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NeuroQuantology |March 2008 |Vol 6 |Issue 1|Page 1-6 1 Smecher A., The Future of the Academic Journal Guest Editorial The Future of the Electronic Journal Alec Smecher Abstract The character of the electronic academic journal is changing rapidly as new technologies, reader habits, and patterns of communication evolve and the Internet is increasingly adopted as a common medium. The obvious changes involve new methods of delivery and subscription, but the underlying structures of academic communication are are also changing, presenting a host of new possibilities. Key Words: electronic publication, open access, academic communication NeuroQuantology 2008; 1: 1-6 “I used to think that it was just the biggest thing since Gutenberg, but now I think you have to go back farther.” John Perry Barlow, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder, on the Internet 1 John Barlow's comments on the profundity of are causing more fundamental changes to the the Internet may have sounded ridiculous in nature of academic communication. the wake of the subsequent dot-com crash, The common linear process of but as the Internet continues to grow in both publishing an academic journal was the scope and depth of impact it has had on established by logistics and tradition. Before traditional institutions, the rosy image he electronic publication began its spread, and presents is hard to dismiss outright. long before the World Wide Web became the Academic journals are undergoing medium of choice, journals moved at the rapid transformation due to the emergence speed of the postal service. Submissions to of the Internet as a major force in the journal were vetted by an editor and communication. The superficial changes, assigned to reviewers according to a double- which are apparent to outsiders such as blind review process. Eventually the readers and authors, are not difficult to completed reviews could be collected and guess: new methods of distribution, new mailed back to the author; if the article was patterns of readership, and new means of judged worthy, the author could send back a access. As the published journal becomes a revised version for publication. Then the collection of data instead of a tangible object, accepted submissions were gathered into an however, the same transformative pressures issue, laid out for print publication, and printed and distributed. These activities would take place in a Corresponding author: Alec Smecher number of different locations, traditionally Address: 410-1341 East 3rd Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada linked by mail, making it unsurprising that the V5N 1G5 e-mail: [email protected] time between submission and publication ISSN 1303 5150 www.neuroquantology.com NeuroQuantology |March 2008 |Vol 6 |Issue 1|Page 1-6 2 Smecher A., The Future of the Academic Journal could take most of a year. The low speed and source anytime it's requested, control over relatively high cost of communication placed the document and thus the power to change limitations on the physical route that a it at any time remains with the publisher – submission could take on its way to even after the date of publication. publication. Each mile traveled by a These changes are typically discussed submission involved time and costs, pitting with respect to distribution, which is the distance against the best interests of both the aspect that undergoes the most visible author and the journal that timely research change when a publication goes digital – but be published quickly. distribution is only the tip of the iceberg. For Apart from its slow speed, the a truly “born-electronic” publication, these physical nature of print publication adds pressures also operate on each step of the further limitations. Photocopies are relatively publishing process, from submission, through cheap, but physical documents are expensive peer review, copyediting, layout, and so on. to manage, obviously for completed issues of The currently accepted set of processes for the journal, but also for submissions in the each step involves media-related restrictions publication pipeline. A copy of an in-process that are no longer at play for an electronic submission, such as a revision with reviewer publication; these restrictions are so familiar annotations, cannot be in two places at once; that they are difficult to perceive, and thus it it cannot be easily compared with another can be difficult to imagine the impact their copy; it may not be convenient to edit, such removal will have on established processes as to remove author identification before like double-blind peer review. sending to reviewers. Of course, discarding models of Finally, the entire process, from publishing that were based in part on the submission to publication, is unidirectional. limitations of physical media would be Once a submission is laid out for printing, it foolhardy, as these models are thorough, can be cumbersome to take new feedback well-understood, and established. John into account, e.g. an author's last-minute Buschmann, for example, provides a valuably discovery of a flaw. Once an article is printed pessimistic (if somewhat dated) overview of and distributed, it is for all intents and some of the negative potentials of electronic purposes immutable – corrections, if they are publishing, particularly with regard to deemed fundamental enough, must be preservation, economics, and fundamental distributed separately as errata. Once the differences between print and electronic journal is in the hands of a reader (at the end media (Buschman, 1997). A careful of the long trip that began with the author's reexamination of the current structure with pen) the opportunity for participation in the the positive and negatives effects of publishing process for that article has ended. technological change in mind presents a Related correspondence can be published in number of exciting potential directions for later issues of the journal, but while this the future while building on long-standing correspondence can refer back to the original traditions. Several journals – popular publication, the original publication can never academic journals with a long history of refer forward to related discussion. rigour, whose names command respect – are None of these restrictions – the high experimenting with these possibilities. cost and low speed of communication, the The peer review process, central to limitations of managing physical documents, academic communication, can be broadened and the unidirectionality of the process – now that the metrics of distribution have need apply to an electronic publication such been transformed. Rather than an editor as an academic journal. Copies are essentially choosing a small number of reviewers, the free, distribution is no longer a major Internet makes a new process possible expense and logistical problem, and because whereby any reader is able to anonymously most web-based electronic publishing comment on a pre-publication submission. structures involve “delivering” the article Variants of this process are used by a number electronically from a single, authoritative of journals and organizations: ISSN 1303 5150 www.neuroquantology.com NeuroQuantology |March 2008 |Vol 6 |Issue 1|Page 1-6 3 Smecher A., The Future of the Academic Journal * Philica (http://www.philica.com), an electronic journal somewhere. Google Scholar * Naboj (http://www.naboj.com), a service allowing (http://scholar.google.com) is an attempt to open commentary on arXiv.org preprints * Living Reviews (http://www.livingreviews.org), a address the indiscriminate nature of process and collection of journals allowing authors of traditional search engines by including a review articles to incorporate ongoing research limited set of data but ensuring that it is developments better indexed and of meets certain These new processes are made standards; while it is not comprehensive, any possible by broad, rapid public access to the results it does find are quite likely to be Internet, which provides global access to pre- relevant, and because of the high quality of prints in a way that has not been possible indexing information, Google Scholar is able before, and the ability to respond quickly to mine the set of papers it includes for without incurring the overhead a traditional references, author information, etc. There process would require. While these and other are many other databases of high-quality recastings of the review process are content available, often domain-specific, such experimental and results have so far been as the Public Library of Science uneven, they are being considered seriously (http://www.plos.org) and PubMed Central by established high-profile journals such as (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov). Nature (http://www.nature.com) and the Online journals are also instituting British Medical Journal additional mechanisms for author feedback. (http://www.bmj.com). Nature has published The British Medical Journal, Open Medicine the results of their high-profile (if not (http://www.openmedicine.ca), and others particularly successful) experiment with Open have implemented Rapid Responses, which Reviews at attach a forum for public discussion to each http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/deba article. Article authors are encouraged to use te/nature05535.html. the same mechanism to address questions or From a reader's perspective, the criticism. As online publications are never transition from print to electronic has had its “complete” in the way that a print own drawbacks. Assuming both are

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