Electronic Publication

Publication of research in academic journals serves three main purposes: dissemination, archiving, and certification.  A fair question to ask is: “How do electronic journals compare to print journals on these dimensions?”

Dissemination

Electronic publication clearly has the advantage in dissemination. Access to electronically published research does not depend on the particular contents of one’s university library (contents that grows increasingly limited due to the rapid rise in serial subscription prices).  Even if the local library happens to hold a subscription to a particular paper journal, one still has to take the time and effort to go to the library, find the volume on the shelf, and possibly copy and eventually file the article in which one is interested.  It is much easier and less time consuming to obtain an article over the Internet from one’s office.  The pure convenience of the Internet might be reason enough to prefer electronic publication. This convenience, however, produces several more substantial benefits. Most important is that the lower transaction cost of accessing information over the web encourages us to read more widely. As a result, papers published electronically are likely to have a larger audience and thus, more impact, all else equal. It is also much easier to conduct electronic searches of articles stored on the Internet than to thumb through an index or back issues of a paper journal. This access is further enhanced by email notification services that are easily implemented on the Internet. In short, electronic publication makes research available more widely, more easily, more cheaply, and in a more searchable format than would ever be possible with paper.

Not surprisingly, the trend in all academic fields is to move research to the Internet.  Even commercial publishers recognize the inevitability of this and increasingly are posting published articles electronically.  The dilemma commercial publishers currently face is how to maintain the revenue streams that they are accustomed to from print journals in the new electronic environment.  In general, their approach has been to charge libraries extra fees for electronic access to the journals to which they already subscribe. This puts additional strain on library budgets, results in cancellation of other serials, and most importantly, continues to deny access to new research to scholars not fortunate enough to be placed at institutions with large and wealthy libraries.

The basic problem is that paper publication is much more expensive than electronic publication.  Even scholarly societies must make sufficient revenues to cover the costs of producing printed journals.  This puts the interests of academic writers and publishers of paper journals unavoidably in conflict.  The business model of all traditional publishers is built fundamentally on limiting access to the contents of their journals to those who have paid for subscriptions.  In contrast, academic authors benefit from the widest possible distribution of their research.  Authors of journal articles usually give up all financial interests they have in their manuscript as a condition of publication.  The only rewards they receive come indirectly from having their research widely read.   Fortunately, things have developed a little differently on the Internet.  Here, dominant model is to make content available free of charge to anyone who might be interested.  The relative cheapness of electronic publication is probably the leading factor that makes this possible.  It goes without saying that this model is much more in line with the interests of both academic authors and scientific advancement in general and is, of course, one we have adopted at the Economics Bulletin.

Archiving

In theory, the Internet should be far superior to paper as a means of archiving research. In practice, however, there are some legitimate concerns about electronic archiving. One the one hand, being able to access back issues remotely from one’s office (or wherever one happens to be) and being able to search back issues to quickly find relevant literature is much better than having to identify an interesting article from a list of references or an index and then figure out where the journal is kept in the stacks.  Even then, the bound journal may be checked out, missing, or may not even be in the library at all if the subscription does not go back far enough.  Interlibrary loans are available, but these are time consuming and costly to the library. In many cases, the scholar may simply decide it is not worth the effort.  Access problems aside, it costs libraries a great deal to bind, catalogue and store back issues of journals. Even worse, every library that has a subscription to a journal must replicate this costly effort.  This redundant archiving is hugely wasteful of resources that might better be spent on acquiring books or used for other academic purposes. On the other hand, the Internet is new and extremely fluid.  Scholars may be concerned that content may disappear or not always be available in the place they expect it to be.  We take these concerns very seriously at the Economics Bulletin and have taken two steps to address them.  First, we have secured a guarantee from the Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that they will continue to make the archived contents publicly available over the Internet should the Economics Bulletin ever cease publication. This obligation is being undertaken by the third largest university library in North America because libraries understand that information is moving to the internet and that they must make this content available on a permanent basis just as they do paper content.  Second, we have organized our database structure so that published articles will continue to be available at the same URL forever.  Our hope is that these steps will go a long way to reassuring both authors and readers that our content is as stable and permanent as that of any paper publication.

Certification

Clearly, one of the key reasons that both writers and readers of research care about publication is that the peer review process serves the essential function of certifying the correctness and importance of a piece of work. Publishing an article in a highly regarded journal helps to establish the reputation of a scholar and ensures wide exposure for his or her research contributions. Readers, in turn, depend on journals to filter research to help them decide which articles they should invest their time in reading. In the abstract, commercial publishers have no comparative advantage whatsoever in providing this certification.  After all, it is scholars who provide the refereeing and editorial services on which certification depends, not publishing houses.  Given this, it is unclear why we should remain in an equilibrium in which members of the academy write, referee and edit the contents of research journals on a voluntary basis or for nominal compensation, and then have their universities buy back the results of their donated efforts from commercial publishers at increasingly high prices.  If anything, scholars should be more willing to donate their time to certification process for noncommercial publishers than for commercial ones, and so paper journals may even be at a slight disadvantage in this dimension.  Nevertheless, there remains a perception that paper journals are more substantial than electronic journals.  As long as this persists, it will to a large extent be a self-confirming belief.  To a first approximation, a journal in any format is good largely because we, as a community, agree that it is good.  We all want our articles published in the best possible journal, and at the present time, these are paper journals produced by commercial publishers and scholarly societies.   On the one hand, if we were to simultaneously coordinate on a new journal as a high quality outlet, good papers would be submitted, refereeing standards would have to rise, and readership and reputation would quickly follow. On the other hand, no individual scholar would benefit from unilaterally submitting his best work to a journal before its reputation is established. This gives the status quo certain stability regardless of the fundamentals.

The power of incumbency makes it extremely hard for any new journal, especially an electronic one, to develop the status that would allow its endorsement to carry the reputational weight required to certify that an article is important.  This is just the way of the intellectual marketplace.  To challenge a well established journal like Econometrica or AER would be a difficult task indeed.  Letters journals, however, are a different case.  More than any other type of research outlet, these are ideal candidates for electronic publication.  Letters journals focus on notes, comments, preliminary results and research announcements.  For such timely work, speed is of the essence and the prestige of the journal is less important than rapid and widespread distribution of the work.  Hopefully, with time, the reputation of the Economics Bulletin will grow, and publication in EB will immediately be recognized as a signal of quality work.  In the short run, however, our review process will serve to certify both the opinion of our referees that a piece of research is correct, and the opinion of our internationally recognized editorial board that the ideas contained in our published manuscripts are worthy of the attention of the profession. 

Interesting links relating to electronic publication

The Association of Research Libraries published an interesting piece on electronic journals in economics in their ARL Bimonthly Report.

For an interesting collection of papers on “papyrocentric” attitudes in the academy and electronic publication in general see the homepage of Stevan Harnad.

Hal Varian also has a very extensive and useful page of links relating to electronic publishing and the information economy in general.

Also see “The Future of Scholarly Communication: a proposal for change”, by Charles Phelps and “Legitimizing Electronic Scholarly Publications: A Discursive Proposal” by Rod Heimpel.

William L. Goffe has written an interesting piece from the perspective of the AEA entitled  “The Internet and the American Economic Association”.

 Ted Bergstrom is very upset about the cost of economics journals and has some interesting data and a radical proposal.  Even more extensive documentation of the consequences of increasing serial costs may be found on the Caltech website.

Librarians are also concerned about this issue.  See for example: “Reforming Scholarly Publishing in the Sciences: A Librarian Perspective” by Joseph J. Branin and Mary Case  

These concerns have led to a number of tangible results. Most notably, see the website of SPARC, a worldwide alliance of research institutions, libraries and organizations that encourages competition in the scholarly communications market. SPARC introduces new solutions to scientific journal publishing, facilitates the use of technology to expand access, and partners with publishers that bring top-quality, low-cost research to a greater audience. SPARC’s stated mission is to return science to scientists. Also have a look at the website of ICAAP, the International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication, which hosts a number of electronic publications in a wide variety of fields.  Two other sites of particular interest are Optics Express, and the Berkeley Electronic Press.  Optics Express is the main letters journal for the Optical Society of America and is a fully electronic publication set up very much along the lines of the Economics Bulletin.  The B.E. Press is a private company that is beginning to publish a pair of “quality rated” journals in economic theory and macroeconomics.  Both of these new journals have outstanding editorial boards and we wish them every success in spreading electronic publication to Economics.