Introduction
Facing the Future of Electronic Publishing

Enculturation, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 2002

A Multi-Journal Collaborative Issue on Electronic Publication

The five journals collaborating on this special release on Electronic Publication—The Writing Instructor, Academic.Writing, CCC Online, Enculturation, and Kairos—have in just a few short years published an enormous amount of high quality work that is probably read by more people than even the most popular journals in the field.[1] Although there aren't any studies yet on citation of online journals in rhetoric and composition, research by Steven Lawrence published in Nature showed that articles that appear online are significantly more likely to be cited by other researchers than those that do not appear online, according to a study of computer-science research literature (Young) "The mean number of citations to offline articles is 2.74, and the mean number of citations to online articles is 7.03, or 2.6 times greater than the number for offline articles" (Qtd. in Young).

The works published in these journals is, perhaps ironically, much closer to the vision we hold of what's supposed to drive the process at a university press: solid and creative scholarship, rigorous peer review, and healthy collaboration. Each of our journals operates on a shoestring budget, with at best modest financial support from institutional sponsors. As editors, we must learn how to leverage sometimes meager resources. What I especially like about these five journals is that each has been able to free itself from the market-driven economy that can tarnish our judgment of scholarly merit. Submissions to each journal are rigorously reviewed.Decisions to publish are made by experts, not by accountants. Furthermore, the collaboration among authors and editors of online journals has also proven to be much more enriching as authors become more involved in production and delivery.

This multi-journal issue on Electronic Publication—a collaborative effort of the editors of The Writing Instructor, Academic.Writing, CCC Online, Enculturation, and Kairos—publishes essays and hypertexts that address some of these issues directly.

In The Writing Instructor, we feature three new works. Paul Cesarini, who describes himself as a "gearhead, a technogeek, a computer nerd," examines the volatile world of eBook publishing in "eBooks: A Battle for Standards." He demonstrates that the real causes of the diminished enthusiasm for eBooks has less to do with a sour economy or that people don't like to read online (a patently false presumption of eBook critics, I think, considering how many hours many of us spend reading our computer screens). As Cesarini notes, "There are now more eBook file formats than there are living presidents." eBook titles are often only associated with particular formats, and many can't be recovered if files are lost or damaged. Hardware designed for eBook reading sometimes only will operate with particular eBook software. We've also witnessed the rise and fall of eBook publishers at an alarming rate. Gemstar is one awful example. RCA eBook readers exclusively use the Gemstar eBook format, meaning that anyone who bought these expensive eBook readers is left now with a machine that can only read a comparatively limited number of eBook titles, made available from an increasingly limited pool of content distributors. Cesarini recognizes that these are signs of the industry's growing pains as companies vie for a potentially lucrative market.

In Modern Chivalry and the Case for Electronic Texts, Janice McIntire-Strasburg relates her efforts to create an electronic, scholarly edition of Brackenridge's novel. Editions of classic works are widely available on the Internet, as you know, but so many of these editions fall far short of what scholars and researchers need and expect. In fact, however, many printed editions are inadequate also, beset as they are with permissions and copyright issues, length, and other factors that unduly affect editorial decisions (if an edition is to be considered definitive, it ought not be subject to length restrictions, one would think). McIntire- Strasburg's project began several years ago when she found she needed a good edition of the novel for an early American literature course but was unsatisfied with what was available in print. Her experience reflects what often happens with electronic publication. Teachers find it useful to make work available to their students electronically, and when that work isn't already available or convenient to use, they create it themselves. My work on the Kenneth Burke Bibliography Project arose from that same experience. I had so many questions about useful sources from students that I found it extremely useful to create a searchable database that I, my students, and other scholars could use to find what they were looking for. In creating such e-texts as Modern Chivalry, we re-create the critical resources of our teaching and scholarly lives, with our work potentially benefitting everyone else who might be interested as well. In McIntire-Strasburg's view, the case for the high value of electronic publication is a strong one.

Finally, in "Writing and Publishing in the Boundaries: Academic Writing in/through the Virtual Age," Patricia Webb Peterson develops a rubric for analyzing print and online publications, with reference to two top journals in the field, Computers and Composition and Kairos. In applying this rubric (focusing on history/purpose, rhetorical presentation, and peer review), Peterson is mindful to suggest ways that writing instructors might use it with their own students to explore the nature of academic scholarship and the ideologies that rationalize it. She also finds that both Computers and Composition and Kairos are highly successful in part because each articulates a clear position in relation to important disciplinary struggles (and uncertainties) and each establishes its credibility by positioning itself both within and beyond the disciplinary borders.

It has been our pleasure at TWI to work with editors of Academic.Writing (Mike Palmquist), CCC Online (Todd Taylor), Enculturation (Byron Hawk), and Kairos (Douglas Eyman) as we face the perilous future of academic publishing. I feel lucky that while perilous, the future is also bright for electronic publication. As one gesture of the spirit of our collaboration, on the navigation bar accompanying each article in this multi-journal issue on electronic publication you'll notice an "I Feel Lucky!" link. Click on it, and you'll find yourself at one of 12 randomly selected articles we offer for your consideration. Or you may end up at the doorway to each journal. Try it! What could be better than (java)scripted luck?

— DB

Note

[1] The print circulation of some of our field's most respected print journals is typically between 500 and 1,000, with only a few—CCC and College English, for instance—reaching much higher than that. In only it's first year as a online journal, The Writing Instructor averages over 125,000 page requests per month. There are many pages on the site to request, of course, but statistics show that a typical article has each of its pages (or nodes) read by 100 unique IP addresses per month. There's no way to tell, except indirectly by number of citations, how many people read a typical article in a print journal. (back)

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