The Scientific Article in the Age of Digitization

1. The birth of the electronic journal In the autumn of 1987 Michael Ehringhaus and Bird Stasz of Syracuse U- versity launched New horizons in adult education, probably the very rst ref- 1 ereed scienti c journal to be published in electronic form ( g. 1. 1). The rst issue was sent over the Adult Education Network (AEDNET). The journal still 2 exists today. In March 1991 Ted Jennings of the University at Albany (State 3 University of New York) launched EJournal, described as an ‘electronic jo- nal concerned with the implications of electronic networks and texts’ ( g. 1. 2), coining the now popular term e-journal. The Online journal of current cli- cal trials, published from September 1991, has been described as the rst peer 45 reviewed electronic journal in medicine. How signi cant is the phenomenon of the scienti c electronic journaltoday, more than a decade and a half after its introduction? Over this period inf- mation and communication technologies (ICT) have been an important factor in the development of scienti c communication. Applications such as c- munication over digital networks (converging towards a single network – the Internet), the use of computerized systems for creating, storing and retrieving 1 The scienti c journal is also referred to as ‘scholarly’ or ‘research’ journal. We use the former term in this study. 2 Although no longer distributed over AEDNET but through the World Wide Web. The rst issue is now ? available at http://www. nova. edu/ aed/horizons/vol1n1.

INTRODUCTION.- 1 The birth of the electronic journal.- 2 The electronic journal ‘revolution’.- 3 Electronic journals: the issues.- 4 Studying digitization.- 5 Information Science.- 6 Theory.- 7 Methodology.- 8 Level of analysis.- 9 Outline.- 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION.- 1 The historical perspective.- 1.1 The Scientific Revolution.- 1.2 The early impact of printing.- 1.3 The scientific societies.- 1.4 The scientific journal.- 1.5 The development of the electronic journal.- 2 The scientific journal.- 2.1 The structure of the scientific article.- 2.2 The evolution of the scientific article.- 3. THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION SYSTEM.- 1 Scientific communication.- 2 Models and metaphors.- 2.1 The conduit metaphor.- 2.2 The information chain.- 3 Early models.- 4 Transaction space.- 5 Continuum model.- 6 Functions of scientific communication.- 7 The author.- 8 From print to digital.- 8.1 The digital information chain.- 8.2 Systems based communication.- 8.3 Institutional repositories.- 9 Innovation of the scientific journal.- 9.1 Scholarly Communication Forums.- 9.2 The innovation chain.- 10 Complexity of scientific communication.- 4. THE DIGITIZATION OF INFORMATION RESOURCES.- 1 Introduction.- 2 The concept of digitization.- 3 Networked information.- 4 Dynamic information.- 5 Quasi-intelligent documents.- 6 The functional document.- 7 The ‘copy paradox’.- 8 The problem of authenticity.- 9 Reading, creating and control.- 10 Characterizing the digital article.- 10.1 The digital document.- 10.2 The digital scientific article.- 5. THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL 1987-2004.- 1 Analytical framework.- 2 Research data.- 3 Results of the survey.- 3.1 Scientific fields and publication year.- 3.2 Submission formats.- 3.3 Publication formats.- 3.4 Multimedia.- 3.5 Data resources.- 3.6 Revision.- 3.7 Response.- 3.8 Customization.- 3.9 External hyperlinks.- 3.10 Functionality.- 3.11 Navigation.- 3.12 Peer review.- 3.13 Copyright.- 3.14 Editorialpolicies.- 4 Open Access journals.- 5 Evaluation.- 6 The impact of digitization.- 6. DIGITIZATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION.- 1 Explaining development.- 1.1 The closure of scientific communication.- 1.2 An evolutionary view of scientific communication.- 1.3 The diffusion of innovations.- 2 The technology myth.- 3 Transforming scientific communication.- 3.1 The significance of the electronic journal.- 3.2 The illusion of new media.- 3.3 The shadow of the format.- 3.4 The epistemological position.- 4 The impact of digitization on scientific communication.- 4.1 The illusion of a revolution.- 4.2 The dynamics of change.- 5 Final conclusions.- BIBLIOGRAPHY.- INDEX.