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First published online April 26, 2010

New journal models and publishing perspectives in the evolving digital environment

Maria Cassella and Licia CalviView all authors and affiliations
Volume 36, Issue 1
https://doi.org/10.1177/0340035209359559

Abstract

Open access combined with Web 2.0 networking tools is fast changing the traditional journal’s functions and framework and the publisher’s role. As content is more and more available online in digital repositories and on the web, an integrated, interconnected, multidisciplinary information environment is evolving and Oldenburg’s model disintegrates: the journal is no longer the main referring unit for scholarly output, as it used to be, for Scientific, Technical, and Medical disciplines, but scholars’ attention is now more focused on the article level. New journals models are thus evolving. The first part of this paper discusses these new experimental journal models, i.e. overlay journals, interjournals and different levels journals. The second part directs readers’ attention to the role commercial publishers could play in this digital seamless writing arena. The authors consider that publishers should concentrate much more on value-added services for authors, readers and libraries, such as navigational services, discovery services, archiving and evaluation services.

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1.
1. ‘‘It was not until the year 1752 that the Royal Society of London adopted a review process such as the one that had been previously used by the Royal Society of Edinburgh as early as 1731’’. Cf. Ray Spier (2002).
2.
2. On this topic see the thoughtful article by Stephen G. Nichols (2009).
3.
3. Brody et al. (2007) are even more optimistic. They calculated that 15 percent of all academic journals articles were already available via open access in 2007. In some disciplines, however, the percentage can be much higher: Bergstrom and Lavaty (2007) report, for instance, that an Internet search turned up freely available versions of 90 percent of articles in the top 15 economics journals.
4.
4. All adopted mandates are registered in the ROARMAP http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ It should be remarked that most of them also mandate the deposit of the refereed postprint.
5.
5. A plethora of projects is actually concentrating scholarly attention on the article level: i.e. the Article of the Future, a project launched in July 2009 by Cell Press and Elsevier http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/ authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_01279; the Article-level Metrics led by PloS http://everyone. plos.org/2009/05/27/article-level-metrics-at-plos/; the Usage Factor study sponsored by the United Kingdom Serials Group to explore articles downloads as a basis for a new quantitative metrics, and its strictly correlated project Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (PIRUS) whose aim is ‘‘to develop COUNTER-compliant standards and usage reports at the individual article level that can be implemented by any entity (publisher, aggregator, repository, etc.) that hosts online journal articles and will enable the usage of research outputs to be recorded, reported and consolidated at a global level in a standard way’’. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/ pirusfinalreport.aspx
6.
6. See on this topic Maron and Smith, 2008.
7.
7. To follow the ongoing theoretical debate on the new journal forms see Paolo Dall’Aglio (2006).
8.
8. http://www.earlham.edu/∼peters/fos/guide.htm
9.
9. David Shulenburger’s proposal (2007) for scholarly monographs is very similar to Ginsparg’s idea. For those volumes which do not find market distribution channels Shulenburger suggests that ‘‘scholarly societies should form peer-review bodies to examine such work of minor pecuniary value and to certify their scholarly worth’’.
10.
10. A very early overlay journal used to be Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, which provided only certification. Later on it has become a traditional journal. http://www.intlpress.com/ATMP/ archive/volume04-1.html
11.
11. http://www.emis.famaf.unc.edu.ar/journals/SIGMA/ about.html#overlay
12.
12. http://naboj.com/
13.
13. http://www.lu.se/forskning
14.
14. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/rioja/
15.
15. ‘‘An application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, data structures, object classes and/or protocols provided by libraries and/or operating system services in order to support the building of applications.’’ Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Api
16.
16. http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs
17.
17. http://www.eprints.org/
18.
18. 4012 astrophysicists were also investigated in a community survey conducted for the project. 683 responses were received (a 17 percent return). ‘‘Preliminary findings indicate that researchers are, in general, sympathetic to the overlay model, albeit with concerns about the long-term accessibility of the research material, and the quality of the certification process.’’ (Press, 2007)
19.
19. A survey conducted by Mayur Armin, an Elsevier consultant, on the usage of journals in Science Direct, found that while researchers in physics and mathematics use massively journals within their discipline (70 percent or more), researchers’ usage of journals in other disciplines, including chemistry and environmental sciences, is at less than half that level. [URL no longer functioning]
20.
20. http://eiop.or.at/eiop
21.
21. http://www.interjournal.org/
22.
22. http://philica.com/about.php
23.
23. http://www.bepress.com/bejte/ratingsystem.html
24.
24. As a matter of fact commercial publishers control certification but the function is really performed by scholars who do not receive a remuneration for their work, with a very few exceptions. Costs for peer-review are really shifted to the scientific community, to the institutions scholars work for and to the general public.
25.
25. A community review model has been adopted for the conference EclipseCON 2006 http://www.eclipsecon. org/2006/Home.do
26.
26. The idea developed by Rodriguez, Bollen and Van de Sompel (2005) is very innovative: ‘‘a deconstructed publication model in which the peer review process is mediated by an OAI-compliant peer-review service. This peer-review service uses a social-network algorithm to automatically determine potential reviewers for a submitted manuscript and for weighting the influence of each participating reviewer’s evaluations.’’
27.
27. We agree with Roosendaal and Geurts’ statement (1997) that ‘‘value is not anymore in information proper but in its effective and efficient communication’’.
28.
28. Publishers are already involved in many different long term preservation projects i.e. Portico, CLOCKSS, LOCKSS, E-Depot. In the digital environment publishers share with libraries, foundations, and authors the responsibility for the long term preservation of the digital memory.
29.
29. http://precedings.nature.com/
30.
30. http://www.livingreviews.org/
31.
31. http://relativity.livingreviews.org/About/concept.html
32.
32. In the literature, peer review is often referred to as a form of ex-ante qualitative evaluation and bibliometric analysis as a form of ex-post quantitative evaluation of scholarly works.
33.
33. According to Mark Ware’s survey on peer review (2008) peer review is widely supported by the different scholarly communities: 93 percent of scholars surveyed disagreed that peer review is unnecessary.
34.
34. See on this topic the whole Nature debate on peer review, 2006 and McCormack, 2009.

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Published In

Volume 36, Issue 1
Pages: 7 - 15
Article first published online: April 26, 2010
Issue published: March 2010

Keywords

  1. scholarly communication
  2. e-journals
  3. electronic publishing
  4. Open Access
  5. overlay journals

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Maria Cassella
University of Turin, Italy, [email protected]
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Licia Calvi
University of Breda, The Netherlands, [email protected]
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