In his summary of this thread, Nigel Gilbert noted
>[The funds we seek to acquire are just enough to pay the salary of a
>part-time assistant and to do enough marketing to publicise the journal].
It would be surprising if you could run a journal long-term on this
financial basis. Can you say, is this the level of funding the project
receives from the eLib programme, and if not what accounts for the
difference? This isn't meant to undermine the project, but if in its course
you have learnt how costs can be minimised in this new publishing
environment then that is a valuable finding which will interest others.
The summary went on
>Finally, in my original posting I wondered how we could accommodate the
>lone scholar in an institution which could not afford to purchase a site
>license. I don't think any reply addressed this point.
I think some did, if not explicitly.
>Other respondents emphasised the attractions of 'added value'
So, if you have minimised the costs of putting the content online, you make
the content free and charge for the 'added value'.
(Apologies for intercutting the thread of Prof. Gilbert's reply)
>Several respondents thought that the journal would be more attractive
>if it broke away from the traditional constraints of paper based
>publication [Note. We are doing this, but cautiously. Retaining the
>respect of our academic community, many of whom are unused to EJs and the
>internet, is more important than exploiting all the available technical
>wizardry. We must lead, but not get too far ahead of our readers].
You are right to seek to hide the technical implementation, but it is the
application that counts. Perhaps your hardest task is to persuade your user
community to use an EJ where none existed before, but there is no point in
trying to hide the fact that SocResOnline is an EJ because that is what it
is, so you might as well build on this. If you can persuade them to make
this leap and - this is ultimately the real benefit of breaking out of the
paper convention, not the technical stuff - the end result is accessible
quality content with easy-to-use added value, then can I suggest that you
will actually have some very willing rather than cautious users.
Steve Hitchcock
Open Journal Project
Multimedia Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +44 (01)703 594479 Fax: +44 (01)703 592865
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Open Journal Project Web page http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
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