{"id":1296,"date":"2000-01-01T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2000-01-01T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/cite\/2011\/10\/18\/article2-htm-2\/"},"modified":"2016-06-04T02:37:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T02:37:57","slug":"article2-htm-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-1\/issue-1-00\/editorial\/article2-htm-2","title":{"rendered":"Setting the Priorities: Electronic Scholarly Publishing for Instructional Technology and Teacher Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
Three journals were dedicated to publishing scholarly and professional papers in the field of educational technology and teacher education at the beginning of the year 2000:<\/p>\n
\u00a7 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Journal of Computers in Teacher Education<\/i> (JCTE).<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a7 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education<\/a><\/i> (JITTE).<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a7 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Journal of Technology and Teacher Education<\/i> (JTATE).\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n These three journals, plus the proceedings of the annual meeting of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, constitute the primary publication outlets for work in the area of technology and teacher education. Many other journals, of course, publish papers on the topic, but these four publications are the only ones dedicated solely to the topic of technology and teacher education.<\/p>\n Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education<\/i> ( CITE Journal<\/i> ) is an online journal that will serve as an electronic counterpart to the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education<\/i> . The CITE Journal<\/i> will complement rather than replace the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education<\/i> . The rationale for an online journal is governed by three factors: demand, format, and participants.<\/p>\n Demand<\/a><\/p>\n JTATE, the print counterpart of the CITE Journal<\/i> , was established in 1990. At that time a number of the leaders in the field expressed doubts about the need for a new refereed journal devoted specifically to the field of technology and teacher education. One individual argued strongly that there were only a few papers in the field, and after one or two issues there would be no more papers and thus no more journal.<\/p>\n However, JTATE was founded as the flagship publication of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE). Today, a decade later, the journal and its two sister journals receive substantially more submissions it can possibly publish. Papers of high academic quality are rejected each year because of lack of space in the existing journals.<\/p>\n There is a growing recognition that educating teachers in appropriate uses of technology is crucial. In the United States, for example, federal funding is being provided directly to schools, colleges, and departments of education to facilitate integration of technology in teacher education programs for the first time. The U.S. National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) established a Task Force on Technology and Teacher Education, recommending policies and standards for integration of technology into teacher preparation programs. Similarly, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) established a best practice award recognizing exemplary teacher education programs that provide leadership in this area.<\/p>\n European Commission research programs have included significant teacher training and Information Technology components (known as telematics or multimedia). In England, comprehensive provisions for both information technology and its assessment are administered by the Teacher Training Agency. In the Netherlands the national funding aims to create innovative and exemplary new approaches, such as that described by Westhoek, Egberts, and Aardse (2000). Further discussion of such developments can be read in several editorials of the Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education (Davis, 1998, 1999).<\/p>\n Several countries in the East, including Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore, have inaugurated significant programs for teacher education and related research in this area. Recognition of the need for incorporation of information technology in teacher education has also arisen in each of the Australian states.<\/p>\n In consequence of the growing recognition of this area, subscriptions to the three existing journals are healthy. There is both a demand for a publication outlet and a readership interested in papers about technology and teacher education. Having established, to our satisfaction at least, that there is sufficient academic demand for additional publication outlets, we would like to turn now to the second reason, format.<\/p>\n Format: An Electronic Journal<\/b><\/p>\n The issue of format will require a bit more discussion, grounded in the context of the evolution of academic and scholarly publishing. As scholarly societies were established in the 17th century, they began publishing proceedings and journals (Ornstein, 1928, cited in Parrot, 1995<\/a> ). According to Ornstein, the first was Gesta Lynceorum,<\/i> which the Italian Academia dei Lincei published in 1609. It was the proceedings of the organization’s meeting and is the first publication of a scientific society.<\/p>\n A half century later, the evolution toward more organized and formal communication between scholars took another step when the Journal des Scavans<\/i> began publishing in Italy ( Parrot, 1995;<\/a> Gu e don, 1994)<\/a> . A second journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,<\/i> began publishing the same year, 1665. Guedon saw the rise of the journal as more than a mere technological advance. He pointed out that it changed the function of writing. Before journals, scholarly writing served a primary role as a “prop for memory.” But after journals became established, writing “evolved into a virtual discussion space.” That is, instead of communicating the accepted cannon of “truth,” writing became a way of discussing issues.<\/p>\n Scholarly publishing continued to grow and evolve during the 18th and 19th centuries. This was followed by a substantially increased acceleration in rate of growth in the 20th century. The increase in the number of new scholarly publications produced in the 20th century is remarkable by itself; that century also produced transformational changes in the very nature of scholarly publishing.<\/p>\n Notable trends in the 20th century included a shift from nonprofit<\/i> publishers (such as associations, societies, and universities) as the primary publishers of academic journals, books, and monographs, to for-profit<\/i> publishers. Some have argued that the increasing dominance of for-profit publishers in the field of scholarly publishing is the major reason for another recent trend\u2014the spiraling costs of journals. The Scholarly Societies Project<\/a> (1995) at the University of Waterloo concluded, “In the last couple of decades, the subscription costs of many scholarly journals (especially those published by certain powerful commercial publishers) have escalated at a rate far exceeding the cost-of-living rate of inflation.” This study titled, The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing,<\/i> included a number of cost comparisons clearly indicating that, “as a rule, journals published by commercial publishers are more expensive than those published by scholarly societies.” This journal is a response to the trend toward higher and higher subscription rates. It is published by a nonprofit organization, and it is available without charge to anyone who wishes to subscribe.<\/p>\n The trends in scholarly publishing, however, are not all that make this an interesting time. Another is the information revolution\u2014the shift from print-based communication to electronic channels of communication. Some (Odlyzko, 2000) believe electronic journals are likely to overwhelm print journals in the near future. \u00a0 He suggested that traditional scholarly journals will likely be transformed within a decade or two. (<\/a> Odlyzko, 1994 in a paper titled “Tragic Loss or Good Riddance? The Impending Demise of Traditional Scholarly Journals”)<\/a> . Today\u2019s headlines make it clear that this transition is already well along in many sectors of publishing.<\/p>\n “We’re doing quite a bit in the e-book and online areas,” says Ted Nardin, a vice president at McGraw-Hill. “We are converting a number of our print products to digital form” . . . . He believes the early demand will be for reference books. Readers will want “a travel book when they go to Italy; a computer book when they want to learn a skill; a business book on a plane flight.”<\/p>\n This technological shift will inevitably lead to changes in American publishing. In the way that amplification forever altered American music, so digital technology will change publishing. \u00a0 “Paper, printing and binding goes away,” Nardin says matter-of-factly. “Physical distribution goes away.”<\/p>\n As an example, Nardin points to Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, a two-volume, 2,688-page reference text ($149) that has sold well for years. McGraw-Hill has also converted Harrison’s into a subscription-based Web site. “We have transformed the book entirely into a continuously updated product,” Nardin explains. The site is easily searchable, and also lucrative. A subscription costs $89 a year. (Weeks, 2000a, p. C01)<\/p>\n In many instances, printed and electronic versions may co-exist for some time to come. In other instances, the physical printed version may no longer exist.\u00a0 Within the next five years many types of physical books\u2014travel, science, sports, for example\u2014may disappear altogether.<\/p>\n Erik Engstrom, president of Random House, is one levelheaded publishing executive who entertains this notion. Take his company’s popular series, Fodor’s travel guides. More and more the travel advice traditionally found in the books will be dispensed on the Internet, he believes. Other types of books with information that changes rapidly will follow.<\/p>\n “You’ve already seen a dramatic change in the encyclopedia division,” Engstrom says. In fact, as online reference works proliferated, Encyclopaedia Britannica reduced the company’s famous door-to-door sales force from 2,300 to 0 in seven years. They were booksellers. Since 1996, the electronic versions of the encyclopedia\u2014CD-ROMs, DVD disks and the Web site\u2014have been the company’s “main source of revenue,” says Tom Panelas of Britannica.com, the made-over encyclopedia company. (Weeks, 2000b, p. C01)<\/p>\n Today there are hundreds of electronic journals<\/i> \u2014scholarly publications that are available on-line via an electronic network. Many such journals have only published a few issues thus far, but they demonstrate the viability of the concept, and they bring many new possibilities to the scholarly publishing table. In addition, a number of electronic journals have been in publication for several years with considerable success.<\/p>\n Extrapolating from the success of journals currently published, it is clear that electronic media will capture a large share of scholarly publication in the next five years and that printed media may not be competitive in journal publication beyond a few more decades. \u00a0 Conversion and startup costs will delay the dominance of electronic media, but the improvement in marginal cost makes it inevitable. (O’Donnell, 1995, p. 183-184)<\/p>\n O’Donnell made his prediction even though he was not uncritically enthusiastic about electronic journals. Amiran and Unsworth<\/a> (1991) also said that \u201celectronic publications are likely to proliferate sooner than most now expect.” A major reason they cite for the proliferation is economics. “Economic reasons alone will force letters out of their time-honored sanctuary in wood-products and into the electronic ether.” Amiran and Unsworth were concerned, however, about the possibility of commercial organizations controlling academic electronic publishing.<\/p>\n They may come to limit redistribution of such publication or insist on copyright restrictions that may serve their financial interests but not the interests of the research community. In effect, this is the case with print publication: much of it is determined by the financial interests and possibilities of commercial presses . . .\u00a0 Bailey<\/a> (1994) was also concerned about control by for-profit publishers.<\/p>\n Commercial publishers have the skills and the resources to produce high-quality electronic publications . .. However, given the ongoing severe crisis in the cost of library materials, we should be hesitant to let them dominate network-based scholarly electronic publishing to the extent that they do print-oriented scholarly publishing without substantial changes in some of their publishing practices. . . . Current trends in the commercial electronic information area do not bode well for the future.<\/p>\n There are, already, a surprising number of electronic journals. The sixth edition of the Directory of Electronic Scholarly Journals, Newsletters, and Discussion Lists,<\/a> published by the Association of Research Libraries (1995), listed over a thousand electronic journals, and many more have appeared since that directory was published. There are many reasons for the rapid growth in electronic journals. Aside from new technology that makes electronic journals both possible and relatively easy to disseminate, many of the reasons relate to problems with traditional print journals. Treloar (1995)<\/a> and Treloar (1996)<\/a> identified five major problems:<\/p>\n Treloar’s first and last problems, the time lag in publication and the cost of journals, are the two most frequently cited as a reasons for seriously considering a move from print to electronic journal publishing. These same problems, and several others, were identified as critical issues by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in its proposal to revise its large publishing program to include many more electronic resources ( D e n ning & Rous, 1994<\/a> ). The ACM, with 78,000 members, publishes 17 periodicals and over 17,000 pages of proceedings a year.<\/p>\n After a thorough review of their publishing enterprise, they concluded, “The traditional scientific publishing system is now facing a variety of breakdowns that must be overcome if the system is to survive.” One aspect of their plan to deal with the problems is to “move aggressively toward having the entire ACM literature in an on-line digital library.” ACM is now well on its way to accomplishing that goal.<\/p>\n It is not yet clear whether the future, particularly the immediate future, will be characterized by the demise of all but a few printed scholarly publications as electronic publications come to dominate the field. All the possible futures are, however, more complex than a simple shift from print delivery to electronic delivery of similar scholarly materials. The future into which we actually evolve will be determined by many factors, some technical, some social, some political, and some organizational.<\/p>\n In this paper, we will examine some of the issues associated with this “bridging period” between a print-dominated scholarly publishing environment and one in which new electronic forms of communication play a major, if not dominant, role. We will outline choices we have made for CITE Journal<\/i> and acknowledge other viable options.<\/p>\n The Current Context<\/b> \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Here we are concerned with only one part of the publishing industry. It is what Harnad (1995a) has called “esoteric scholarly publishing,” which is publishing that involves scholarly material for which the author does not expect to be paid. Esoteric material is created to be disseminated to other specialists with similar interests. There is no expectation that the author of the material will be paid for the paper or share in proceeds from the sale of a publication through royalties. While it is usually applied to journals, the term “esoteric scholarly publishing” can probably be extended to scholarly monographs and books for which there is a limited audience, since the primary goal is communication and not profit. A scholarly book that sells 400 copies and costs $35 would generate a royalty of $1,400 if the contract called for a 10% royalty on the retail price. If you assume the author invested 900 hours in writing the book, that works out to $1.75 an hour. Teaching an overload course (or mowing yards) would yield more money for less effort.<\/p>\n We are, therefore, not dealing with popular publications such as Scientific American<\/i> that are aimed at a broader audience. Esoteric scholarly publishing is essentially an effort by an author to communicate with a few others rather than many others. Franks’ (1993)<\/a> \u00a0 article on electronic journals dealt with essentially the same type of publication, but he characterized them as “a publication whose authors and editors are unpaid.”<\/p>\n Electronic scholarly publishing presents scholars with several options. Although considerably oversimplified, Table 1 \u00a0 divides the scholarly publishing options into two types: media options and content options.<\/p>\n\n