Computers in Physics The Scholarly Information Web Glenn Ricart Citation: Computers in Physics 9, 360 (1995); doi: 10.1063/1.4823415 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4823415 View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/cip/9/4?ver=pdfcov Published by the AIP Publishing Articles you may be interested in Blogging Scholars Comput. Sci. Eng. 15, 104 (2013); 10.1109/MCSE.2013.116 Web‐based Distributed Medical Information System for Chronic Viral Hepatitis AIP Conf. Proc. 1060, 349 (2008); 10.1063/1.3037090 Web Searching and Information Retrieval Comput. Sci. Eng. 6, 43 (2004); 10.1109/MCSE.2004.24 Fusion information on the web Am. J. Phys. 68, 788 (2000); 10.1119/1.1304910 More Product Information by Telnet and the World Wide Web Comput. Phys. 9, 138 (1995); 10.1063/1.4823387
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THE SCHOLARLY INFORMATION WEB Glenn Ricart
Department Editor: Glenn Ricart
[email protected]
Dicture this. As you read a journal article, you become curious about one of the references and double-click on it. Two seconds later, the abstract and first page of the reference appear along with four more buttons. The first button authorizes a payment of 8 cents for an on-screen version of the entire article you can read now or have added to your reading stack. The second button authorizes a payment of 20 cents to print a high-quality version on your laser printer back at the office. The third button simply saves a pointer to the article in your "maybe later" reading list. But you click on the fourth button in order to see reader reactions. You note with some pleasure that theoretical physicists like yourself have rated the reference highly and go back and click to have the reference added to your reading list. A marriage appears natural and inevitable between the World Wide Web and scholarly information. The ease-of-use
of Web browsers and the ability to move between Web information sources seems made to order for scholarly information. I believe that in the next decade nearly all publishing will move to Web-like access in order to reach much larger audiences than traditional publishing can provide. Conversely, readers will find the ease-of-use so overwhelming that the norm will be to consult more scholarly information. Faculty eligible for tenure will be able to build their cases with actual readership and reactions to their publications. What is more, electronic publishers and libraries will provide additional value by categorizing, linking, and rating information instead of by providing bound copies.
Motivation For the past decade, virtually everything published in the United States began its life as digital information on a computer or word processor. Authors have taken advantage of that fact to send e-mail copies to their editors minutes before deadline and from wherever they might be. Parts of this article were written in Denver, Austin, and Silver Spring. Alas,
Glenn Ricart is the director of the Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, and assistant vice chancellor for Academie Information Technology for the University of Maryland system.
readers of traditional journals today do not have these advantages. They have to fetch their journals from their homes, offices, or libraries, and carry them if they want to read them elsewhere. The information they contain is anywhere from two to twelve months old. In short, the information revolution has reached the author but not yet the reader.
The Seholarly Web The revolution will come complete with the emergence of the Scholarly Information Web—the online scholarly information source. You will be able to search for articles not only using traditional key words from the author's name or the title but also using key words or synonyms from the full text. Soon, electronic publishers and libraries will begin offering services that help locate information that others have found to be valuable. For example, one information service
on the Internet now publishes a list of those articles most requested during the previous week. Once you locate a relevant aaide, the real fun begins. Each reference at the back of the aaide (or, according to Web style, in the article) is, of course, a hot link to the article it references. Just click on the reference and the referenced aaide will be fetched. Naturally. But now look at the reverse references, which are articles that refer to the current article and that are added dynamically by the publisher's software to the reversereference section. The reverse-reference section is initially empty, but it grows in proportion to the number of other articles that reference the current article. I consider it a reputational indicator of quality. Along with editorship endorsements, the reverse-reference section can be retrieved along with the article' s abstract. At this point, we have a true scholarly web of information centered on the article you are reading, with clickable references to both prior work (the regular reference section) and successor work (the reverse-reference section). The Scholarly Web should accelerate the use of scholarly information in academia, research, and everyday life because the most costly elements of printing and mailing can be eliminated from the academic publishing chain. I have no illusions that the Web will reduce the spiraling costs of materials to libraries; instead, I expect that the lowered barrier
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browsers. Reverse-reference lists and reviews cannot now be automatically compiled, but the softSGML: http://www . sil oorgl sgml I sgml. html ware to do so appears to be conHTML: http://www.ncsa .uiuc.edu/General/lnternet/WWW/ ceptually straightforward. HTMLPrimer.html Reliable high-capacity servers Acrobm: http ://www .adobe.com/Acrobat/AcrobatO .html to supply the networked informaEnvoy: http://wp.novell.com/envoy/envoytoc .htm tion from large publishers are being Replica: http://www2.farallon.com/www/www2 / repl repmac. html developed and deployed now for (for Macintosh) World Wide Web applications of or http://www2.farallon .com/www/www2 /rep/repwin.html electronic commerce. (for Windows) As far as accounting and authorization technologies go, secure browsers that encrypt transacto publishing will trigger an onslaught ofadditional scholarly tions including credit-card numbers have begun to appear this and semischolarly publishing. Increased supply suggests the year and should soon be ubiquitous. However, what is to be reader is more likely to find desired material but will have to done about very small, micropayment transactions that fall wade through a greater quantity of undesired material. beneath the economic floor of a credit-card transaction? Note that the natural unit of discourse in the Scholarly Marvin Sirbu, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, is Information Web is not the journal or the volume but the leading a team that is researching micropayment billing on individual article. The potential advantages include (1) faster the Internet. The accumulated micropayments could be settled publication, because it is not necessary to complete an issue through one of the Internet's many new payment mechabefore going to press; (2) relaxation of page limits and the nisms, including Digicash (E-cash), Cybercash, NetCheque, ability to include accompanying materials, because sections NetChex, and the Internet financial clearing houses such as of the article or its backup materials can be linked instead of NetBank and First Virtual Holdings (see "Electronic Cash and printed with the article; and (3) the ability to group and Payment Resources on the Web," this page). regroup articles into several different categories to provide more customized virtual-journal titles. For example, an article Roles on computer-driven physics experiments in high schools In the remainder of this article, I look at how electronic might be stored once but linked into different virtual issues of publication is likely to affect each of the current participants Computers in Physics, High School Physics Teacher, and in the publication value chain. Hands-On High School Science. A good prototype for the Scholarly Web is the physics Author preprint service being offered out ofLos Alamos (see CIP 8:4, Authors have already experienced a large amount of 1994, pp. 390-396; and http://xxx.lanl.gov/).Thefull change because of incipient electronic publishing. First, the material is online in various formats, though not yet linked as intellectual content is already requested electronically. fully as I suggest in this piece. Many physicists tell me this Authors mail disks or, more frequently, submit their materials electronic preprint service has become the main source of via e-mail to their editors and publishers. Second, there is scholarly material for research; the actual publication then greater demand for accompanying (and integral) images, becomes the imprimatur of record for promotion and tenure sounds, and videos to provide the reader with a multisensory decisions and the archival record for lasting contributions. experience. Third, references will migrate from instructions for finding a particular piece ofpaper in a journal to electronic The technology universal-resource names (URNs) (see the debate in The technology we need for scholarly publishing on the http://ds.internie .netlrfclrfcl630. txt) that will Web is largely existing technology. The Internet can be used locate one or more online copies of the information. The to supply information in a variation of the standardized genauthor's job is becoming more difficult; an article must have eralized markup language (SGML) called HTML (for "Hyhigher production values in order to be noticed among the perText Markup Language") to awaiting Web browsers. For Web's clutter. more control over the presentation of the material, articles can also be supplied in a page-markup language like Adobe's Acrobat format, Novell's Envoy format, or Farallon's Replica format. (For Micropayment billing: http://www . ini. emu . edu/netbilll more information on these languages, Digicash or E-cash: http ://www . digieash. nIl see "Markup Resources on the Web," Cybercash: http://www .eybereash.com/ this page.) ctCheque: http://nii-server . isi . edul info/NetChequel Search engines for scholarly mateNetChex: http : / /www.netchex.com/ rials are now fixtures of libraries or can First Virtual Bank: http://www . fv. eoml be supplied as simple variants on Web
Markup Resources on the Web
Electronic Cash and Payment Resources on the Web
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Editor By building and retaining a reputation for materials selection and presentation, the editor remains the most important catalyst for increasing readership. In some sense, the major value of an editor lies in the current and historical links that an editor creates from his or her publication's home page on the Scholarly Information Web. A subscription may consist of having those pointers e-mailed to you monthly or having them available to your Scholarly Information Web browser. Editors may be separate entrepreneurs and work with one or more publishers or may be associated with a professional society .
Publisher The scholarly work will probably remain with editors and professional societies, while the economic engines of advertising, printing, distributing, and promotion will continue to be the province of publishers. The economics of publishing will change dramatically, though, because the major costs of printing and mailing will disappear along with much of the reliable subscription income. Instead, publishers will be able to provide advertisers with highly targeted commercial message delivery on a per-article, per-reader basis. Printing and mailing will be replaced with the much smaller costs of maintaining online information on the Internet. Each access will generate a micropayment to the publisher of a size determined by the durability and quality of the access . For example, a quick look that came with advertising and that could not be saved or looked at later might be free. Obtaining the rights to add the article to a personal or corporate library might have a much larger payment. Intermediate rights (such as the right to print one copy ) would be intermediate in price . Special rights for libraries are discussed under that heading (see also "Libraries Before and After," below).
Library In the model I am proposing, librarie s have two very important roles . First, they continue to have reference librarians, profe ssionals who can locate information when you have no idea where to find it. This information function, while provided by libraries, does not necessarily mean a trip to the library . The reference-librarian function might be invoked
through e-mail or desktop video conferencing as well as a trip to the library. Corporate and community librarians will continue to be much in demand for this purpose. Second, the libraries will act as information caches for communities of interest (see "The Monticello Electronic Library ," p. 363). For example, a corporate library may cache articles requested by its technical staff. Although the fee to a publisher to cache information for the corporation will be higher than the fee for a single access , the fee will be lower than multiple individual accesses from the corporation 's staff. Community libraries will want to cache children's books , public health information, and other materials of significant community value . Caching information in libraries appears to be both economically and technically sound. It provides a stable form of income to the publisher and moves widely used information closer to the destination, so that the information does not have to be transmitted from the publisher each time it is requested. Nevertheless, if transmission costs drop quickly and storage costs do not fall as fast, it may be more economical for a library to negotiate a bulk rights agreement with a publi sher and to refetch articles as needed .
Reader While there are many advantages to reading scholarly articles on an Internet-connected computer screen, today 's screens just cannot rival paper for clarity, contrast, and ease oftransport. I therefore expect that for at least another five years, people will prefer to see their scholarly information printed on paper. But the paper will not come through the mail. It will be printed on either a conveniently located personal laser printer (or equivalent-quality inkjet or bubblejet) or a departmental or corporate high-volume laser printer. As screens improve and the advantages of online browsing become more pronounced, the scenario that started this article becomes more realistic. Online browsing and readingcan be much more eclectic and serendipitous because you can follow links oflinks instead ofbeing limited to the results of a single search. The biggest question in this scenario is whether readers will be fmancially responsible personally for the micropayments they trigger. Responsibility will probably differ by
Libraries Before and After Before
After
Professional librarians catalog information Shelving for books and journals Two-week loan periods etwork of small libraries Limited hours Catalog of materials on-site Reference librarians help locate information Materials published before acid-free paper disintegrate Materials purchased before needed Physical interlibrary loan
Authors and publis hers cata log information Network-accessed disks for books and journals Materials copied, not loaned, for micropayments etwork of large publishers and libraries 24-hour service Multiple catalogs of materials accessible Reference librarians and artificial -intelligence programs help locate information Digital materials must be periodically recopied to new media Materials purchased when needed Electronic interlibrary access
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The Monticello Electronic Library Electronic publication and distribution over networks eliminate the need for universities to keep physical copies of each publication. Instead, an electronic copy can be fetched from a publisher or, with permission , another library. Therefore, consortia of libraries allow electronic materials to be jointly cataloged and accessed at costs lower than for separate acquisition and storage at each university. With this consortium approach in mind , the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) , working with the Southeastern Online Library Network (SOLINET), has created the Monticello Electronic Library Project. University libraries work together to expand materials available at each ofthe participati ng institutions whiIe reducing the effort associated with acquisition and ownership. TI1e Monticello project gets its name from the library of some 6000 books that Thomas Jefferson originally acquired for his home, Monticello, but later sold to the Library of Congress to form the basis ofits collection afterthe British burned the building in the Warofl8 12.
provide the service. However, archiving is not a function currently being provided by publishers; instead, paper copies are self-verifying through storage in multiple libraries. Anoilier option is to contract with one or more libraries (perhaps the Library of Congress; see http://lcweb .loc. gov/) to keep a digital copy archivally, or at least to keep an official digital signature. The Copyright Office (no online presence yet) is another option for keeping at least a digital signature of the protected material. Finally, some organizations, such as University Microfilms (see http://www.umi.com/). may decide to provide digital archival services for articles similar to the services they now provide for theses and dissertations.
Everything digital As the 1990s end, we are in full conversion to digital media. Cellular telephones are going digital. CDs have already made our music digital. High-definition television (HDTV) will be digital. You can even have photographs delivered to you digitally on a Kodak Photo-CD. When will the advantages ofaccessing scholarly information digitally be so overwhelming that readers will put aside the centuries-old analog bound paper journal? At some point, journals will become digital as well.
person and institution, with an initial default of recycling existing materials budgets into readership charges.
Professional-society publishers Many professional societies and organizations such as the American Institute of Physics are economically dependent, in part, on the publication of scholarly materials. Like commercial publishers, these organizations provide both editorial and publishing functions in the manner I have described in this article. One clear function is for them to provide editorial decisions with respect to a certain number of articles and virtual titles. At that point, storage and distribution functions could be handled in a number ofways. First, the organization could contract with one or more commercial publishers to handle storage and distribution. By making nonexclusive arrangements, competition could be used to reduce the cost and improve innovation in these functions. Second, the organization could attempt to capture the income associated with the publication function by performing it in-house or by contract. Third, it could deal directly with libraries for digital subscriptions for intellectual content, while using noncompetitive or competitive distribution mechanisms.
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Archival storage One important issue is unresolved. Who will keep permanent, archival versions of articles and verify the digital signatures of any copies that may be presented for authentication? The author does not have the institutional infrastructure to provide this function, although the author's library is a candidate. The editor generally has neither the infrastructure nor the continuity to provide such a function. The publishers are a good option, though, because they have the infrastructure to
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