The ins and the outs of electronic publishing

Abstract

Dallas (1995) captures our dilemma neatly when he comments: "Great invention; now what's it for?" The sooner we cease gongoozling the technology of electronic publishing (which still only really works on a good day anyway) the better. Electronic publishing is overdue a healthy dose of world-class marketing thinking and campaigning. What valued benefits in use does it or can it offer to its customers? What new products or services can it offer to deliver those benefits? What prices will be willingly paid? What forms of marketing communication will be most appropriate? How will the products and services be distributed? Concludes that, unless these questions are addressed professionally sooner rather than later, a great deal of investment will yield little return -or worse. Back to basicsSo what is electronic publishing? It is readily defined as using computers in the processes of capturing and disseminating knowledge and information. It implies that the parties at each end of the process, and as may be required in the middle, have computers that can converse with one another. The conversations can be either interactive on line or static via either disk or fixed time data interchange (EDI). Such conversations, without computer mediation, are scarcely a new idea. Interactive conversations have always taken place between individuals face to face, and latterly using telephones since the dawn of the twentieth century. Static conversations have taken place through manuscripts since writing began, via printed books since the fifteenth century, through journals, paintings, photographs, cinematography, radio and television.What is new therefore is the computer's capability to avoid or complement the ways in which we hitherto interacted or in which we held static conversations. The way in which printing avoided and complemented the work of scribes, telephones and radio avoided or complemented the need to travel to hear, the cinema and television avoided or complemented the need to travel to see as well as to hear, so too computers avoid or complement the need…to print to read, to travel to hear or to travel to see. Multimedia publishing using computer mediation encompasses them all, albeit smell and touch remain absent.It is salutary to note that all developments thus far have not yet eliminated any antecedent medium -people still like to write, they like to travel to listen, to talk and to see. As such paperless publishing seems as unlikely an outcome as the demise of the cinema, painting, television, radio or the telephone. Yet they will only live on in a fresh complementarity to what electronic publishing can best provide. Electronic publishing in the fullness of time will force those new complementarities among the earlier technologies, also implying avoidances as well.

Differential effects of occupation on Internet usage

“…Other research has investigated the evolution and diffusion of the Internet (Goodman et al, 1994;Kahn, 1994), the commercial uses of the Internet (Cockburn and Wilson, 1996;Hoffman et al, 1995), the Internet as a strategic tool (Nejmeh, 1994), and the use of the Internet for education and research (Ives and Jarvenpaa, 1996), manufacturing (Upton and McAfee,156 Differential effects of occupation on Internet usage 1996), marketing (Quelch and Klein, 1996), human resource management (Greengard, 1995), electronic publishing (Wills and Wills, 1996), and for obtaining business intelligence (Pawar and Sharda, 1997). In addition, issues relating to the Internet such as information security (Doddrell, 1996), intellectual property rights (Small, 1996), data integrity (Mathieu and Woodard, 1996), and legal risks (Smith, 1996) have also been examined.…”

Editorial and publication delay of papers submitted to 14 selected Food Research journals. Influence of online posting

“…One common (if not general) assumption about electronic edition is that "Onward transmission to the editors of learned journals is also more readily achieved by electronic file transfers, and the editorial refereeing process can be more expeditiously done. (…) It speeds ups the process of review wonderfully so that publication can be achieved much more speedily" (Wills & Wills, 1996). Some evidence against this assumption has been reported (Kling & SwygartHobaugh, 2002;Dong et al, 2006) as well as some favourable experience (Tobin, 2004).…”

The Future of Brands in Academic Publishing

“…Wills & Wills (1996) point to precision access to the archive of knowledge, updates on recently published material, involvement in conferences and forums, and the effectiveness of the media in disseminating published material. Butler (1995) has noted the benefits of electronic journals making articles available to readers within 48 hours of the manuscript being approved by the peer review team.…”