It seems fairly clear that many changes will occur in the information
flow of the profession. One important lesson comes from the
development model of the Internet itself. Rather than designing a grand
system with every possible feature, the Internet has been developed in
an incremental fashion with repeated and frequent testing.
In addition, rather than adding every possible feature,
stress is put upon getting a useful version working. The general idea
is well expressed by the
``Internet Credo:''
We reject kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in rough consensus and running code.
In addition, it would be wise to use standard Internet tools, such as web browsers and Adobe's Acrobat (PDF) format, as much as possible. These tools are rich enough to support almost anything economists might wish to do. When new tools must be developed, it should be done in an open manner. For example, a group of chemists have developed a standard way of exchanging viewable images of molecules that is freely available to all (MIME).
Such freely available standards and software has a long history on the Internet and likely stems in part from the Internet's genesis as a research and educational network. For instance, the math and physics professions use the TeX system and it variants, such as LaTeX, for their word processing. They are freely available to all. While this system of freely available software may seem odd at first brush to economists, the non-pecuniary returns to the developers are substantial, and the indirect pecuniary returns can be quite substantial indeed, as these projects advertise skills to potential employers. But, something more than returns are at stake--for some these projects simply are enjoyable. Rather than building a model train set in the basement, some build Web pages, others write software, and some maintain archives, all as a hobby--but as a hobby that can be seen by millions. Larry Wall, the author of one of the most widely used, but freely available programming languages Perl, simply states ``Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this because it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then your notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-)"
With these concepts in mind, consider the development of
electronic journals. Most are accessed using either html or Adobe
Acrobat to display text and figures, and are accessed through
the web. This combination offers the features needed for an
electronic journal.
These tools cover the ``back end'' of the process--how to put a
journal on-line given an electronic version of the paper. Another part
of the process is the front end--how papers are processed before
publication. The costs savings are likely to be considerable if
this process (submission, copyediting, reviewing, etc.) is entirely
electronic. Complete automation requires standard word processing
tools--for example TeX. Needless to say, it seems extremely
unlikely that economists will move to a common word processing
system. However, a journal could insist on electronic submission
in one of a few popular formats (say Word, WordPerfect, and TeXor
LaTeX) that cover the vast majority of economists.
Furthermore, with the sophisticated ``style sheets'' of these word
processing systems, all authors would submit papers in the ``look
and style'' of the journal.
In other words, typesetting could be entirely eliminated with the
resultant cost savings.
Even the largest journals can be put on-line; a good example, with many valuable lessons, is the Astrophysical Journal Electronic Edition (AJEE), is described by Boyce (1996). The Astrophysical Journal publishes approximately 25,000 pages per year. One of the chief design goals was to handle this amount of material with as little human intervention as possible. AJEE determined that they could not go partly electronic, and that it was ineffective to take the paper version of the journal and deliver it electronically. Each party to the publication had to participate to make the electronic journal work. The authors have to submit in AASTeX(a version of LaTeX) to provide the structure of the document - title, author, abstract, sections, and references. Only with this structure can the submitted article be automatically transcribed into Standardized General Markup Language (SGML), wherein the database of references to the extant literature can be automatically linked and checked. The typesetter had to do their copy-editing markup in SGML. From the SGML, both paper and electronic versions are created.
The benefits to a journal of this system are clear: more visibility for its editors and authors (and thus more citations). Further, in the near future, as journals transition to an electronic world, there will doubtless be opportunities for journals that aggressively move to this model--with much easier access, their use and status will rise. In the rapidly moving world of high technology, the field is littered with failed organizations that didn't adapt to changes in their environment.
Clearly, a substantial amount of work on the part of many will be required. Editors and others working with journals will need to become more familiar with the Internet and the different tools that produce electronic documents. In addition, indices will need to be further developed. Economists will have to get used to supplying information for these databases. Simply putting a working paper or dataset on a local web site without entering the information in a database is analogous to libraries putting books on their shelves without entering it in their on-line catalog.
The AEA sponsors a number of programs that support the profession
beyond journals: their directories of economists, JOE, and the
indexing of the JEL and EconLit. Already, the directory, and JOE are
on-line (as is a home page with information about the association).
The AEA could help with many network initiatives. Some would be in
the nature of ``infrastructure,'' such as developing ``style sheets''
for Word, WordPerfect, and LaTeX, so that papers produced by these
word processing systems would have an identical look when placed in an
on-line journal (thus, no typesetting would be required, dramatically
reducing costs). Sessions at the AEA annual meeting on the nuts and
bolts of electronic publishing would rapidly increase economists'
human capital in this important area. To encourage other journals
to establish on-line archives of data and programs, the AEA should
establish an archive for the association's journals. The archive might
even be used for non-AEA journals. Another program would be to sponsor
a freely available on-line journal to demonstrate the model described
above, much like how the APA sponsors
PSYCOLOQUY,
or how the AMS
cooperates with the EJC. Finally,
the AEA should encourage its members it register their working papers
and on-line data in databases so that other researchers can find them.