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The World Wide Web: A New Medium for Professional Communications
Eric H. Schnell, M.L.S.
Research and Publication
Typically, it can take from six months to a year for a research paper to appear in a
refereed journal. The printed publication process requires months of lead time in order
to review, edit, resubmit, edit again, typeset, print, and distribute a single issue. As a
result of this process, it is likely that some Web addresses contained in traditional
printed media are outdated by the time the books or journals are published. The odds
of any printed publication containing outdated Internet references increases every year
after it is published.
There are some advantages to using the Web as a way to communicate ideas to
other library professionals. Electronic bibliographies, or Webfinders, designed for local
use can be made available to the world. Internet resources referenced in Web
documents can be updated as the resources move, change names, or are deleted.
Works in progress can be made available for colleagues to comment on content and
structure. If properly maintained, a Web document can always be the most current
version of a published work.
There are also some disadvantages to the Web as a medium to communicate ideas.
Since copyright laws have not kept up with the technology, it may not fully protect ideas
or project concepts which are published on Webspace sites. Documenting that an idea
was published at one site before another is a difficult point to prove. The ability to edit
and alter Web documents also means no work is complete. In this liquid environment,
creating a permanent archive of Web documents will be a challenging task.
The role of the Web in scholarly research and publication is still being investigated.
As a medium of publication, the Web is being used in professions such as physics as
the primary method of publishing current research.[7] Debate is also underway in the
biomedical sciences on the use of Web information servers for prompt delivery of
research findings.[8] [9] A number of
pioneers are developing electronic journals, but few
use the traditional peer-reviewed process. Among currently available library and
information science electronic journals, only the Public-Access Computer Systems
Review (PACS Review), [10] MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship,[11]
and LIBRES: Library and Information Science Research Electronic Journal,[12] are peer-reviewed. Since scholarly activities are reviewed by university tenure committees, it
would appear that the same criteria used for evaluating printed publications will still be
used to determine the quality of research in electronic publications. The most
important criterion is the appearance of research papers in refereed journals.[13]
Placing content and substance issues aside, a survey of existing electronic library
journals available using the Web shows that hypertext and multimedia capabilities are
not being fully utilized in these publications. None of the electronic library journals
surveyed currently accept HTML Web documents. All of the electronic publications
listed above request that manuscripts be sent in plain ASCII text format. Since ASCII
eliminates the use of charts, graphs, and images, the resulting Web documents are
pure text, lacking even the look and feel of traditional print publications. Future library
journals need to solicit and except manuscripts which take advantage of the new
multimedia publication techniques that the Web provides.
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The text of this article is published by The Haworth Press, Inc. (10
Alice Street, Binghamton, New York 13905-1580) in IRSQ: Internet Reference Services Quarterly (The Journal of
Innovative Information Practice, Technologies, and Resources) Vol. 1, Issue 4 (1996), Lyn Elizabeth Martin,
Editor-in-Chief.
Page URL: http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/eric/papers/irsq/research.html