e-Publishing's Impacts on Journals and Journal Articles

Abstract

The primary vehicle for formal communications in most disciplines and research domains is articles published in journals. The digital era as a whole has had many impacts on the activities of article creation and use. Of particular significance is the availability of the Internet as a distribution mechanism. This is bringing about significant changes in the economics of journal publishing. The dimensions of those changes are examined within the context provided by models of the roles of journals in the mid-to-late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries. Several early indicators of fundamental changes in the process and product of the journal are considered. Tensions between for-profit and open-access publishing are identified. The new potentials for community-based endeavor create the likelihood of upheaval in what has been a highly profitable industry sector.

Electronic interaction research 1988 – 2012 through the lens of the Bled eConference

“…The eBusiness Era saw some limited improvements in the timeliness of journal publications, but the dead weight of the small number of corporations that had achieved control of academic publishing has held back real progress. During the current eInteraction Era, as the iron grip of these corporations is gradually prised open, new approaches to research, publication, review and use of ideas will become possible (Clarke and Kingsley 2008).…”

Open Access: The Whipping Boy for Problems in Scholarly Communication—A Response to the Rebuttals

“…Indeed, as authors, we can note that we have pioneered Australian empirical research in this field-Kingsley from communications and Kennan from information sciences. Researchers in IS have featured in the literature over this period (Kling & Callahan, 2003;Kling, McKim, & Kin, 2003;Kennan & Kautz, 2007;Kennan & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2007;Clarke & Kingsley, 2008;Mann, von Walter, Hess, & Wigand, 2009).…”

“…Lamp then investigates how these functions may be altered or addressed in the context of electronic publishing and includes some of the debate that has arisen around new models of peer review, which he does partly to discuss some of the advances and added benefits that electronic publishing has compared to the limitations of paper publication. He describes the innovations implemented by the Journal of Humanitarian Engineering before introducing the issue of impact beyond impact factors-an aspect of publishing that is increasingly required in funding policies, partially due to issues with the journal impact factor (Clarke & Kingsley, 2008;PLoS Medicine Editors, 2006;Vanclay, 2012). Australia is not alone in that funders have what Lamp describes as a "prescriptive attitude" to the treatment of scholarly outputs; indeed, increasingly around the world funders are requiring OA as a provision of their funding (Australian Open Access Support Group, 2013).…”

Journal Self-Citation XIX: Self-Plagiarism and Self-Citation – A Practical Guide Based on Underlying Principles

“…A common expectation is that the paper submitted to the journal will have been further developed, to reflect feedback received in the interim. It remains to be seen whether the maturation of electronic publishing will result in major changes to both journal papers and journals, and perhaps a gradual merger of conference and journal venues [Clarke and Kingsley 2008].…”