Ginsparg and Harnad return to speculation about the practical elements of the proposal. The first of a series of responses from the library community follows.
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 16:45:23 EDT
From: "Stevan Harnad"
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 13:02:05 -0600
From: Paul Ginsparg 505-667-7353 ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.govtks for forwarding latest group of messages. sounds exciting, almost
regret i'm about to go incommunicado for two months
(but will try to check in with berners-lee later this month at cern on my
way to the french alps [les houches, near chamonix] for the summer school
i'm organizing). Paul Ginsparg
Paul, if possible, please tune in one more time to reply to Lorrin Garson's reply to me. I'll be posting that next. He makes two points, one correct (that my journal is mostly text, and that text costs less than Tex and graphics) and one incorrect (that Tex and graphics will cost more rather than less than paper). I continue to stand by my <25% figure but for technical text and graphics I am on weaker ground because I don't have data of my own. Please chime in if you feel it is appropriate. I know that David Stodolsky has said he will; and there are already several technical e-journal editors who can give figures too. But your project is the biggest, and it's certainly not primarily text.
A reply to your earlier message follows. Sorry for the delay. I was swamped. In it I discuss our slight differences on the need for quality control (I want to make sure they are not conflated with the cost issue).
Stevan Harnad
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 11:36:59 -0600
From: Paul Ginsparg 505-667-7353 ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.govFrom: "Stevan Harnad" harnad@Princeton.EDU
To: lrg96@acs.org
Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 05:51:45 EDTsh> (1) The calculation according to which the "per-page" savings would be
sh> only 25%, leaving 75% still to be paid for is based on how much
sh> electronic processing will save in PAPER publication. The entire
sh>
sh> To put it another way: Your way of doing the figures is rather like
sh> challenging the advantages of automobiles by calculating how much
sh> they would save on horse-feed.
sh>
pg> thank you for making this point so explicitly. the meeting with the
pg> amer phys society is now set for mid oct, and i am more satisfied with
pg> the agenda (it seems that it is not an entirely monolithic
pg> organization, and at least some within are starting to respond to
pg> community pressure). if for any reason you have had a long-standing
pg> urge to visit santa fe and would be free that weekend, you would be
pg> more than welcome to participate at our expense (especially when it
pg> comes to issues of quality control and peer review).
Hi Paul,
I'll be in Southampton by then, but if you can get my trip and lodging covered, I'd be happy to come (though I'll need to know the exact dates very quickly, so I can get it on my schedule at Southampton).
I'm aware that you and I don't see quite eye-to-eye on the quality-control/peer-review question, but I think it will be a central one in a lot of people's minds, so I think it's important to be very explicit (and aware) about the options. I'm in the middle here, between those who argue that it's the cost of quality control that necessitates sticking to the trade model (I completely disagree) and those who argue that quality control itself is unnecessary and the Net can control its own quality (I completely disagree). In some ways (in my view), these two opposing positions (status-quo versus anarchy), especially if they are seen as the two main options, are among the main obstacles to reaching a sensible solution soon. The reactionaries will cling to the paper/pay-per-view model, even on the Net, in the name of maintaining the quality of the literature, and the anarchists will reject refereeing and editing in the name of "democracy."
It's for this reason that it would be good to see the quality-control issue pulled out of this fray. I oppose the pay-per-view model completely, yet I advocate a very conventional form of quality control. The critical point is that the two are dissociable, so going purely electronic does NOT leave only two options: paying for quality control on the trade model or else giving it up for anarchic self-regulation. You can have a rigorously refereed and carefully edited electronic literature and still make it available for free to all. THAT's the point of view I'd like to represent. And if you yourself happen to favor a model with looser quality-control constraints, it is still to your advantage (and mine) to have allies on the free-access issue (which is the really radical one) who happen to have different views on quality control. Then no one can link the two factors, dividing and conquering by pitting the radicals against one another (free-access/controlled-product vs. free-access/uncontrolled-product), as if the issue were quality information vs. free information.
sh> as the readership grew and costs
sh> actually shrank; and thanks in part also to centralized subscriber-list
sh> handling at EARN, much of it automatized, as well as to developments
sh> such as gopher and world-wide-web, which are rapidly replacing the
sh> subscriber model by the browser model altogether in electronic publication)
pg> for the physics e-print archives, i have been observing the relative
pg> "subscriber" and "browser" model activities.
pg > but "subscribers"
pg> here claim that is a convenient feature of the electronic system
pg> that they get such daily reminders, and that receiving things
pg> parcelled out in daily pieces facilitates keeping up (and moreover
pg> being forced to go through them
pg> to avoid a clogged mailbox). the minority "browsers", on
pg> the other hand, instantly cancelled their subscriptions when high
pg> quality gui browsing was enabled. bottom line is: evidently there
pg> will remain both kinds, and both should be accommodated.
I've had the same experience: I've encouraged PSYCOLOQUY subscribers to unsubscribe and browse the archives instead, but about 3000 continue to prefer having everything emailed to them. The whole issue could eventually be finessed with "virtual" email, in which "hot links" are simply activated whenever you look at your "mail": You wouldn't really be clogging the Net by actually mailing everything to everyone; the mailer would simply do an active browse for you, dressed as email. Eventually these will simply be parameters you set: Autobrowse X, Y and Z.
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 16:28:49 +0100
From: "Paul F. Burton" paul@dis.strath.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Subversive Proposal
pb> It seems to me that this is an idea whose time has just arrived. Do you
pb> think that the Follett Report proposals could include a feasibility study
pb> of this? I'd be interested in discussing the idea further with you, if you
pb> have time.
pg> again you are welcome to any of the data i've collected, if
pg> interested. the net result is certain to increase dramatically the
pg> pressure on publishers of esoteric material.
I will forward this to Paul, suggesting he get directly in touch with you.
sh> (Everyone will, quite naturally, swap the reprint for the preprint at
sh> the moment of acceptance for publication, and before paper publishers
sh> can mobilize to do anything about it, the battle will be lost, and they
sh> will be faced with an ultimatum: either re-tool NOW, so that you
sh> recover your real costs and a fair return by some means other than
sh> interposing a price-tag between [esoteric, no-market] papers and their
sh> intended readership, or others will step in and do it instead of you.)
pg> yup, i forwarded these comments from you to the aps people so they
pg> can appreciate that the rest of the academic world shares many of our,
pg> concerns and may soon be catching up in preprint activity.
But notice the crucial "invisible hand" factor: Swapping the reprint for the preprint assumes that at some point there is a quality-control stage, with what is before it being "pre" and what is after it being "post." The invisible hand is being provided by the PAPER literature right now. THIS is the (seeming) weak point at which the divide-and-conquer strategy will be aimed, squarely. You have to make sure you are fore-armed against it, so the whole project doesn't get locked into the anarchy issue.
sh> I have no animus against paper publishers. It's natural for them to do
sh> whatever they can to preserve the status quo, or something close to it.
pg> i didn't use to, one seems to be growing on me over past few years.
sh> But necessity is the mother of invention, and my subversive
sh> proposal would awaken their creative survival skills.
pg> you may be giving them too much credit. there seem very few
pg> visionaries in that industry, and their investment in the
pg> status quo leaves the rest blinded.
They're not facing necessity yet (though your preprint archive is what is bringing them the closest to the brink so far -- and wide following of my subversive proposal would simply generalize your effect across disciplines; my electronic journal is no threat till it has hundreds of counterparts, across disciplines). So far 99.99% of the cards are still paper, and they are in their hands. Necessity (and the creativity it gives birth to) will only intervene when those cards really begin to fall; until then, vision will be limited, and delaying the inevitable will be the best strategy for paper publishers.
sh> if, as I say,
sh> publishers wish to survive in ESOTERIC publication, they will have to
sh> change from a trade to a subsidy model for recovering the substantially
sh> lower true costs of electronic-ONLY publication).
pg> my current guess (hope?) is that the big publishing companies will
pg> ultimately drop out of the esoteric market, since the bottom line will not
pg> be so interesting to them (currently libraries spend over $10,000 / year on
pg> subscriptions to single journals such as nuclear physics b -- those will be the
pg> the first to go). professional societies, on the other hand, are likely
pg> to survive and still may be of use. my own professional society (aps) is
pg> coming to terms with a fait accompli, and is now sponsoring a major
pg> meeting on my home turf with what appears to be in principle
pg> a forward-looking agenda.
But since virtually all of our intellectual goods are currently being carried by the paper flotilla it is in ALL of our best interests (not just publishers') to make sure that the transition period does not turn into anarchy. Worst scenario: Paper publishers decide to cut their losses instead of restructuring, and simply pull out of esoteric publication. Do you think the editorial offices of all those esoteric journals could simply go electronic overnight? In fact, paper journal editorial offices (and paper journal editors) for the most part wear the same paleolithic blinkers as paper publishers.
No, the transition process should be a (preferably speedy but) graded one, a peaceful one, and preferably one in which paper publishers, those with the expertise in the quality control, re-tool themselves for electronic-only publication with advance subsidy (from author page charges, learned society dues and subsidies, university and library subsidies, and research publication grants), rather than a sudden pull-out leaving others (with no quality-control expertise) scrambling to pick up the pieces.
This is where necessity born of subversion comes in: With preprints/reprints becoming accessible for free to all it will be clear that costs will HAVE to be covered some other way. Going to electronic-only publishing will first cut costs down to size; and going for advanced subsidy will put them into phase with the non-trade model.
pg> keep me informed on your initiative (though i too will be in europe
pg> for most of the summer, organizing a physics summer school in the
pg> french alps [les houches, near chamonix], will occasionally hunt and
pg> peck on minitel and transpose all my q's and z's), Paul Ginsparg
I hope you will be invited to join the gs/UNESCO group directly, and then you will be a part of the initiative de jure (as you already are de facto).
h Stevan Harnad
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 14:42:44 EDT
From: Peter Graham psgraham@gandalf.rutgers.edu
One of the points Paul Ginsparg makes that bears thinking about is the proposal that various archives be established, e.g. by scholarly societies but also presumably by other agencies.
Let me condense an argument very much by suggesting that this function is what libraries are for, perhaps uniquely for: the long-term preservation function. Some of us in the library community have been discussing what it is that libraries bring distinctively to the electronic environment. One of the functions is the continuing one of assuring that information that is here today is also here tomorrow (as I sometimes like to put it, If I love this information in May will it still be here in December?).
Libraries, unlike publishers, individual scholars, and scholarly societies, are explicitly in this for the long term. I think it is our responsibility in the library community to determine what is necessary for long-term provision of information. This will include matters such as
backup
technology (hardware) refreshing (e.g. from vax to unix to ?, from 5.25" floppy to 3.5" floppy to ?, from magnetic disk to optical disk to crystal, etc.)
technology (software) refreshing (e.g. from Wordperfect 1.1 to v6.0, from DisplayWrite to Word, from LaTeX to ?, from CorelDraw to ?, etc.).
accessibly search engines
authenticity and completeness
long-term commitments of people, money and systems (this being the hardest thing of all) in an environment where budgets are typically only annual.
There's more to say but this thread tends to bunch up in indigestible chunks anyway, so I shove this out to get this ball rolling. (metaphor?)
Peter Graham (psgraham@gandalf.rutgers.edu)
Rutgers University Libraries
169 College Ave
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
phone: (908)445-5908