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Hypermedia Online Publishing: the Transformation of the Scholarly Journal

5.2 Transformation of publishing functions

Turning potentiality into actuality is a large step. Technologies evolve, and users of technology are normally fairly resistant to change. Inertia, particularly with respect to communication technologies, plays a large role. People are not willing to change just for the sake of change - they need a compelling reason. Applying this to scholarly journals means that in order to be successful, any new technology needs to provide either equivalent functionality to print, or if this is not possible, enough alternative functionality to compensate for any deficiencies. For any scholarly publishing medium to be useful to the user, a core set of functions is needed [Treloar, 1996]:

ability of authors and publishers to produce and format the publication;
ability of publishers to notify users of new issues of the publication;
ability for users to access the publication.

Peter Boyce argues for an expansion of this list [Boyce, 1996] [Boyce et al., 1996], focusing on the functions that need to be performed by the publishers and/or librarians. His list of essential components of the publishing process is:

Author preparation
Peer review
Copy editing and typography
Distribution
Archiving

Michael O'Donnell proposes five roles [ODonnell, 1995'] which he defines in terms of the functions they perform:

author - writes article
editor - judges quality and relevance
publisher - announces acceptance of article and makes it public
archivist - preserves article
readers- read accepted text

Boyce does not mention the issue of access. O'Donnell makes no reference to those who perform the refereeing function (at least in this list- they are mentioned later). Because access to a publication includes delivery to the user, presentation of the publication, and navigation through the publication, these need to be considered separately. Conflating these three lists and making explicit some assumptions therefore produces the following set of functions:

Authoring
Peer review
Production and formatting
Notification of users
Distribution and access
Navigation
Archiving

This section will look at each of these functions in turn, discussing both how they are provided in print journals and how they might be re-implemented in electronic journals.

Hypermedia Online Publishing: the Transformation of the Scholarly Journal

5.2 Transformation of publishing functions

5.2.1 Authoring

5.2.2 Peer review

5.2.3 Production

5.2.4 Notification

5.2.5 Distribution and access

5.2.6 Navigation

5.2.7 Archiving