Walking the HighWire at Stanford
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How we got here... |
 Sputnik drove vast increases on investments in R&D
Continuous and sustained increases in stm discoveries and thus reports--more and more articles to publish
STM societies as publishers failed to expand their definitions of topics central to their members' interests
Professionalization of the professoriate; rewards and loyalties to far-flung communities of scholars working in similar areas
Growth of niche publishing; growth of "for the record," bottom-feeder publishers
Commodification of stm information in late 1970s and since
Substantial profit-taking by for-profit companies
Research libraries awaken, writhing, to stm journal crisis in early 1980s
Effects of stm journal cost rises reduce availability of stm journals on many campuses, also affect spending upon humanities and social scientific resources
ARPAnet & then Internet developed
Advent of Lockheed Information Systems Dialog, Orbit, etc, making on-line a&i services principal resources for access to primary literature
British Library, Congressional Information Service et al. become repositories of documents to supply distant readers
Free and effective browsers created and distributed
Personal computers become affordable; the academy invests in them and in effective on-campus network connections
Server and memory technologies become increasingly powerful for decreasing costs
SGML, HTML, XML, Acrobat (PDF) technologies developed, more or less standardized, and widely distributed
Attempts by some for-profit publishers to maintain profitability AND cash flow
Attempts by not-for-profit publishers and responsible publishers to enhance scholarly communication AND recover costs of publishing stm journals
Birth of HighWire, Project Muse, important programs at University of Chicago Press, and elsewhere |
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Missions |
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Enhance scholarly communication Contribute to marketplace correction |
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Statistics |
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Now 84 journals from 32 publishers; next week 100+ journals, 33 pubs 20 more journals in the next several months; many more after that HW brings up ca 12-15k pp per week Ave 10M hits, resolving to 200K readers per week 35 FTE full-time & 11 FTE co-opted, part-time |
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Features Enhancing Scholarly Communication |
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HTML/PDF versions Advanced searching in and among journals Easy hyper-navigation Toll-free linking of citations to abstracts (Medline, soon Web of Science), full-texts if available in HW suite, relevant other sources on-line (Genbank, etc) Prospective citations of articles displayed; related items citations High-resolution images and multi-media Interactivity (encouraging e-mail between readers and authors, readers & editors) For member subscribers, citation alerting from 50 journals For all readers, contents awareness by e-mailing tables of contents Experimentation with "As soon as ready publishing" (Pediatrics & ...), on-line peer-review (BMJ) "Overnet" for distant readers via Digital Island (Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, UK...and more) Free back issues provided by some publishers |
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In Development Monograph publishing on the Internet with Stanford University Press; support from Mellon Foundation |
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12 recent titles from Latin American Series DTDs created, SGML coding complete, site in design/development SUPress has modified its processing to increase throughput using word-processing and other "in-press" software Developing with ASBMB manuscript submission, tracking, and editing software; for diffusion to other HW publishers Affordable Internet co-publishing for low-budget journals (arts, humanities, social sciences) with many of the current HW features |
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HighWire Publishers Conferences |
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Discuss and share insights Help HighWire decide which features to implement next Create community for common efforts (cite tracking, e-TOC alerting, toll-free linking) Creation of a new community of nfp and responsible publishers who share similar values, if different approaches |
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Derivative & Related Publications |
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"Knowledge Environments"--deep & rich, narrowly defined topical digital libraries including literature, services, & communication 1st in cellular signal transduction with AAAS, Island Press, & SUL/AIR; others in development |
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"Opening China"--national site license for SCIENCE Magazine for PRC--a joint AAAS/Stanford University Libraries effort--negotiations to add titles Interest from India, Russia, other 3rd world (e.g. World Bank for African Virtual University) Participation in Australian experiments (JBC in Council of Australian University Librarians programs) |
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Established HighWire Marketing Group for Internet editions only |
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9 publishers, 27 titles 8 agents providing world-wide coverage--sales & marketing services attempting to develop suites of titles and favorable pricing with wide latitude for choice by subscribers |
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Effect Marketplace Correction HighWire's Strategy-- |
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enhance scholarly communication by improved readability functions & thereby attract readers enhanced scholarly communication attracts authors to HighWire publishers empower scholarly societies and responsible publishers by enhancing scholarly communications--make them more competitive |
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Early results |
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more manuscripts submitted to many HW publishers more readers and subscribers for many HW publishers some HW publishers expand membership categories testimonials from satisfied readers requests by stm scholars to HW to place their new journals with HW publishers attempts to buy out HW publishers attempts to buy out HW expanding markets for HW publishers |
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Concerns & Unrealized Matters The Digital Archive Question |
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Free back issues--archival palliative Local caching Reliable escrow agent for content & software Migration of content Emulation of earlier software and data formats |
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Liberation of Libraries |
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Cancel print in favor of network site subscriptions Consolidate archival print copies in a few locations Develop effective ILL Define & ratify necessary aspects of digital archive |
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More and more publishers realize that "content is king" Attempts by some for-profit publishers to over-control access to articles and databases (DOI; encryption, watermarking, & fingerprinting; pay per view; copyright and database legislation; intimidation tactics on intellectual property will increase) Realization by advertisers and publishers that traffic to sites provides an opportunity to advertise As bandwidth increases dramatically (Internet2, NGI, parallels world-wide), more multi-media inclusion, especially full motion video, live instrumentation Continued experimentation with business and access models; firm and frequent responses to infirm models by librarians VERY important Contention among "middle players"--agents and distributors - for a continuing business life (viz. SwetsNet, Science Direct, Blackwell Navigator, EbscoHost, etc.) Emergence of more Internet-only journals & other scholarly publications Internet publishing for broadly defined information communications --EI, BioMedNet, ChemWeb, Chemdex Growth of new "middle players" along narrowly defined market-place lines, but for global sales (health care sites, specific disease sites, social consciousness sites, etc.)
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