Record: 1
Net gains. By: Plant, Sadie. New Statesman & Society. 1/27/95, Vol. 8
Issue 337, p39. 2p. Abstract: Reports on the impact of electronic
publishing on publication of academic journals. Computer networks and
traditional journals; Experiments on models of research and debate. (AN:
9503031853)
Database: Business Source Alumni Edition
NET GAINS
Sadie Plant welcomes the advent of the on-line journal and the cyber-symposium
Journals have occupied a unique position in the academic world. Low in circulation and high in status, they are
also vulnerable to the effects of the telecoms revolution in both publishing and the academy.
To a culture already used to multimedia and instant access to on-line information, academic journals now seem
slow and cumbersome vehicles for the dissemination of ideas. Authors can wait two or three years for a paper
to appear, and as long again for some response. This is not simply because of the editing and printing
processes: by the time they appear, papers in a refereed journal will have been subject to lengthy peer review.
Any replies spend so long in press that they can end up responding to authors who might disagree with their
earlier research, or even be working in some quite different field.
Perhaps there was a time when such slow speeds were in step with the pace of intellectual and material life.
Certainly these publication lags are nothing new. But in a climate of instant communication and paradigm shifts
across the disciplines, they now seem to function only as brakes on academic research and debate.
Not that journals necessarily want to be on the cutting edge of research. Some of the more traditional
publications are quite happy to invest in the perpetuation of what they consider to be timeless qualities,
standards and themes. Many foster an air of archaic respectability, as if to make the point. All of which would
be fine if these traditional journals didn't continue to wield great institutional power. Prestigious for their editors,
contributors and the university departments or learned societies that publish them, their entries are highly
valued for funding purposes. Those at the top of the superleague can function almost as regulatory bodies for
their disciplines. In their pages standards are set, parameters are drawn and, not least, careers are made.
Left to their own devices, the rows of Mao-suited volumes in university libraries would doubtless continue to
grow for some time. But new devices change everything. As electronic publishing encroaches on all
conventional print media, it brings unprecedented possibilities for the storage and circulation of information, and
also new imperatives of access and speed. Even the most orthodox of journals have already found themselves
at the forefront of the information revolution, as university libraries hard-pressed for space and cash provide
access to abstracts on CD-Rom.
But of all the current developments, it is the Net--the web of worldwide computer connections--that poses the
most serious challenges to the traditional journal. The proliferation of bulletin boards, MOOs, MUDs, and other
virtual meeting points on the Net has unleashed a whole new world of on-line communication. In comparison to
the hushed tones and classic typefaces of the scholarly journal, the Net is an anarchic space with little
opportunity for rigour. But amid the idle chat and impolite conversation there are pockets of serious discussion,
zones of high theory and technical detail.
There is also what many regard as an unprecedented openness among on-line researchers, eager to
communicate across disciplines and time-zones and excited by accessing library catalogues and information
sources. The Net carries books, magazines, newspapers and, of course, a new breed of academic journal.
Although many such publications simply reproduce their print-based format, electronic journals like Postmodern
Culture and Psycholoquy are already taking advantage of changing media and exploring the intellectual shifts
they unleash. And while the Net seems surprisingly hospitable to the formats and quality-control mechanisms of
the scholarly journal, the new electronic journals are more than translations of some paper original. Because
they are able to diminish radically the traditional publication lags, Net journals go some way toward bringing
academic discourse closer to the "real time" speeds of research. With wide audiences and low costs, they also
facilitate a rather more democratic process of circulation and peer review.
Many of these new journals are experimenting with models of research and debate that undermine the closed
elitism of orthodox publications. Psycholoquy, for example, draws on the participatory practices of the Native
North American cultures to encourage high levels of what its editor calls "creative disagreement". Although
articles are subject to rigorous initial review, their authors are also offered the chance to submit their work to
"open peer commentary". A wide-ranging readership is asked to submit commentaries which are then
published simultaneously with the paper and, of course, with the author's own response.
Like all other aspects of the telecoms revolution, the death of the traditional academic journal is piecemeal but
inexorable. If publications like Psycholoquy help reassure academics that prestige, quality control and scholarly
rigour are Net-compatible, these early experiments will raise serious intellectual and economic issues for the
journal, the academy and for publishing itself.
How practicable and desirable is the policing of discussion and research? A new contingency surrounds many
presuppositions about the orders of knowledge. Distinctions between readers, writers, teachers, students and
academics are no longer obvious. The speed, scope, interactivity and accessibility of current debate are
already allowing it to spread beyond the corridors of academic power.
Combined with developments in desk-top and commercial publishing, the collapse of the Gutenberg world is
already changing the tone and spread of even print-based journals. A wave of new publications draws writers
and referees from a younger generation which is too impatient to wait years to see itself in print. Their
standards are high, their procedures strict, but these journals are increasingly cross-disciplinary, student-based
and experimental. They are also more likely to be on-line, or in the process of migrating to the Net.
More conservative journals pay scant attention to hypertext, multimedia and the emergent possibilities of online global libraries. It is on the Net's new spaces that such debates are lively and advanced. If the metaphor
wasn't already obsolete, this would speak volumes about the currency of the academy's orthodox
communication--if not about the academy itself.
Women's History Review: pounds36 per year for individuals, from Triangle Journals Ltd, PO Box 65,
Wallingford, Oxon OX10 OYG
New Formations: pounds32 per year from Lawrence and Wishart Ltd, 144A Old South Lambeth Road, London
SW8 1XX
Third Text: pouds22 per year for individuals from Carfax Publishing Co, PO Box 25, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 3UE
Women: a Cultural Review: pounds21 per year for individuals (pounds17 for first-time subscribers) from
Journals Marketing, Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
PHOTO: A motif based on Japanese arcade games, designed for a Catalan couturier. Volume 2 of The Graphic
Language of Nevillie Brody, created with Jon Wozencreft, reveals the impact of computers on his design, from
Dutch stamps to German TV logos (Thames & Hudson, pounds24.95)
~~~~~~~~
By Sadie Plant
Sadie Plant teaches cultural studies at Birmingham University
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