[208] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
E-Journal Consortium
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Fri May 8 09:43:02 1992
Date: Fri, 8 May 1992 08:30:21 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad%Princeton.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.BITNET>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
From: Larry W. Hurtado <hurtado@ccu.UManitoba.CA>
Date: Wed, 6 May 92 14:29:19 CDT
A CONSORTIUM FOR NETWORK PUBLICATION
OF REFEREED RESEARCH JOURNALS
First Advance Notice May 1992
The University of Manitoba has received funding commitments to organize
and hold an international conference to promote the establishment of a
consortium of universities and learned societies to sponsor computer
network publication of refereed journals. The consortium would be a
non-profit publishing cooperative intended to make use of the Internet
as an important medium for the publication of scholarly research in any
discipline. Since the summer of 1991, an ad hoc group at the University
of Manitoba has been developing the idea of the conference and the
proposed consortium, and has been working on funding proposals since
the Autumn of 1991. The conference is now tentatively slated for the
Autumn of 1993 and will be held at the University of Manitoba,
Winnipeg, Canada. We hope to enlist the interest and cooperation of
major research universities and learned societies across North America
and elsewhere.
Over the next year or so, we will be communicating the vision behind
the conference and consortium to the academic community. This is the
first advance notice, and we plan to provide updates with more specific
information on the conference details as plans for it develop.
As an analogy of sorts for the proposed consortium, in the
traditional publishing of books and paper journals, Scholars Press
(Atlanta, Georgia) is a unique example of such a cooperative, operating
under several major U.S. learned societies (e.g., American Academy of
Religion, Society of Biblical Literature, American Philological
Society), with a number of universities in the U.S. and Canada as
sponsors of particular publication projects such as major monograph
series. It is an example of groups in the academic community taking
collective responsibility to see that worthy scholarship gets
published, without commercial considerations determining the question.
The Internet is the major new medium for dissemination of research, and
it is vital that the scholarly community, through its major
institutions of universities and learned societies, become acquainted
with the enormous potential of the Internet for scholarship. Commercial
companies are already devoting attention to developing computer network
publication projects. It is imperative that the scholarly community not
leave this major medium to be developed solely by commercial
interests.
The basic aims are (1) to make academic merit the sole consideration
in the publication of journal- type research, (2) to advance the idea
that the academic community should have a hand in determining what gets
published and how it is disseminated, (3) to provide a major outlet of
research publication that is not subject to the severe economic
constraints of traditional paper-journal publishing (soaring costs in
some commercially attractive fields, very limited journal outlets for
less commercially attractive fields), (4) to make collective and
considered use of the scholarly advantages of network publication
(e.g., savings in production costs, speedup in publication and
dissemination process), (5) to provide an effective and low-cost means
for universities and learned societies to play a greater role as
disseminators of research information and not only as producers and
consumers of research information.
Our initial objective at this point is to inform as many in the
scholarly community as possible of the conference and the consortium
proposal, and to solicit interest in these plans. Please contact us for
more information, and to be kept informed on the progress in our
planning. We also sincerely invite you to offer your ideas on things to
be included in the conference, key people to inform and possibly invite
to the conference, and any other matters relevant to the conference and
consortium proposal.
For more information, and to express your interests in the conference
and consortium, contact the convenor of the University of Manitoba ad
hoc Committee on Electronic Journals, Professor Larry W. Hurtado,
Institute for the Humanities, 108 Isbister Bldg., University of
Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 2N2. Phone: (204) 474-9114. FAX (204)
275-5781. E-mail: hurtado@ccu.umanitoba.ca.
