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Mission

Foster research and instruction by providing a more direct linkage between the writers and readers of scholarly materials.

Use innovative network tools for capture, publishing, retrieval, reading and presentation.

Affect the economics of provision of scholarly information to researchers, especially science, technology and medical (STM) research information.

Ensure that the nascent marketplace for electronic communication among scholars does not develop along the semi-monopolistic lines of current STM publishing.

Build new technological, economic and programmatic partnerships with others investigating related problems.

Startup Strategy

Partner with scholarly societies and university presses.

Partner with other universities and publishers to do 'whole job.'

Partner with technology and publishing industry to leverage tools, techniques.

Provide testbed for longer term efforts to build upon and experiment with.

Network-Based Scholarly Publishing:
A Prospectus

The Problems:

The problems of scholarly publishing - particularly for science, technology and medical information (STM) - are well documented:

It takes too long for authors to get work into the literature because of the author, reviewer, publisher, library, reader handoffs.

It is difficult and time consuming for readers to sort through all that is published.

It is increasingly expensive for libraries to acquire STM materials, which are advancing in price to research libraries at four to six times the c.p.i.

It is becoming impractical for publishers to deliver a timely and complete product that meets the needs of research scientists.

As single events, these problems are each frustrating to scholars and those who serve them. In combination, these impediments are a significant barrier, and challenge the productivity and quality of science.

The Projects:

The Network Publishing project, dubbed "The HighWire Press," provides models of solutions for these problems by taking advantage of the special circumstances of scholarly communication - as distinct from entertainment or trade publishing - in the context of a University community: the writers and readers of scholarly materials are in the same profession, writing for each other, they are located in similar environments; and they do not seek profit from their publishing activities, which are a means to an end for them. Because of network-based communication technologies, the apparatus of a large publishing operation is becoming unnecessary for communication of scholarly results; this is true for the same reason that desktop publishing technologies a decade ago allowed a shift from large design and composition shops to desktop authorship backed up by small, responsive print shops. Essentially, our projects attempt to "re-engineer" traditional scholarly publishing to focus on formal, structured communication among the community of scholars.

The Goals:

Our first year's goal is to work with a small number of scholarly societies and university presses - preferably those who have significant faculty links to Stanford - to deliver the members' research results electronically as an adjunct to print publication. We expect to accomplish three significant publications in the first year, proving that significant results that benefit the societies' members can be achieved today, through action not just talk.

Our longer term goal is to package the technologies and techniques from the first year's products and deliver those to scholarly societies - a sort of "digital franchise" - so these societies can undertake to meet their own members' communication requirements. Societies could choose to operate these technologies or outsource the operation to agents such as Cadmus. But in all cases the scholars themselves would control the means of publication and distribution for their own ends.

Our expectation is that this will have both direct and indirect effects on scholarly communication. The societies that participate will quickly improve their members' research communication, and may soon after see a shift of information flows to them as they are able to deliver information that is greater in volume, lower in cost, more timely, and more useful in the digital world of the laboratory. We expect indirect, second-order effects on the for-profit publishers of STM materials over time; they will be faced with competition they hadn't seen before: competition that is high-quality, faster and more flexible, less expensive, and community-owned and operated.

The Approach:

Our business and technical approaches coincide: for each publication, SUL/AIR's HighWire Press will partner with a scholarly society and cost-share in the product-development process. While the projects will be managed by Stanford - acting as a type of systems integrator to take advantage of Stanford's powerful confluence of scientists, librarians and technologists - significant work is being outsourced to electronic- and print-publishing organizations. All the technology in use will be off-the-shelf, based on rapidly-evolving industry standards. This approach keeps local leverage high while keeping the Stanford-based operating components low; a model "networked organization."

Each project will take advantage of Stanford academic expertise in the scientific content of the publications, and will involve a number of faculty and advanced students in validation of the usability and value of the electronic publication. In addition, because open, easily available technologies will be used, HighWire Press projects could also offer significant testbed opportunities to digital library research projects.

The Timetable:

Our first network publication project - the Journal of Biological Chemistry - was launched on February 1, 1995, with the goal of delivering a demonstration at the annual conference of JBC's readers in mid-May. During the development of the prototype, four significant events occur in which scientists validate usability and value of the network presentation of the publication. After a successful demonstration, the prototype was released to research scientists on the Internet via the World Wide Web for three to six months of evaluation. During this time, the prototype will be brought to production levels of performance and reliability in which the ongoing weekly cycle of publishing is supported.

While the prototype-to-production phase for JBC is moving forward, a second and third publishing project will be negotiated and launched. Likely partners are the Stanford Press and Annual Reviews, Inc. With each, we would define a three-month to twelve-month demonstration project, followed by a phase in which the demonstration is moved to wide, production availability.

The First Project: The Journal of Biological Chemistry

The JBC is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and is the core journal for scientists in this field. JBC publishes about 1,000 pages of science per week - 80-100 articles. The technical challenges in the project come from both the volume of publishing and the complexity of the material. First, to keep up with 1,000 pages of science per week, our production process must be well-tuned; second, the content is intensely graphical, with mathematical and chemical notations, line art and graphics, and photographs of "gels" that scientists use to separate different types of biological molecules.

The project is fortunate in having the largest concentration of members of JBC's editorial board at any one institution, giving us significant opportunities to ensure our approach meets the needs of research scientists. In particular, we are working with Prof. Robert Simoni, postdoc Todd McGee, and Prof. Doug Brutlag. Prof. Simoni, with the assurance of a population biologist, predicts that the printed form of the publication will not be sustainable within about three years because of the volume of literature that must be published; it must find another form to grow in, or suffer some loss in quality or prestige. Todd McGee represents a young generation of scientists for whom use of digital media for dissemination of research is an assumption, not a part of a debate. And Prof. Brutlag is unusual in using the JBC in his teaching activities; he believes the networked version will change the way in which he prepares and delivers curriculum. About a half-dozen additional scientists are involved in the project's usability evaluations.