Navigating a corpus of journal papers using Handles

For some years now the Internet and World Wide Web communities have envisaged moving to a next generation of Web technologies by promoting a globally unique, and persistent, identifier for identifying and locating many forms of published objects . These identifiers are called Universal Resource Names (URNs) and they hold out the prospect of being able to refer to an object by what it is (signified by its URN), rather than by where it is (the current URL technology). One early implementation of URN ideas is the Unicode-based Handle technology, developed at CNRI in Reston Virginia. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a specific URN naming convention proposed just over 5 years ago and is now administered by the International DOI organisation, founded by a consortium of publishers and based in Washington DC. The DOI is being promoted for managing electronic content and for intellectual rights management of it, either using the published work itself, or, increasingly via metadata descriptors for the work in question. This paper describes the use of the CNRI handle parser to navigate a corpus of papers for the Electronic Publishing journal. These papers are in PDF format and based on our server in Nottingham. For each paper in the corpus a metadata descriptor is prepared for every citation appearing in the References section. The important factor is that the underlying handle is resolved locally in the first instance. In some cases (e.g. cross-citations within the corpus itself and links to known resources elsewhere) the handle can be handed over to CNRI for further resolution. This work shows the encouraging prospect of being able to use persistent URNs not only for intellectual property negotiations but also for search and discovery. In the test domain of this experiment every single resource, referred to within a given paper, can be resolved, at least to the level of metadata about the referred object. If the Web were to become more fully URN aware then a vast directed graph of linked resources could be accessed, via persistent names. Moreover, if these names delivered embedded metadata when resolved, the way would be open for a new generation of vastly more accurate and intelligent Web search engines.

Electronic Publishing -- a Journal and its Production

The use of the term "Electronic Publishing" transcends any notions of the paperless office and of a purely electronic transfer and dissemination of information over networks. It now encompasses all computer-assisted methods for the production of documents and includes the imaging of a document on paper as one of the options to be provided by an integrated processing scheme. Electronic publishing draws heavily on techniques from computer science and information technology but technical, legal, financial and organisational problems have to be overcome before it can replace traditional publication mechanisms. These problems are illustrated with reference to the publication arrangements for the journal `Electronic Publishing Origination, Dissemination and Design'. The authors of this paper are the co-editors of this journal, which appears in traditional form and relies on a wide variety of support from electronic technologies in the pre-publication phase.

The Development of an On-line Submission and Peer Review System

Online submission and peer review is emerging as the next step forward for many journal publishers in an ever increasing drive to take advantage of technological improvements in transferring data electronically over the internet. The Electronic Submission and PEer REview (ESPERE) project was initiated in 1996 as an electronic Libraries (eLib) initiative of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Subsequently the project continued as a self-funding group composed of a consortium of learned society and commercial journal publishers intent on utilising the changes in technology to improve the services they provide to their authors as well as cutting their costs and increasing efficiencies.

Electronic Publishing : the evolution and economics of a hybrid journal.

The technical, social and economic issues of electronic publishing are examined by using as a case study the evolution of the journal Electronic Publishing Origination, Dissemination and Design (EP-odd) which is published by John Wiley Ltd. The journal is a `hybrid' one, in the sense that it appears in both electronic and paper form, and is now in its ninth year of publication. The author of this paper is the journal's Editor-in- Chief. The first eight volumes of EP-odd have been distributed via the conventional subscription method but a new method, from volume 9 onwards, is now under discussion whereby accepted papers will first be published on the EP-odd web site, with the printed version appearing later as a once-per-volume operation. Later sections of the paper lead on from the particular experiences with EP-odd into a more general discussion of peer review and the acceptability of e-journals in universities, the changing role of libraries, the sustainability of traditional subscription pricing and the prospects for `per paper' sales as micro-payment technologies become available.

`Electronic Publishing' -- Practice and Experience

Electronic Publishing -- Origination, Dissemination and Design (EP-odd) is an academic journal which publishes refereed papers in the subject area of electronic publishing. The authors of the present paper are, respectively, editor-in-chief, system software consultant and senior production manager for the journal. EP-odd's policy is that editors, authors, referees and production staff will work closely together using electronic mail. Authors are also encouraged to originate their papers using one of the approved text-processing packages together with the appropriate set of macros which enforce the layout style for the journal. This same software will then be used by the publisher in the production phase. Our experiences with these strategies are presented, and two recently developed suites of software are described: one of these makes the macro sets available over electronic mail and the other automates the flow of papers through the refereeing process. The decision to produce EP-odd in this way means that the publisher has to adopt production procedures which differ markedly from those employed for a conventional journal.

Libraries and open access: the implications of open-access publishing and dissemination for libraries in higher education institutions

This chapter discusses the consequences of open-access (OA) publishing and dissemination for libraries in higher education institutions (HEIs). Key questions (which are addressed in this chapter) include: 1. How might OA help information provision? 2. What changes to library services will arise from OA developments (particularly if OA becomes widespread)? 3. How do these changes fit in with wider changes affecting the future role of libraries? 4. How can libraries and librarians help to address key practical issues associated with the implementation of OA (particularly transition issues)? This chapter will look at OA from the perspective of HE libraries and will make four key points: 1. Open access has the potential to bring benefits to the research community in particular and society in general by improving information provision. 2. If there is widespread open access to research content, there will be less need for library-based activity at the institution level, and more need for information management activity at the supra-institutional or national level. 3. Institutional libraries will, however, continue to have an important role to play in areas such as managing purchased or licensed content, curating institutional digital assets, and providing support in the use of content for teaching and research. 4. Libraries are well-placed to work with stakeholders within their institutions and beyond to help resolve current challenges associated with the implementation of OA policies and practices.