has brought us beyond the
point of asking whether the networks will be used for scholarly
communication.  The important questions now center around how
computer-mediated scholarly communication will take place.
Increasingly, speculation has focused upon the ability of
electronic media to replace paper as the primary delivery medium
for scholarly journals.

A prima facie case for the desirability of online or electronic
scholarly journals seems already to exist.  Advocates have based
their cases on the advantages of computer networking and
electronic media over print publication, such as the speed of
dissemination, the relatively low costs of production and
dissemination, and the ability to make more scholarship available
than before [1].  Noting that publishers receive the economic
benefits of research produced at public expense, Okerson has
suggested that an electronic publishing component within the
National Research and Education Network would enable scholarship
to remain financially accessible to the public [2].

Other arguments have been based upon the ways that electronic
publication might improve the practice of scholarship within
academic disciplines.  For example, advocates have described the
superior possibilities for information retrieval that may be
achieved when scholarly articles are interconnected in flexible
databases [3, 4].  Yavarkovsky [5] and Lyman [6] have suggested
that electronic publication can facilitate certain types of
scholarship that generate products better represented in
graphics, or in three-dimensional, animated, or moving visual
representations.  Other researchers have argued that electronic
journals might be aimed at facilitating informal communication
processes through which original ideas are generated and refined
and preliminary information about research is disseminated [7, 8,
9].

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Although the future of electronic journals seems promising, their
adoption by scholars will not be determined solely by the number
of technical innovations or by the medium's ability to tip the
scales in a comparison of costs and benefits with print media.
The decade of the 90's will no doubt witness many attempts to
introduce models for electronic academic journals.  Whether these
journals succeed or fail will depend on the extent to which a
particular journal's design is consistent with the social
practices of the discipline it serves and the extent to which it
reflects the discipline's needs for information and
communication.

If this is true, it follows that no single journal model will
serve as a prototype for all disciplines.  Instead, designers of
electronic journals would do well to understand how their
particular disciplines' social practices may block or delay the
acceptance of an electronic journal.  The journal must be
designed and introduced in a way that overcomes these hurdles,
while offering an approach to "publication" that improves the
discipline's ability to satisfy information and communication
needs.

In this article, we describe the approach we have taken in the
design of the Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue
Electronique de Communication (EJC/REC, ISSN 1183-5656).  We
begin by noting differences between disciplines that argue for a
variety of approaches in electronic journals.  Then, we focus on
the considerations that were most important to us in planning the
development of EJC/REC, and we describe how we have attempted to
address them.  Our strategy has centered upon the idea of
introducing EJC/REC within the context of an electronic service
known as Comserve--a broader disciplinary project whose aim is to
promote the use of electronic media in communication scholarship.
Finally, we call attention to challenges that designers of
electronic journals will face in attempting to institutionalize
the medium within the academy.

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2.0  Disciplinary Differences in the Design of Online Journals

Electronic media makes feasible a dazzling array of innovations
with the potential to transform the nature of scholarly
communication.  Developers are eager to incorporate these
features into the design of electronic journals.  However, these
innovations will not be equally attractive in all disciplines.
Although journals in the sciences, humanities, and the social
sciences appear to be fairly similar, there are systematic
differences in the kind of information they include and the way
that information is presented [10].  These variations in journal
design and presentation reflect more fundamental distinctions
across the disciplines in journal publication processes, the way
that journals are used, and the types of contributions journal
articles represent.  Those planning to develop electronic
journals must be sensitive to these differences.


2.1  Electronic Archives

Some of the most radically innovative proposals for online
publications have focused on the improvements in information
retrieval that can be obtained when journals and their contents
are interconnected in archival databases.  Designers of these
"electronic archives" (the category "journal" no longer seems
apt) plan to incorporate certain characteristics of traditional
journals such as editorial boards and peer review, but use
technology to transcend the limitations of print.  Their aim is
to create information retrieval features that enable users to
access a single article as well as a body of literature that is
relevant to it, to place comments and rebuttals to specific
articles within the archive, and to generate instructions that
will identify additions to the system that are of interest to
particular users [11, 12, 13].

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One would expect such a model to be attractive in the natural and
applied sciences where scholars often pursue particular questions
systematically within established theoretical programs.  Research
such as this, occurring in fields like medicine, engineering,
physics, and biology, is often supported by large grants or
contracts.  In such contexts, new knowledge accumulates rapidly
and supersedes existing knowledge; scholarly credibility depends
upon the ability to portray one's work as integral within this
stream.  However, this type of process is barely evident within
most humanities and social science disciplines.  Further, we
question whether the economic resources devoted to disciplinary
inquiry will be sufficient for the construction and use of such
elaborate information retrieval capabilities.


2.2  Non-Traditional Electronic Journals

It has also been popular to suggest that, instead of
replacing traditional journals, online publications might address
other aspects of scholarly communication.  For example, online
journals might be used to disseminate brief summaries of research
and information about research in progress [14], to engage in
more limited exchanges of information [15], or, more ambitiously,
to support and institutionalize informal scholarly communication
activities that typically take place in interpersonal contexts
[16].  Informal scholarly communication, which is regarded as
important for generating ideas and communicating information
about ongoing research, takes place at conferences, at colloquia
or symposia, and through correspondence.  It is typically
restricted to small numbers of individuals.  Electronic media
would enable these activities to take place on an ongoing basis
with greater levels of participation.

Some of these proposals spring from fears about whether
electronic journals will command the credibility of traditional
print publications.  For example, Turoff and Hiltz's focus on
developing electronic alternatives to traditional journals was
motivated by their discovery that scholars were reluctant to
place their work in the Electronic Information Exchange System
(EIES)-maintained journal [17].  They surmised that this
reluctance was due to perceptions that articles in this journal
would have a smaller chance of being cited by others.

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In the natural and applied sciences, where informal communication
is the scholar's primary means of keeping up to date on research
advances, computer-mediated information exchanges may be valued,
though it is not clear if electronic journals that carry out such
functions will ever command the same prestige as traditional
publications.  Peer review and broader network access to these
journals would surely help to overcome some of their limitations.

However, what is true of one discipline may not be true of
others.  In many humanities and social science disciplines,
informal communication may play a greater role in generating
ideas than disseminating information about research in progress,
and journal article publication is itself viewed as a less
important contribution to knowledge than publication of a book
[18].  In such disciplines, electronic journals may never achieve
the credibility of print.  Indeed, Katzen's suggestion that
scholarly communication functions are likely to be split between
electronic and print media seems to proceed from the assumption
that humanities scholars will find it very hard to break their
allegiance to print [19].  Electronic journals are viewed as
impermanent, less satisfying to read, and it is feared their
contents will change as the journals are disseminated.
Therefore, these journals may be suitable for reflecting what is
transient in scholarship; what is permanent and authoritative
should be preserved in print.

We do not doubt that electronic media will stimulate the
development of new forms of scholarly discourse; however, we were
reluctant to introduce both a new genre and a new medium of
journal publication.  Historically, the journal article evolved
as a genre of scholarly discourse from the first published
scientific communication, which consisted of letters sent to the
editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of
London [20].  In the same way, we expect that new genres of
electronic scholarly discourse across the disciplines will evolve
after the medium in which they appear has acquired the imprimatur
of scholarly legitimacy.

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3.0  The Design and Introduction of EJC/REC

One might expect that those who study human communication would
be the first to embrace the advantages of new communication
technologies.  However, while there are many communication
scholars who are interested in communication technologies, there
are many others who have little experience in computing and who
are just as likely as other scholars to question the viability of
new publication systems.  Any new serial is going to face issues
of permanence (will it still exist in three years?),
accessibility (will it get into the hands of other scholars?),
and credibility (will articles be peer reviewed and cited by
others?).  It was apparent that the new medium would make it more
difficult to provide the usual assurances.  Further, we
recognized that the medium posed challenges not experienced in
print publication that would have to be overcome.  Thus, before
any of the advantages of online journals could be realized, we
believed that it was necessary to overcome the obstacles
presented by the medium.


3.1  Comserve: An Electronic Publisher

One of the first decisions made was to offer EJC/REC under the
auspices of Comserve.  Comserve is an electronic information and
discussion resource that, since 1986, has used national and
global computer networks to provide disciplinary services to
communication scholars and students.  Individuals interact with
Comserve using accounts on local mainframe computers that are
linked to BITNET, Internet, or any network connected to them.
Comserve functions as a software robot with its own network
address, watching for and taking action on commands that users
send to it.

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Comserve's primary purpose is to promote the use of electronic
networking and computer-mediated communication in the service of
communication scholarship.  Available 24 hours a day, seven days
a week, at no charge to users, Comserve offers four basic types
of resources:

       (1)  An interactive "white pages"--an electronic
            directory of names, electronic mail addresses, and
            research interests of individuals in the
            discipline.

       (2)  Electronic indexes to disciplinary journals
            that can be searched for bibliographic citations.

       (3)  A database of over 1,000 files containing
            research, teaching, and other professionally useful
            information.

       (4)  A suite of 20 online conferences addressing
            research, teaching, and professional topics in
            communication studies.

By associating the publication of EJC/REC with Comserve we hoped
to dispel some of the inevitable doubts about the permanence of
the journal.  When the first issue of EJC/REC was published,
Comserve was entering its fifth year of operation, making it one
of the oldest disciplinary services on the networks.  Comserve
had received financial support from several of the discipline's
professional organizations as well as from many individual
departments of communication throughout North America, thus
indicating that it had achieved some measure of recognition and
visibility within the discipline.

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Furthermore, by associating EJC/REC with Comserve, we hoped to
provide some assurances about EJC/REC's accessibility.  Users
have generally found it easy to learn how to access Comserve's
resources, as indicated by the speed of diffusion among students
and faculty.  Over 20,000 individuals from nearly every major
academic institution in the United States, Canada, and Mexico (as
well as in 35 other countries) have sent over 250,000 commands to
Comserve.  Approximately 4,500 individuals maintain subscriptions
to one or more of Comserve's electronic conferences.

In the same way that many scholarly associations act as
publishers of their own disciplinary journals, Comserve acts as
an electronic "publisher" for EJC/REC.  As an electronic
disciplinary forum, Comserve offers an array of incentives for
faculty and students in communication studies to learn how to use
computer-mediated communication for scholarly discourse.  The
services described above fall within the realm of informal
scholarly communication.  EJC/REC, a mechanism for formal
scholarly communication, complements these efforts to
institutionalize the use of electronic communication within the
field.  Together, Comserve and EJC/REC are helping to create an
electronic community of scholars.  Within such a community, we
believed that an electronic journal has a significant chance to
develop disciplinary stature.


3.2  EJC/REC: Form and Content

In its first year of publication, EJC/REC has delivered two
issues and is in the process of producing its third.
Technically, subscriptions are managed automatically through a
special electronic conference devoted to the journal that is
managed by Comserve.  Interested individuals may subscribe to the
journal by sending the following command on the first line in the
body of an electronic mail message to COMSERVE@RPIECS (BITNET) or
COMSERVE@VM.ECS.RPI.EDU (Internet):

     SUBSCRIBE EJCREC First_Name Last_Name

     (Example:  SUBSCRIBE EJCREC Mary Smith)

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The journal's 320 subscribers automatically receive the journal's
table of contents, abstracts for each article in the issue, and
the names of files containing each article in the issue.  Files
are named by author and volume/issue number.  Those interested
may then request files containing desired articles by sending the
appropriate command to Comserve (at either of the addresses noted
above).  For example:

     SEND MCKEOWN V1N190

refers to an article by Bruce McKeown of Westmont College
entitled "Q Methodology, Communication, and the Behavioral Text,"
appearing in volume 1, number 1 of EJC/REC in 1990.  Articles
appearing in back issues will continue to be available through
Comserve and may be requested at any time.  All articles are in
ASCII format.

With respect to editorial policies, EJC/REC seeks to be broadly
representative of the field of communication studies and invites
submissions related to the study of communication theory,
research, practice, and policy.  Manuscripts reporting original
research, methodologies relevant to the study of human
communication, critical syntheses of research, and theoretical
and philosophical perspectives on communication are encouraged.
Manuscripts are reviewed by relevant individuals within a thirty-
member editorial board consisting of scholars representing
diverse interests in the field from Europe, Canada, and the
United States.

To establish a credible publication history, attract readership,
and encourage submissions, we have devoted initial issues of
EJC/REC, edited by scholars with established reputations, to
special topics within the communication field.  Thus, the first
issue addressed the topic of "Q Methodology and Communication:
Theory and Applications" and was edited by Irvin Goldman of the
University of Windsor and Steven Brown of Kent State University.
Goldman and Brown, acknowledged heirs to the scholarly legacy of
psychologist and communication theorist William Stephenson, who
invented Q methodology, identified noted scholars in the area,
invited contributions to the issue, and supervised the reviewing
process.

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Since EJC/REC originates in Canada, there have been efforts to
create a journal that is bilingual in certain aspects of its
presentation and in some of its focuses.  Editorial duties are
distributed between James Winter of the University of Windsor
(English-speaking editor) and Claude Martin of the University of
Montreal (French-speaking editor).  Articles may appear in
English or French.  Although articles will not always be
translated into both languages, messages from special issue
editors, article titles, and article abstracts are presented in
French as well as in English.


4.0  EJC/REC: In the Future

We recognize that we have not resolved all doubts about the
permanence, accessibility, and credibility of EJC/REC.
Ultimately, these doubts can only be resolved, and the journal's
future assured, when EJC/REC is incorporated within the
recognized body of scholarly knowledge.  This means ensuring that
the journal is readily available through university and college
libraries.  Although libraries may currently subscribe to issues
of EJC/REC distributed through the network, we plan to improve
availability by distributing the journal to libraries on
diskettes (at well below current costs for print journals) as
soon as a full volume becomes available.  We are also exploring
possibilities for including the journal in standard citation
services and other secondary bibliographic resources in the
humanities and social sciences.

Finally, one important hurdle we, and other designers of
electronic journals, must attempt to address is the onerous
experience of reading an online journal.  It is necessary to
display the contents of online or electronic journals in ASCII
format because there are few word processing systems compatible
with the many different kinds of computing equipment that can be
used to display text.  As most already know, reading large
quantities of text on video display terminals is not a
comfortable way of consuming scholarship.  Many editors of online
journals are resigned to the fact that their readers will
download articles of interest and print them in order to read
them.  Thus, the electronic medium is viewed as suitable for
delivering, but not for experiencing, text.

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We are impressed by the results of an experiment conducted by
Standera that assessed reader responses to a journal appearing in
five different formats, including an electronic version read on a
video display terminal [21].  He concluded that before readers
will be willing to change their preferences for print: "Designers
(of electronic publishing systems) must provide improved
legibility, easy browsing, more friendly procedures, ready
availability of indexes, portability, and less fatigue" [22].

Some improvements in legibility will occur with advances in video
display technology.  But needed now, or in the very near future,
are more fundamental improvements in the reader's ability to
"handle" or manipulate text.  The allegiance to print is in great
measure an unwillingness to give up advantages conferred by the
materiality of paper.  Until they can do with electronic text
what they currently do with text on paper, scholars will retain
their devotion to print and resist converting to electronic
media.


Notes

1. Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, "The Electronic
Journal: A Progress Report," Journal of the American Society
for Information Science 33 (July 1982): 195-202.

2. Anne Okerson, "Incentives and Disincentives in Research and
Educational Communication," EDUCOM Review 25 (Fall 1990): 15.

3. William Gardner, "The Electronic Archive: Scientific
Publishing for the 1990s," Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990):
333-341.

4. Sharon J. Rogers and Charlene S. Hurt, "How Scholarly
Communication Should Work in the 21st Century," Chronicle of
Higher Education, 18 October 1989, A56.

5. Jerome Yavarkovsky, "A University-Based Electronic
Publishing Network," EDUCOM Review 25 (Fall 1990): 14-20.

+ Page 36 +

6. Peter Lyman, "The Library of the (Not-So-Distant) Future,"
Change 23 (January/February 1991): 34-41.

7. Stevan Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the
Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry,"
Psychological Science 1, no. 6 (1990): 342-344.

8. D. J.  Pullinger, "Chit-Chat to Electronic Journals:
Computer Conferencing Supports Scientific Communication," IEEE
Transactions on Professional Communications PC 29 (March 1986):
23-29.

9. B. Shackel, "The BLEND System: Programme for the Study of Some
'Electronic Journals'," Journal of the American Society for
Information Science 34 (January 1983): 22-30.

10. May F. Katzen, "The Changing Appearance of Research Journals
in Science and Technology: An Analysis and a Case Study," in
Development of Science Publishing in Europe, ed. A. J. Meadows
(Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1980), 177-214.

11. A. Bookstein and M. J. O'Donnell, "A Scholarly Electronic
Journal on the Internet: The Chicago Journal of Computer Science"
(Paper presented at the Association of Research Libraries
Conference for Refereed Academic Publishing
Projects, Raleigh, North Carolina, 8 October 1990.)

12. Lynn Kellar, "Functional Overview of the Electronic
Science Journal." (Paper presented at the Association of
Research Libraries Conference for Refereed Academic
Publishing Projects, Raleigh, North Carolina, 8 October 1990.)

13. Gardner, "The Electronic Archive: Scientific Publishing for
the 1990s," 333-341.

14. May Katzen, "Electronic Publishing in the Humanities,"
Scholarly Publishing 18 (October 1986): 5-16.

15. Turoff and Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress
Report," 195-202.

16. Stevan Harnad, "Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication
Continuum of Scientific Inquiry," 342-344.

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17. Turoff and Hiltz, "The Electronic Journal: A Progress
Report," 195-202.

18. Blaise Cronin, "Invisible Colleges and Information
Transfer: A Review and Commentary with Particular Reference to
the Social Sciences," Journal of Documentation 38 (September
1982): 212-236.

19. Katzen, "Electronic Publishing in the Humanities," 5-16.

20. Katzen, "The Changing Appearance of Research Journals in
Science and Technology," 177-214.

21. O. L. Standera, "Electronic Publishing: Some Notes on Reader
Response and Costs," Scholarly Publishing 16 (July 1985):
291-305.

22. Ibid., 299.


About the Authors:

Teresa M. Harrison and Timothy D. Stephen
Co-Directors, Comserve
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY 12180

James Winter
Editor, Electronic Journal of Communication
University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4

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This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Teresa M. Harrison, Timothy
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