Brian R. Gaines
Knowledge Science
Institute
University of Calgary
Alberta, Canada T2N
1N4
gaines@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
The problems of information overload from the growth of scholarly literature, and the need to use information technology to manage them, were identified by major writers and scientists over fifty years ago. Yet the main form of scholarly communication, the journal, is still circulated in paper form as it has been for over three hundred years. The economic arguments for using computer and communication technology to overcome these problems through a new form of scientific communication, the electronic or digital journal, were vigorously presented in the 1970s. Experimental trials of digital journals with the technologies of the 1970s and 1980s have not been successful. In the 1990s, the continuing value of current journal systems is again being questioned in terms of soaring library costs, the burden of the current refereeing system and the diminishing returns of journal publication brought about by information overload. This paper presents a fundamental examination of the prerequisites for the introduction of digital journals, at one level in terms of the role of journals in the social and economic processes of human knowledge production, and at another in terms of the state of the art in the relevant technologies. Models of the processes underlying the growth of knowledge in the literature on the philosophy, history and psychology of science are first used to analyze the structure and role of the social infrastructure of journals, including the editorial and refereeing systems and the role of commercial publishers and libraries. The motivation for digital journals and past experience is then surveyed, then the learning curves and current costs and performances of the enabling hardware, software, communications and interface, technologies. Examples of the current impact of computer and communications technology on scholarly discourse are given to enable probable changes to be predicted in the structure of journals when they are transferred to digital form. Finally, the social and technological analyses are used to outline some architectures for a first generation of digital journals emulating the current medium, and for the evolution of later generations diverging in characteristics to take advantage of the new medium.
Some three hundred and twenty five years ago the first two scholarly journals came into being: the Journal des Sçavans in January 1665 in France, and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in March 1665 in England. Now, as we prepare to enter the next millennium, the two have grown to some fifty thousand, and what was the blessing of improved scholarly communication has become the curse of information overload. The growth of knowledge that has its seeds in the seventeenth century enlightenment has become a prolific jungle, the understanding and control of which through the information sciences and technologies is now an important knowledge objective in its own right.
The origins of this information explosion, although three centuries in the past, have much relevance to our understanding of the problems of today. The second enlightenment was seen as an emancipation of human thinking from the weight of authority of the church which had taken the fruits of the Greek enlightenment and turned them into a ritual and static form. As Kant phrased it, "Enlightenment is man's release from his inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another." (Kant, What is Enlightenment?) This freedom of the mind was inextricably related to the sociology and politics of the times in paradoxical ways. It provided the environment for the French revolution with its overthrow of the authoritarian ancien régime, but it also provided that for the industrial revolution based on scientific knowledge that enslaved humanity in new ways (Toffler, 1980).
The progress of the enlightenment was also inextricably related to the technology of printing which enabled new knowledge to be disseminated widely at a reasonable cost. More than 30,000 titles were published in France between 1723 and 1789 and literacy became widespread. A technology that was first used by Gutenberg to make the bible more widely available became the vehicle for disseminating Rousseau's model of the intrinsic rights of every citizen and the need for his or her involvement in communal affairs. As many writers have documented (Innis, 1951; Ong, 1977; McLuhan and Rogers, 1989), innovative technologies that support new media for human discourse are both a response to social needs and major factors in social and cognitive change. Our understanding of those needs at the time, our intentions in design and our expectations of use, are all likely to prove incorrect from later historical perspectives. However, it is difficult to use such past historic perspectives to enable us to manage socio-technical change in our own time more effectively. One might hope that if we plan and design new scholarly communication systems with a view to flexibility and evolution then the expected surprises in general, although intrinsically unexpected in particular, will be less traumatic in their impact. Even that may be an over-optimistic assessment of our capabilities to understand and manage our own social dynamics.
Thus, as we look to electronic, computer and communications technology to provide a new medium for the dissemination of knowledge, the digital journal in which electronic access and digital processing will be combined to harness the information explosion, it is important to remember that technology is only one consideration, albeit a very important one. The social framework within which scholarly activities take place, and of which they are an essential part, is that which provides the rationale for the production and dissemination of knowledge, and also for the development of information technologies. Bacon noted that "Human knowledge and human power meet in one" (Bacon, Aphorism III, Book I of The New Organon, 1878), and power, politics and economics are as integral a part of the dynamics of the life world as is the creation and dissemination of knowledge. The role and nature of power structures in the application of new technology will be as significant as it has been in the old, and whatever structures for publication that we design will evolve to become part of the post-modern socio-economic infrastructure, whatever that may become (Habermas, 1985; Heller, 1990).
This paper brings together the social and technical aspects of the development of digital journals, analyzing those of existing, printed journals, extrapolating this to a first generation of digital journals that will emulate the functionality of current journals, and finally attempting to transcend the past by projecting how new forms of knowledge dissemination may evolve. It commences with the motivation for digital journals, analyzes the social role of scholarly communication, examines the state of the enabling technologies, uses these to outline possible architectures for digital journals, and puts this in a setting of trends in scholarly communication using information technology other than journals to speculate about future developments.
Abstract, 1 Introduction, 2 Motivation for Digital Journals, 3 Social Processes In Scholarship, 4 Technological Aspects of Digital Journals, 5 Existing Innovations in Using Networks for Scholarly Discourse, 6 An Agenda For Digital Journals, 7 Conclusions, References,