The changing economics of publishing

One easy dimension is the contrast between product and service. When a magazine is something you buy once a month at the grocery store, it is easiest to imagine it as a product. But when a personalized newspaper appears on your printer every morning, it seems more like a service.

Stefic has characterized the processing of content in terms of a refinery model [Stefik95] [REF177] . Crude, raw data is produced in large volumes (e.g. by satellites, video cameras, etc.). People who watch these data streams, and now automatic data mining algorithms, find interesting correlations and report on them. Individual observations and correlations are integrated into larger stories, related to prior work, etc. At each stage of refining the raw number of bits diminishes, but the information, then the knowledge (perhaps even wisdom?!) is increased as the individual facts become integrated into more meaningful accounts. Along with each change comes increased economic value.

Another model for interaction comes from the OPEN SOURCE model of software development. The best metaphor for this may be the hippies' notion of co-ops: Everyone contributes a little bit, so that a valuable resource is available to many. This model is most often applied to software development, but fine-grained ``clipping services'' and moderation-for-hire News groups are quite similar. More and more business models for such interactions are already being explored, with some members paid and others filling more informal roles. The recent controversy concerning AOL's moderators, some of whom think they should benefit from the same economic windfall enjoyed by the AOL corporation, is another interesting example.}

If publishers are to have a role in the future, the EDITORIAL ENHANCEMENT and other added value they provide beyond the authors' original content must be significant. For example, a key feature of publishing in academic journals is the AUTHORITY conferred to a publication by the process of PEER REVIEW . An article published in a major journal is not only made available to a wide audience, but comes with a ``seal of approval'' of external validation by recognized experts in the field (viz., the editorial board and referees of their choosing) that the document represents significant work. The increased speed and reduced cost promised by electronic communication associated with electronic journals will not be realized unless social mechanisms such as these can be successfully transferred from the printed communication channel.

Another traditional distinction that electronically produced hypertext tends to blur is between the rough, working notes and drafts that an author maintains personally and the polished prose that is typically published. When two documents were both typed from scratch, there was every reason that they should be as different as possible. But as word processing technologies have allowed us to cut and paste, it seems that different versions of approximately the same document wind up being published independently. It is sometimes worthwhile saying the same thing more than once (e.g., with different audiences in mind), and in some fields it is common to first publish a shorter, in-progress report in a conference proceedings, with a more thorough and refined version of the same text subsequently appearingin a journal publication. But viewed cynically, the pressure on academics to ``publish or perish'' together with the increasing number of more and less formal publication channels makes the ease of such self-plagarism an issue. Just as funding agencies like the National Science Foundation now limit the number of publications that can be mentioned (in support of grant proposals or as part of an investigator's vita), publishers and professional socieites may find it necessary to limit the raw quantity of publications in order to preserve their quality.

Obviously this text itself is an example of an experiment in electronic publishing, and hence in publishing economics. For more details about how the economics is intended to play out, see the final ``Active Colophon'', §9.

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