Cyberspace and
EJournals
Tommy
Boone, PhD, MPH, FASEP, EPC
Professor
and Chair
Director,
Exercise Physiology Laboratories
The
College of St. Scholastica
Duluth,
MN
Cyberspace. What is it?
Where is it? Is it the other side of your screen? Is it the
unfolding of electronic information from e-publications? Cyberspace
is the Internet. It is new, original, and available to millions of
people all over the world. It transcends print copy and other non-computer
communications. Cyberspace is greater visibility with increased communication
and lower costs. It transcends all scholarly communications of print
copy. So, why are so few exercise physiologists interested in electronic
journals? More specifically, why are so few exercise physiologists
publishing their work in the Journal of Exercise Physiologyonline(JEPonline)?
Why, when there are hundreds of research articles that need publishing,
they are sent to print copy publications?
Part of the answer to these
questions lies with the assumption that contemporary exercise physiologists
are debating the quality and integrity of electronic journals (EJournals).
Everyone understands the importance of publishing an article. It
is impressive, and it happens after a lot of hard work. The print
copy is the reward. It is real, and it can be shared with others.
Moreover, there is always controversy with new kinds of publications.
Without question, publishing research via the Internet is different.
It's on the screen in front of you. It is not something published
first on paper, although it generally ends up on paper. Skywriting
is new. It is a revolutionary step in peer review journals.
It is the 21st century method of authorship of original research.
Skywriting is the researcher’s fingertip access to rapid information management.
So revolutionary that literally thousands of electronic scholarly journals
have appeared on the Internet. Scientific research has made the transition
from paper to Internet distribution . Books, journals, workshops,
conferences, and forums are published electronically and this is only the
beginning.
Why electronic journals?
Why cyberspace? Because it makes sense. It is immediate, and
it is worldwide. Simplicity is another answer along with speed and
communication. Print copy (or p-journals), however
well done, cannot match the range of scholarly communication that e-journals
offer. Also, the low cost electronic distribution is impressive,
especially since most articles published in the e-journals could appear
in the more costly paper journals. Why electronic journals?
Simply because it makes sense. But, given this understanding, many
exercise physiologists still appear unresponsive to the benefits of publishing
their work in the electronic medium. Publishing in e-journals is
new. It is considered less impressive than in p-journal publications?
Why? Well, that is what this article is about. Up front, however,
such thinking doesn’t make sense when one considers the international distribution
afforded the Internet author(s). Publishing in the JEPonline
or in the Professionalization of Exercise Physiology
(PEPonline)
requires the same peer review process, the “final edited copy” and the
posting of the electronic version. Pagination is optional, but certainly
possible with pdf (Acrobat) formats.
Exercise physiologists need
to move forward in their thinking and publishing possibilities in e-journals.
The paper form is good, but it isn’t the medium that encourages free access
to publication, visibility, and distribution of scholarly work. As
a result, electronic publishing has skyrocketed. Even traditional
paper publishers are now moving to publish on the Internet, even though
they are concerned about the bottom line. Publishing research
is important to researchers, and publishing houses are interested in keeping
the researchers support. Visibility is important for all involved,
and researchers and publishing houses are realizing that distribution of
research via e-publications can be permanently archived and preserved by
academic libraries. Moreover, it is free with significant web-based
advantages over existing print journals. Hence, until recently, it
wasn’t possible to create a virtual scientific data base with selected
web connections through hypertext links to web documents. The Internet
volume of related articles and interconnected resources from around the
world are radical departures from p-journals.
EJournals are global in scale.
Exercise physiology is thus on the brink of global departure from commonplace
distribution methods. JEPonline
and PEPonline
are unprecedented exercise physiology publications. They exist as
electronic opportunities to link academically and clinically with research
institutions and healthcare settings on a global scale. JEPonline
is, in particular, the “scholarly skywriting” exercise physiology journal
to present research data. It sets the stage for exercise physiology
research interaction and brainstorming, and even peer criticism.
With web based interactive software, the interactiveness is beyond the
scope of p-journals. Hence, the potential for accessing research
and the scholarly inquiry is nothing more than revolutionary.
Overwhelmed as exercise physiologists
might be with the Internet, skypublishing offers the possibility of accelerating
exercise physiology professionalism. This point is incontestable.
One cannot quarrel with Internet publishing and, yet some exercise physiologist
underestimate its logical bridge to professional status. Is it possible
that the academic community is unready for the change; a change that has
already happened? If so, what does it mean to those who fail
to see the professional profitability of e-journals? Is it possible
that they distrust the digital age? Of course this is a possibility,
but a web master’s manipulation of digital technologies is a lot of nonsense.
Such thinking will soon be history.
The electronic way is the
only logical correction to the production cost, annual inflation, distribution
costs, and administrative expenses with p-journals. Libraries across
the United States are constantly in battle with the spiraling costs of
journal prices. The fact that “virtual peer review” simply
isn’t possible with p-journals yet is possible with e-journals is an incredible
thing. Internet publishing is intellectual, creative, informative,
and immediate. It is in the purest sense the essence of scholarship
without the inevitable business perspective, that is, the cost of publishing
or at least a much lower cost for scholarly publishing. Even with
the occasional dreaded “404 Object Not Found” error message when searching
the Internet or other retrieving problems given the size of the Internet,
there is the reality of thousands of published papers immediately at your
fingertips.
These papers are in most
circumstances “peer reviewed” in which the submitted work is sent to an
editor who in turns sends it to a specialist to make the determination
whether the paper should be published and if so, what changes need to be
done. Is it infallible? Of course not. It is subject
to error and abuse in the same way editors and specialists misinterpret
or deliberately choose to make bad decisions with submissions to p-journals.
After all, the quality of the literature is a direct function of the expertise
and thus competence of those who submit articles as well as those who are
part of the review process. Even experts are not in good position
to detect fraud and unethical practices.
So, once again, what are
the real reasons for the failure of exercise physiologists to take full
advantage of publishing their work on the Internet? Only a fraction
of the papers that should be published are sent to JEPonline.
It can’t be the peer review issue because obviously it exist. The
peer-review/revision/acceptance cycle used by p-journals is a standard
practice of most e-journals. It can’t be that JEPonline
orPEPonline
articles may get misplaced. They are articles published in official
journals of a national organization. Looking for an article published
in JEPonline
requires as few clicks as finding ASEP. What then is holding exercise
physiologists back? Publishing on the Internet makes the work available
to everyone around the world. Skywriting is the means to a rapid
global communication of ideas, concepts, and findings. It is also
copyrighted with academic and professional credit given to the author(s).
Security and plagiarism, as obstacles and concerns, are no different from
p-journals. Certainly this point should not distract from Internet
publishing. Is it quality and reputation? If so, isn’t it clear
that publishing, Internet or print copy, relies on the expertise of editors
who are typically academic scholars who use established methods of evaluating
submissions to p-journals for publication. It seems most probable
that researchers understand this basic point and, therefore understand
that even self-publishing can be achieved with rigorous attention to good
writing and good scholarly decisions.
There is the interesting
point that if exercise physiologists don’t contribute to the ASEP journals,
then perhaps the e-journals are not needed. Maybe there are
enough print copy publications to meet the publishing needs of exercise
physiologists. If this were true, it simply wouldn’t make any sense.
New journals, print or electronic, are important to disseminating scholarly
material. The justification for ASEP’s e-journals is that the organization
has a right to its own journals and thus do so without additional financial
burden on its members. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that
the Internet provides the most flexible and immediate cost savings of publishing
scholarly information. Online journals allow for unlimited and unrestricted
access for users who click on the ASEP contact page. It is not only
conceivable but expected that a certain percentage of the users will become
ASEP members. The accessibility of the ASEP published work in its present
form is expected to continue without the user having to buy relevant articles.
Scientists in all areas of
research understand that there is a very real need for electronic journals.
JEPonline
and PEPonline
and the ASEPNewsletter are the
“first” electronic formats in the history of exercise physiology and, as
such have helped to streamline the electronic process of communicating
both research and professionalism. Since the ASEP effort and the
benefit to exercise physiologists throughout the world are within our power
to influence the profession of exercise physiology, it is the ASEP responsibility
to continue. ASEP certainly has a role to play in the scholarly distribution
of information and professional communication without compromising quality.
Finally, how is an exercise
physiologist going to know that the electronic-only journals published
by ASEP are quality journals? The answer isn’t as complex as the
reader might think. It comes with professional experience and common
sense. Staying away from spurious material and reading solid research
results isn’t a complicated process. After all, this is the information
age. Enhanced electronic communication either through e-mail, transfer
of files, or by full-featured e-journals is the network scene. It
is easy-to-use, reasonably intuitive, full of graphics and equations, and
as complete in content as p-journals; all at a low price!
The search and retrieval
abilities of electronic publishing are beyond anything that can be done
with p-journals. Articles can be maintained and archived in a usable
state with a simple click of the mouse. The fact that any article
and related graphs and pictures can be transmitted electronically to researcher’s
printer is first-rate service. The ASEP Board is especially
happy with the small steps wherever possible to help exercise physiologists
keep abreast with new information. The Board is keenly aware of the
work of Dr. Robert Robergs, as Editor-in-Chief of JEPonline,
and his editors who have done an excellent job in developing the journal
into a recognized scientific publication. It may differ in
looks from the typical p-journal, but it is nonetheless a recognized electronic
publication for exercise physiologists.
In this electronic era, ASEP
is on the cutting edge. Members should be proud of the electronic
manuscripts and the effort required of committed professionals. The
organization is not an experiment or a moment in time, but rather an undertaking
that requires a lot of work to meet the needs of exercise physiologists.
One of the major challenges facing ASEP as a producer of electronic information
is the continued effort to find new ways of communicating its quest for
professionalism. Fascinating and far-reaching communications are
yet to be discovered and put online as new formats are experimented with.
There will be many more changes of this type, and across time manuscripts
will increasingly be presented with a flood of information that can’t be
denied. Better communication is always the right step to take.
The ASEP EJournals is a major step in better communication.
Suggested Readings
1. Bot, M., Burgemeester,
J., & Roes, (1998). The cost of publishing an electronic journal. D-Lib
Magazine. (November) [Online] http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november98/11roes.html
2. Boyce, P. B. & Dalterio,
H. (1996). Electronic publishing of scientific journals. Physics Today.
Vol 49 [Online] http://www.aas.org/~pboyce/epubs/pt-art.htm
3. Butler, D. (1999). The
writing is on the web for science journals in print. Nature. Vol 397 [Online]
http://www.nature.com/server-java/Propub/nature/397195A0.docframe
4. Davidson, L. A. &
Douglas, K. (1998). Promise and problems for scholarly publishing. Journal
of Electronic Publishing. Vol 4, No. 2 [Online] http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-02/davidson.html
5. Arnad, S. (1998).
The invisible hand of peer review. Nature. (5 Nov.) [Online] http://helix.nature.com/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html
6. Harnard, S. (1999). Free
at last: the future of peer-reviewed journals. D-Lib Magazine. (December)
[Online] http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html
7. Kling, R. (1995). Controversies
about electronic journals and scholarly communication: an introduction.
The Information Society. Vol 11, No. 4 [Online] http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kling/intro114.html
8. Kling, R. & Covi,
L. (1995). Electronic journals and legitimate media in the systems of scholarly
communication. The Information Society. Vol 11, No. 4, [Online]
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kling/klingej2.html
9. Strong, W. (1999). Copyright
in a time of change. Journal of Electronic Publishing.
Vol 4, No. 3 [Online] http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-03/strong.html
