By Julie Robichaux, InterNIC Support Services, June 1996

The world of science and technology changes rapidly, even daily. Contrast this with the lead-time required to publish a journal or magazine in print. It immediately becomes apparent that information can become outdated even before it appears on the newsstand.

Now consider the difficulty a reader might have in searching for articles with a particular focus. This can be a time-consuming process when the reader has only spools of microfilm at his disposal.

And think about the expense of printed journals; many libraries are finding it increasingly difficult to acquire publications because of their rising cost.

Re-engineering Scholarly Publishing

When these problems became apparent, staff members at Stanford University Libraries/Academic Information Resources were prompted to develop Stanford's Network Publishing project, known as HighWire Press (http://highwire.stanford.edu/). "As single events, these problems are each frustrating to scholars. In combination, these impediments are a significant barrier, and challenge the productivity and quality of science," said John Sack, Associate Publisher and Director of HighWire Press.

The aim of the project is to provide models for solutions to these problems. "Essentially, our projects attempt to 're-engineer' traditional scholarly publishing to focus on formal, structured communication among the community of scholars," Sack explained. Aiding the project team in this endeavor are the advantages of network-based communication, which solve the problems that originally motivated the development of the project: fast turn-around time, easy access and searchability, and very low cost to the end-user.

Their first network publication project, The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), was launched on February 1, 1995. The JBC publishes about 1,000 pages of science a week, or 80 to 100 articles. Both the volume of the material and its intensely graphical nature made this publication a prime candidate for Web publication. It can currently be seen at http://www-jbc.stanford.edu/jbc/ [http://www.jbc.org]. Also available from the HighWire Press Web site is SCIENCE magazine's on-line version (http://science-mag.aaas.org/science [http://www.sciencemag.org]).

The presentation of these publications via the World Wide Web address the project's short-term goal of delivering three significant publications during its first year, demonstrating that results can be achieved today with a significant impact on the magazines' readerships. The project's longer-term goal is to package the technologies and techniques gleaned from the production of the first year's models and offer them to scholarly societies so that these societies can apply them to the needs of their own constituencies.

A Model that Works

According to the reaction of the public, the model that HighWire proposes is one that works. "We know very directly from online feedback that the people who use the service are very enthusiastic about it," John Sack said. "We'll be conducting a survey with CLR in the coming months to learn more about the reactions of the Internet community at large, and not just the people who write to us. However, the ultimate gauge of the project's success is whether we are aiding scientific communication. It's probably too early to expect a significant impact there, as people need to take new innovations into account in their research processes."

For each publication, HighWire Press forges a partnership with a scholarly society and shares in the cost of the product development process. The publishing projects are managed by Stanford, though much of the actual development is performed by outside contractors. By using off-the-shelf technology to produce the models, HighWire Press assures that societies beyond the auspices of the project can implement their own solutions with similar success.

To be added to the roster of publications by HighWire Press are The Journal of Neuroscience, The Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Pediatrics. John Sack described the selection process for its publications as one of mutual choice. "HighWire and the publisher essentially have to choose each other. There are certain characteristics--high impact, usually society-owned, and often biomedical--that most of the journals we work with have in common. The journals are very strongly interested in leading the move to shape the electronic future of scientific communication."

The Future of Online Scholarly Publishing

Exciting challenges surely lie ahead for HighWire Press, but it is difficult to forecast what they will be. "The good news is that the technology changes rapidly. We can quickly incorporate what we learn from each step we take--we learn a lot from the scientists who write to us, and from those who participate in our usability tests. The bad news," he conceded, "is that the technology changes rapidly enough that it's hard to offer useful predictions for the future. I think the technology will ultimately become simpler to control and to use, and so, like desktop publishing, it will migrate to the hands of those who actually own the content, rather than staying in the hands of the technologists."

One concrete challenge Sack foresees is that "for publishers whose mission requires that they stay at the very leading edge of scientific communication, there will be a need to work with those whose mission is to stay at the leading edge of the technology." But the payoff for surmounting whatever obstacles develop is clear for both HighWire Press and the scientific community: "Scientists--and science--will benefit greatly, and that's what makes it worthwhile."

Article copyright © 1996 InterNIC News.