Disintermediation%20of%20Academic%20Publishing%20through%20the%20Internet:%20An%20Intermediate%20Report%20from%20the%20Front%20Line

1
Disintermediation of Academic Publishing through
the Internet An Intermediate Report from the
Front Line

• Thomas Krichel
  http//openlib.org/home/krichel
• Simeon M. Warner http//t8web.lanl.gov/peop
  le/simeon/

2
Nature of this talk

• intermediate report
• Interaction welcome, ample time
• Done by pioneer (Krichel) and practitioner
  (Warner)
• Normative rather than positive emphasis
• listen to the horses mouth
• descriptive and speculative parts

3
The Internet threat

• Internet is a relatively recent technology that
  threatens all sorts of businesses whose essential
  function is to provide an intermediary between
  different parties
• these include estate agents, marital agencies,
  academic publishers

4
Esoteric authors

• An academic has little change but big ego.
• No monetary reward for writings, therefore
  optimal for authors to allow free access.
• But big ego only satisfied with quality
  certification.
• Social optimum reached when price is equal to
  marginal cost.
• Unclear if free access can become a reality

5
Problems for toll-gate publishers

• Static demand for material by libraries leads to
  upward spiral prices to raise profits.
• Remedy is pricing per customer and consortia
  deals.
• Risk of a downward spiral where poor
  dissemination may detract best authors away to
  alternative venues.

6
Alternative venues on Internet

• Homepage on the web
• Some isolated Internet publishing venture
  (budding electronic journals)
• Institutional multidisciplinary archive
• Formal internet archiving and dissemination
  venues, essentially limited to the preprint
  disciplines.

7
The preprint disciplines

• Some few disciplines have had a tradition of
  informal publication through
• preprints
• working papers and tech reports
• These are
• Computing
• Economics
• Mathematics
• Physics

8
Centralised and decentralised model

• discipline centralised decentralised
• Computing CORR NCSTRL
• Economics EconWPA RePEc
• Mathematics arXiv MathNet
• Physics arXiv PhysNet
• and then there is the web...

9
arXiv

• Oldest (1991) and best-known author
  self-archiving system
• in fact the essence of an author self-archiving
  system
• authors upload papers to a centralised system
• the centralised system itself is mirrored
• founded by Paul Ginsparg at LANL

10
History

• Mail exchange (August 1991)
• ftp server (1992)
• web interface (December 1993)
• automatic PostScript generation from TeX source
  (June 1995)
• PDF generation (April 1996)
• web upload (June 1996)
• OAI interface (February 2000)

11
Statistics for 2000

• 70,000 users in over 100 countries
• 13,000,000 downloads of papers
• 30,000 submissions
• 3,500 additional new submissions per annum
• Over 98 of submissions are entirely auto-mated
  68 via the web, 27 via email and 5 via ftp.
• arXiv uses less than one full-time equivalent to
  deal with day-to-day operations.

12
Special strengths of arXiv

• Simple to understand concept
• Usage of TeX document formatting system
• indefinite funding horizon thanks to NSF and US
  DoE
• strong community support (e.g. volunteer
  moderators)

13
(minor) Weaknesses of arXiv

• Its model failed on other discipline-based
  attempts
• cogprints
• EconWPA
• CORR
• not as well integrated as possible with other
  sources
• lack of important innovation in past few years

14
RePEc

• Comprehenisive academic self-documentation system
• in fact, the very essence of an academic
  self-documentation system
• run decentrally by academic volunteers
• comprehensive picture of academic output activity
• originates with WoPEc project founded by Thomas
  Krichel in 1993

15
RePEc principle

• Many archives
• archives offer metadata about digital objects
  (mainly working papers)
• One database
• The data from all archives forms one single
  logical database despite the fact that it is held
  on different servers.
• Many services
• users can access the data through many
  interfaces.
• providers of archives offer their data to all
  interfaces at the same time. This provides for an
  optimal distribution.

16
RePEc is based on 190 archives

• WoPEc
• EconWPA
• DEGREE
• S-WoPEc
• NBER
• CEPR

• US Fed in Print
• IMF
• OECD
• MIT
• University of Surrey
• CO PAH

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to form one dataset...

• over 140,000 items in over 1,000 series, contains
  working paper, published paper, software,
  personal and institutional data
• largest distributed free source about online
  scientific publications, over 45,000 electronic
  papers
• data is encoded using the purpose-built ReDIF
  format
• all archives follow a convention called the
  Guildford protocol on how to store ReDIF files
  and other data on their servers. Therefore the
  archives can be mirrored.

18
RePEc is used in many services

• BibEc and WoPEc
• Decomate Z39.50 service
• NEP New Economics Papers
• Inomics
• EconPapers
• Ecommunics

• IDEAS
• RuPEc
• EDIRC
• HoPEc

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describes documents

• Template-Type ReDIF-Paper 1.0
• Title Dynamic Aspect of Growth and Fiscal Policy
• Author-Name Thomas Krichel
• Author-Person RePEcper1965-06-05thomas_kriche
  l
• Author-Email T.Krichel_at_surrey.ac.uk
• Author-Name Paul Levine
• Author-Email P.Levine_at_surrey.ac.uk
• Author-WorkPlace-Name University of Surrey
• Classification-JEL C61 E21 E23 E62 O41
• File-URL ftp//www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/
  pub/RePEc/sur/surrec/surrec9601.pdf
• File-Format application/pdf
• Creation-Date 199603
• Revision-Date 199711
• Handle RePEcsursurrec9601

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describes persons (HoPEc)

• Template-Type ReDIF-Person 1.0
• Name-Full KRICHEL, THOMAS
• Name-First THOMAS
• Name-Last KRICHEL
• Postal 1 Martyr Court
• 10 Martyr Road
• Guildford GU1 4LF
• England
• Email t.krichel_at_surrey.ac.uk
• Homepage http//gretel.econ.surrey.ac.uk
• Workplace-Institution RePEcedidesuruk
• Author-Paper RePEcsursurrec9801
• Author-Paper RePEcsursurrec9601
• Author-Paper RePEcrpcrdfdocconcepts
• Author-Paper RePEcrpcrdfdocReDIF
• Handle RePEcper1965-06-05THOMAS_KRICHEL

21
describes institutions (EDIRC)

• Template-Type ReDIF-Institution 1.0
• Primary-Name University of Surrey
• Primary-Location Guildford
• Secondary-Name Department of Economics
• Secondary-Phone [phone]
• Secondary-Email economics_at_surrey.ac.uk
• Secondary-Fax [phone]
• Secondary-Postal Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH
• Secondary-Homepage
• http//www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/
• Handle RePEcedidesuruk

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Weaknesses of RePEc

• No funding
• Difficult to grasp innovative concepts
• relational database for the academic process
• plethora of user and contributor services
• testing out concept in other discipline with to
  date limited results (ReLIS). Setting-up costs
  are large.
• Little support from the top of the academic food
  chain

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Think forward...

• Optimisation over time involves finding the best
  path that leads to the desired outcome.
• That is the essence of Bellmans principle of
  intertemporal optimality.
• Therefore a realistic desired outcome has to be
  fixed first.

25
Think British...

• Extreme scenarios are unlikely
• Slow evolution
• Totally free access to scholarly documents
  unlikely
• Budding initiatives of free quality-controlled
  journals shows that academics can do it
  themselves

26
One size does not fit all...

• There are important discipline-specific
  differences in scholarly communication that are
  likely to persist in the rise of
  Internet-mediated scholarly communication.
• This can already be demonstrated on current
  initiatives, all of which have a discipline
  anchoring.
• (talk about institutional archiving later)

27
Disciplines differ...

• communication patterns before Internet
• presence or absence of entrepreneurial pioneers
• rewards systems
• sensitivity and contestitivity of material
• but all will have a free layer and a toll-gated
  layer

28
Scenario 1 vacuum cleaner

• Free academic layer dispersed and available with
  all the rest of the web.
• Toll-gated material much more quality controlled
• no free bibliographical database
• Scenario defended by Bill Arms.
• Impossible to build scholarly communication
  system on the free layer alone.
• Default scenario.

29
Scenario 2 trainspotter

• Organised, decentralised free layer, separatable
  from the web.
• Toll-gated layer of quality-controlled final
  publications.
• Both layers interoperate through a shared free
  bibliographical database.
• Scenario as in RePEc and OAI.

30
Scenario 3 Gosplan

• One central archive for the discipline with much
  of the papers available on it.
• Peer-review running as overlay to the central
  archive.
• Scenario of ArXiv.

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Suggestion to move forward

• Concentrate on the provision of contents. Dont
  waste so much time on
• metadata schemes (adopt AMF)
• user interfaces
• Use OAI protocols to export contents.
• Shift focus of attention away from works towards
  the persons who create the works.

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Conclusion

• When a technological shock (like the Internet)
  hits a social structure (like the scholarly
  communication system), then there is an
  opportunity for new entrants to come along.
• This opportunity is here today.
• Seize it.
• Thank
  you for listening.