2. Mechanisms of academic knowledge distribution using the internet

2.1. Web-journals

Traditionally organised web-journals eliminate the need for printing (at least by the publisher), significantly reduce the distribution and archiving costs, and facilitate the organisation of the review process, the indexing and the reader's search. What costs there are can be almost totally subsumed into the academic's time and resources (internet access, printing facilities, word-processing). This means that the only major unsubsumed costs left are the organisation of review, and the mark-up of papers. Since a lot of the mark-up can be demanded of the writer using word-processing facilities, the remaining unsubsumed costs are sufficiently low that web-journals can be set up with no explicit commercial structure at all. Also the flexible nature of electronic representation of knowledge can be utilised to enable new forms of knowledge presentation and interaction between academics, for example in peer-commentary.

However web-journals still have some the rôles of paper journals, in that these journals still own the papers they publish. They mark them up to ensure they are well presented and so that the style of papers is that of the journal, they archive the papers on their web-site and (typically) own the copyright of their papers. This ownership has subtle costs in that it makes the structure of knowledge less flexible - for example it means that a single paper can only be presented to one audience.

Another disadvantage is in the closed nature of the review process. There is a private dialogue between the reviewers and editors of the journal and the author. Frequently this dialogue concerns not only questions of fact and presentation but also the content of the paper, even when the issues concerned are controversial and far from settled. This not only deprives the public readership of a part in this discussion but also denies them the information that can be gained from it (e.g. the detail of the reviewers judgements). As a result the readers can only search journals on the content of what is published - in a real sense the only explicit judgemental information given to the reader is that it is worthy of being published.

A Proposal for the Establishment of Review Boards - Bruce Edmonds - 16 MAR 99

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