%Paper: ewp-mic/9704001
%From: bparks@wuecona.wustl.edu
%Date: Fri, 4 Apr 97 15:13:39 CST

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\title{The Future Information Infrastructure in Economics
\thanks{William L. Goffe is Associate Professor of Economics and International
	Business, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
	Robert P. Parks is Associate Professor of Economics, Washington University,
	St. Louis, Missouri. Their e-mail addresses are Bill.Goffe@usm.edu and
	bparks@wuecona.wustl.edu, respectively.
	This paper can be found on the Internet, including an HTML version with
	active links to the Internet references given here, at
	$<$http://econwpa.wustl.edu/eprints/mic/papers/9704/9704001.abs$>$. In words,
	move to EconWPA at $<$http://econwpa.wustl.edu$>$, select the JEL category
	D1 - D4 (Microeconomics), then select April 1997, and then the abstract for
	this paper. The entry for the HTML version will be found near the bottom of
	this abstract page.}}


\author{William L. Goffe\\
%        Dept. of Economics and International Business\\
%        University of Southern Mississippi\\
%        Hattiesburg, MS 39406\\
%        {\tt Bill.Goffe@usm.edu}\\
\and
	Robert P. Parks\\
%        Department of Economics\\
%        Washington University\\
%        St. Louis, Missouri 63130\\
%        {\tt bparks@wuecona.wustl.edu}\\}
\\}

\maketitle


%\section{Introduction}

Computers have already changed the lives of economists. The estimation
of econometric models, the manipulation of data sets, word processing,
and literature searches through EconLit are just a few examples of
their impact.  However, computers attached to networks may dramatically
change our professional lives.  The profession is now beginning to
take full advantage of electronic mail and mailing lists, online
access to card catalogs and U.S. government data. However, these
changes may be only the beginning.  Economists are now starting to
participate in an online working paper culture, with more than 4,000
online working papers at last count; see {\it \citeANP{EconWPA}} and {\it
\citeANP{WoPEc}}. Back issues of six economics journals (including the {\it
American Economic Review} and the {\it Journal of Economic Perspectives})
are now available online ({\it \citeANP{JSTOR}}), and
a few other economics journals have current articles online (e.g.,
{\it \citeANP{AE}}).

An optimistic vision of the future might best be demonstrated with the
following vignette:

\begin{quote}
Dr. Smith, reading an article in the latest JPE online with his
PC in California, was surprised by a footnote that cited a recent
article in the AER. He clicked on the reference, searched the AER
article, and quickly found the results of a key regression. He had not
followed this literature for several years, and it was counter to his
experience. Opening up another window, he tapped into the AEA's online
archive for the paper's data set in Tennessee and retrieved them. He
then ran the regression, tried additional diagnostics, and modified the
specification. He was surprised to find that the results were quite
robust. Curious about other recent results in this literature, he
then moved to the paper's references and clicked his mouse on several
related papers to jump to their online versions via a hypertext link
(he was thankful those journals were online, as his small library did
not carry their paper versions). He then recalled that he could use
this procedure for a project he thought about long ago, if he could
remember where he saw the data set. He then opened up a window to the
AEA's index of data sets in economic publications (an outgrowth of
EconLit). He soon found the data set online at a journal archive in New
Zealand. He contacted one of his graduate students in Virginia and they
began an online audio conference. They opened their word processors in
``conference'' mode and began jointly and simultaneously outlining
and writing a new article---together editing, modifying, and pasting
new regressions results and graphs.\footnote{The final draft of this
paper was edited this way with Microsoft NetMeeting, and the increased
productivity was striking.} In an hour, they had a new paper partially
written.
\end{quote}

In short, a fully networked world could offer much easier access to the
working papers, articles, bibliographical information, and data that
lies at the heart of much research and teaching. Indeed, some of this
information is currently freely available at your desk through your
computer (and it can be printed locally if desired).  However,
the path to the future
is likely to be tumultuous. After all, technological change may not
only alter existing practices, but may usher in entirely different
institutional arrangements.
 In \citeN{Scovill}, a report written by librarians, authors and
 publishers, three scenarios of the future are described including
 two where some publishers perish.
The following scenarios are somewhat different
given the different focus for this paper.

In one scenario, the technology of moving and storing information
changes, but no fundamental change occurs in the relationships between
librarians, publishers and readers. Although information will flow over
networks, it will not be much more accessible. Instead, information will
still be tucked away in distant libraries where you have no privileges,
or at publishers' servers where you must purchase it. In this vision,
libraries and publishers will play roughly traditional roles---publishers
hold copyrights, libraries store information and journals, and they
and users may pay fees for the electronic copies of material. In short,
this future roughly maintains the status quo.

A second possibility is that scholarly material becomes freely available
on the Internet, but is unorganized and all but impossible to find. This
scenario
could be labeled
the ``Field of Dreams Approach''---put it out there, and they will find
it. This seems unlikely to us, since rational authors should quickly
realize that readers will not find their work. At last count, there
were tens of millions of web pages; one Internet search engine,{\it
\citeANP{AltaVista}}, recently found more than 1,000,000 documents
containing the word ``economic,'' and more than 5,000 with ``Adam
Smith.''
And in fact these publicly available web search engines only index a
``only a small, flawed,
arbitrary and not even random sample of what is on the web today...
31 million pages...out of as many as 150 million pages''
(\citeANP{Pike}, \citeyearNP{Pike}).

Even if commercial search engines improve their abilities to
sift the wheat from the chaff, it is doubtful that they will concentrate
much on the academic arena.  Authors who want their work to be read
will need to post their papers to a working paper archive like {\it
\citeANP{EconWPA}}, or register the paper with an index like {\it
\citeANP{WoPEc}}.

We argue for a better future, in which information will be easily found
and accessed. This paper offers a conceptual view of how computer
networks should change the way we work. The guiding philosophical
principle behind our discussion is that in academia, a primary goal
is the growth, acquisition, and dissemination of knowledge, which is
aided by the freest possible access to information produced by and
for academics. Many academic practices illustrate this approach:
publication of results, freely available material in libraries,
conferences open to all, non-profit maximizing academic organizations,
and free or inexpensive working papers.  Throughout our discussion,
it is important to keep this principle of greatest possible access to
academic information at the lowest possible cost in mind. From this
point of view, we examine the flow of information in the profession
and how it might change with the arrival of computer networks. We
begin by discussing the impact of computer networks and the information
technology on working papers, journals, libraries, data, and indices to
information. Then, we will look at altogether new opportunities which
may arise, and suggest a roadmap for moving to a networked world.

We hope that this paper will encourage debate in our profession about how
to organize the flow of information that is critical to our professional
lives. This paper also contains a brief overview of how networks
will influence academia; more details and speculation can be found
in \citeN{Okerson}, \citeN{Scovill}, \citeN{Peek}, \citeN{Hitchcock},
and many issues of the {\it \citeANP{JEP}}.  \citeN{Bailey} contains
a very extensive bibliography.


\section*{Journals}

The impact of computer networking technology on journals is well
explained by \citeN{Kahin}: ``Under the old model, publishers saw that
books and journals were manufactured and physically delivered; libraries
cataloged and archived books and journals from many publishers and
made them available to one user at a time.'' In that model, publishers
and libraries formed a pipeline between authors and readers, and to
some extent, publishers and libraries had a division of labor. But
``in the networked environment,'' Kahin writes, ``the pipeline model of
publishing collapses. Authors can speak directly to readers. Publishers
and libraries find themselves in the same business: providing access
to information.''

There are a number of different models for online
journals\footnote{We distinguish online journals from electronic
journals.  The JEL is available electronically on CD-ROM but not
via the Internet.} which have different implications for authors,
libraries and publishers (\citeANP{Grycz}, \citeyearNP{Grycz};
\citeANP{Harnad}, \citeyearNP{Harnad}; \citeANP{Odlyzko},
\citeyearNP{Odlyzko}). Among the most revolutionary is \citeN{Harnad},
who presents a view of how the entire journal industry may be upended
with the introduction of networks. Harnad first makes the distinction
between the ``trade'' and ``esoteric'' author. The trade author expects
to be paid for his work; journalists and writers of popular books are
trade writers in Harnad's sense, and so are academics when they write
textbooks.  The esoteric author resides almost entirely in academia:
the authors do not expect to be paid directly for their words; the
market for a particular work is very small; and they sometimes even pay
for their words to reach more readers (such as paying for and sending
reprints). Their pay is tied to their recognition and status, which
is indirectly gained from the words they write. Thus, esoteric authors
want their words to be as freely accessible as possible. Harnad writes:

\begin{quotation}
     The first step in getting the word to one's peers,
however, is to publish it at all, and in the Gutenberg age the only way
to do this was through the mediation of the slow and expensive medium
of printing and paper distribution. It was because of the high cost of
this, the only means of making one's ideas and findings public at all,
that esoteric authors have \ldots been willing to make the ``Faustian''
bargain of trading the copyright for their words in exchange for having
them published. ... So for the esoteric author, there was always a
conflict of interest built into the act of publishing: One wants to get
the words out there to everyone who might be interested, but one agrees
to erect a price-tag as a barrier, to cover the costs (not one's own,
but those of the publisher) and a fair return (again not to oneself,
but to the publisher who had incurred the costs).
\end{quotation}

Harnad then argues that ``with the advent of electronic publication,
the Faustian era for esoteric authors is now over. The per-page cost is
so much lower for purely electronic publication than for paper (if one
reckons it properly) that it no longer makes sense to recover it on the
subscriber model of trade publication.''  He details journal's costs,
where he speaks from experience---he edits both the paper journal
{\it Behavioral and Brain Sciences} and the online journal {\it
\citeANP{PSY}}, sponsored by the American Psychological Association
(APA). There are two components to costs: distribution costs and
``first copy'' costs (all the costs up to distribution). Distribution
costs for an online journal approach the trivial. Harnad argues that
the savings for first copy costs of a totally electronic journal over
a paper journal are on the order of 70-90\%.  Some find these cost
reductions implausible (\citeANP{Scovill}, \citeyearNP{Scovill}, p. 15),
but others, such as \citeN{Odlyzko}, are convinced.

A study by \citeN{Jog} of six academic journals shows that the average
journal in the study costs \$70,000 per year to produce.  Typesetting
(9\%), printing (28\%), and shipping (12\%) costs account for almost
50\% of the costs of the journal.  Administrative costs were 25\%,
while editorial expenses were 23\%. The paper-based costs of publication
would disappear with an online journal.  Some journal
administration can also be automated and handled electronically (but that
could also be done for a paper based journal). Editorial copy-editing
expenses can be reduced. For example, if authors are required to submit
the paper in a particular style format, then the journal's expenses
of preparing a paper for the typesetter can be substantially reduced.
Currently, authors with poorly copy-edited manuscripts are subsidized and
efficiency would dictate that the authors rather than subscribers bear
those costs.  Springer-Verlag sometimes requires submission of \LaTeX\
in a Springer style, and no copy-editing is done.  Kluwer has its own
\LaTeX\ style files.  Some math journals now reject any submission that
is not in AMS-\TeX\ and most psychology and education journals reject
submissions that are not in APA format.

Editorial text-editing costs do not change much in the electronic world.
The cost reduction debate may be mostly a question of how much editorial
text-editing is done by a journal---some journals do little or none
while others do a substantial amount.  In any event, we believe that
the costs of an online journal are easily 50\% less than those of a
hard copy based journal, and can be 100\% less. One excellent example
is the {\it \citeANP{EJC}} which is free and which has no direct costs.
Editors, and referees serve for free, there is no copy or text editing,
submissions are in \TeX, and software produces the journal.

Pricing electronic journals, when there are first copy costs,
brings up a number of interesting issues.
The knowledge in
journals represents a pure public good, as \citeN{Arrow} noted. Journals
themselves can be thought of as quasi-public goods because one can
subscribe to one personally, or go to the library and read a shared
one (\citeANP{Ordover}, \citeyearNP{Ordover}).  In Harnad's system,
journals become a pure public good (in distribution) with the cost of
providing this good borne by those who benefit the most from it: the
authors and their sponsors.  Although readers also benefit---not only
from the content of the paper but also from the selection mechanism
(editorial and referee process)---charging them reduces the readership
which the esoteric author does not want.  In addition, as pointed by
\citeN{Varian95}, electronic journals,
 with relatively high first copy costs in comparison to distribution costs,
 face
decreasing average costs, thus making it difficult to recover costs if
goods are priced at marginal cost. But, with Harnad's system, journals
are priced at zero and the costs (if any)
are borne by those who benefit the most.

Harnad proposes that the costs of producing an online journal can
be collected in several ways.  Professional societies, universities,
private foundations or the National Science Foundation might pay for the
first-copy costs of an online journal.  In effect, this means that the
public good is purchased through some manner of collective decision. A
second possibility is that journals would be supported by a small page
fee. This might be collected from either authors or their sponsors;
for example, most science journals impose page charges.  Or charges
might be collected from those who make the information accessible to
others, like libraries or universities. In any case, the works will
then be freely accessible and available to readers.\footnote{Note that
this does not necessarily mean the material is not copyrighted; rather,
the restrictions on use would simply fall---the rights holder permits
copying. This sort of copyright is common in some software, and the
best example is the \citeN{GNU} ``copyleft''---copying is permitted,
and the program can even be resold, but resellers cannot restrict further
copying.
Linux, claimed to be the world's second most popular version of
Unix and authored by thousands of volunteers around the world, is
``copylefted.''}
This makes sense from the standpoint of ``esoteric''
authors, who would like to have their material broadly available. Also,
since the marginal cost of distribution is close to zero, economic
theory would seem to argue that distribution at close to zero cost
would have desirable efficiency properties (if hard copy is desired,
then the individual reader bears the cost when they print out a copy).

It is also worth remembering that the cost of paper journals involves a
number of opportunity costs that go beyond their production cost. Even if
you have the journal in your office, you cannot search it electronically,
but instead you must look through indices for individual years. The
physical presence of a journal also takes up precious shelf space.
If you want to read just one article, you must still carry the
entire journal with you.  Getting a journal from the library entails
a round-trip of perhaps half an hour, assuming the journal is carried
by the library and it is correctly shelved and no one else is using it
including the bindery.  If a local copy is not available, inter-library
loan can take days or weeks. In the online world described above, any
journal can be read with just a few clicks of a mouse.  These costs
must be balanced against online costs---equipment costs, learning to
use electronic media, less portable media or local printing costs,
etc. However, those online costs are shrinking daily due to advancing
technology and general computer usage so that the balance is tipping
(quickly) against hard copy.

There are a growing number of totally online journals, including {\it
\citeANP{PSY}}, the {\it \citeANP{EJC}}, the {\it \citeANP{EJDE}}, and
{\it \citeANP{GaT}}.  All are freely available to readers, with first
copy costs supported by others when there are any first copy costs.
Hundreds of others are listed in \citeN{ARL}.

\section*{Working Papers}

Harnad's vision of completely free distribution of esoteric writing
is reality in the field of high energy physics. In 1990, a group of
high-energy physicists around the world were sending their research
papers to each other through electronic mail by using a list of
electronic mail addresses.  Paul Ginsparg, a physicist at Los Alamos
National Laboratories and a very competent programmer, created what
is now known as the {\it \citeANP{EPrint}}, at Los Alamos National
Laboratories. Submissions are made by authors, writing in \TeX\
or \LaTeX. From the submission, software automatically creates
PostScript and Acrobat PDF files (which are excellent electronic formats
for technical papers as they
readily display any graph or symbol). Readers access the system via the
Internet by e-mail, ftp, and WWW browsers.  E-mail notification lists
notify subscribers each day of new submissions.  Submissions are not only
electronically indexed (full body indexing as the submissions are made
in \TeX\ or \LaTeX), but citation references are created so that each
paper not only contains a list of references in the paper, but also a
list of works cited {\it by this paper}. Thus, each paper has its own
built-in citation index (see \citeANP{Ginsparg}, \citeyearNP{Ginsparg}).

This archive has been very successful. It is accessed about 70,000
times per day by over 35,000 users in 70 countries.  The number of
submissions to the most active area---high-energy physics-theory---is
typically over 200 a month. Over 30,000 preprints are stored. Most if
not all high-energy physicists no longer consult hard copy journals,
only the electronic archive, and some senior physicists are rumored to
no longer bother with paper publications. There are many reasons for this
success, not all of them applicable to the economics profession. The {\it
\citeANP{EPrint}} began with a core of fewer than 100 researchers who
used the archive; they all wrote using \TeX; they were technologically
adept at using e-mail; the peer review process for high energy physics
is such that most papers are published within six months with very few
revisions; hard copy preprints were very costly to some institutions
requiring budgets of \$20,000 or more; there was considerable
international involvement, or at least collaboration; and research
results were demanded on a timely basis (days rather than years).

One might think that with no peer review or selection process,
the archive would be cluttered with junk, much like the Usenet
physics newsgroups or the unmoderated economics newsgroup {\it
sci.econ}.\footnote{Usenet is an electronic discussion system, sometimes
known as news or netnews.  It is similar to e-mail disucssion lists,
but the messages are distributed with different technology.  Some of the
20,000 or so newsgroups suffer from junk, while others do not.} However,
in six years of operation, there is no junk (at least according to
Ginsparg).
The absence of junk may in part be due to the fact
that with e-mail and Usenet, communications are nearly immediate, require
far less effort than posting a paper, and are less formal than papers.

To get a handle on the possible cost savings from electronic
publication we compare the cost of the {\it \citeANP{EPrint}} at the
Los Alamos to the costs of the AER.
The {\it
\citeANP{EPrint}} was established with at most a couple of weeks of
Paul Ginsparg's time writing the software that handles the archive's
functions automatically, and originally was hosted on a machine which
he also used for other purposes.  The current cost for storage alone
is less than six cents per paper, and less than sixty cents per paper per
year including maintenance and depreciation.\footnote{27,000 papers
can easily be stored on a 9 gigabyte disk drive which costs \$1600
or 5.9 cents per paper.  If the drive is replaced every four years,
and we include a \$3400 computer every four years, and 100 hours per
year maintenance of a \$25 per hour system administrator, the total
costs for four years is \$11,600 or 55.5 cents per year per paper.}

 A much higher estimate of the cost can be made using the 1995 NSF
 grant to the archive.  By  unfairly attributing all of the
 \$1,069,900 34 month grant to the archive's operating costs (
 \$31,468 per month), and dividing by a typical month's
 submissions, 1,363 in February of 1997, we have \$23.09 per
 paper.  For 1995, \citeN{Hinshaw}
reports the budgeted expenses of the
AER
were approximately \$967,000, and in that year, the AER published 175
articles, including long and short articles, comments and proceedings,
which is an average cost of \$5,622 per article.  \citeN{Ashenfelter}
reports that printing and mailing costs were \$447,709 (46\% of total
costs, in line with Jog's estimate), or \$2,603 per article
Thus, by either, average total costs (\$5,622 to \$23.09), or average
distribution costs (\$2,603 to sixty cents), there is a very substantial
difference in costs.



Admittedly, this comparison---which is almost too sketchy even to qualify
as back-of-the-envelope---has biases.  The AER includes an editorial,
referee and copy-editing process; in 1995, the AER processed 919 papers
or \$565 per submission (\$519,291 for non-distribution costs divided by
919 submissions).  The {\it \citeANP{EPrint}} publishes working papers
(preprints) as they are.  These comparisons also do not include
shelf space, time, and search costs, etc. for hard copy,
or equipment or learning
costs on the electronic side.  Nonetheless, the difference in cost
is striking, and quite supportive of the notion that a fully online
journal can bring dramatic reductions in cost.


\section*{Other Issues of Online Distribution}

Moving to an online world involves a number of issues for the
profession.
For example, how might electronic
publication affect the quantity of economics papers and journals?
Although technology has made it easier to write papers, especially joint
authorship (using networks rather than hard copy systems), it still takes
a substantial amount of time to write a paper and the underlying reasons
for writing one more paper have  not changed.  Our guess is that the
quantity of output of economists is unlikely to substantially change.
However, the number of journals could either rise or fall dramatically.
With space limitations no longer a constraint, prominent journals could
choose to expand in size, or perhaps once papers are be posted to a
well-known archive, prominent economists will follow their physics
brethren in not bothering with paper publication. These trends would
reduce the number of journals. Conversely, it is possible that the low
costs of electronic publication could cause a number of specialized
journals to spring up.

Indeed, it seems plausible to us that electronic publication could be the
savior of many journals that are either highly specialized, or appear
at the middle or lower levels of journal rankings.  Many libraries,
under great budget pressure, are now canceling subscriptions to these
journals. Without the opportunity to maintain broad availability at
lower cost through online publication, many of these journals could fold,
much as the scholarly monograph market has in other areas of academia.

A number of issues revolve around the question of how readers will find
the material they are seeking in an networked world.  Consider the {\it
\citeANP{EPrint}} with some 16,000 submissions per year, all of which
are available on your desktop computer.  Economics certainly produces
a similar number of working papers each year.  Just because you don't
receive all of them does not mean that you have an optimal selection
method currently.  At least with online distribution, we can eliminate
one inefficient selection mechanism---the cost of hard copy distribution.

Journals will probably provide one important selection mechanism.
After all, most of the value of a hard copy journal is in its
refereeing and editorial process and this will not change; online
journals will provide the same services. In addition, an online journal
can assure the reader it has the most up-to-date or final version of
an article, along with any comments on it.
More importantly, current hard copy journals, due to publication lags,
provide little selection for current (less than a year old) research.
As online journals will least avoid publication lags and backlogs
of the hard copy world, their selection services will be far more timely.

There are other means of search and selection than by journals. For
example, notification lists can be sent by e-mail, either from a
server or directly from the author. Electronic search mechanisms can
easily be set up to search by JEL subject category or by a group of
keywords. Electronic journals could count how often its papers are
accessed, or how often they were cited in another paper.  Another
possibility would use the feedback from earlier readers as a guide
for later ones. Readers could rate papers or articles, and you would
consult the ratings to limit your search of interesting articles. Such a
 system has existed on the Net for movies since 1991
 ({\it \citeANP{Movie}}); more recently {\it \citeANP{WiseWire}} (general
 web filtering) and {\it \citeANP{FireFly}} (music) have appeared
 and more are under development (\citeANP{VarianC},
 \citeyearNP{VarianC}) including one for academic articles
 (\citeANP{VarianIE}, \citeyearNP{VarianIE}).


While many hi-tech solutions have been proposed, it is interesting to
note that on the {\it \citeANP{EPrint}} at Los Alamos, there are no such
selection tools, in spite of more than 1,300 submissions in a month.
Apparently, physicists have little trouble sorting through this number
to find what is interesting and important.
Finally, although navigating the online world is sure to have its
frustrations, these should be placed in context.  After all, current
methods of finding material are messy as well; waiting for working
papers or journals to arrive, talking with local and remote colleagues,
checking the JEL, and visiting the library.  Even an imperfect online
world will likely be preferable to the present.

Yet another cluster of issues revolve around whether online journals
will maintain certain levels of quality.  Anyone can start an online
journal, while hard copy journals require significant startup effort.
As with hard copy journals, authors will submit to and readers will read
online journals that have high quality articles and they will ignore
those that do not.  The reputations of online journals, however,
will depend more heavily on what they publish than who publishes
them. Also, how will promotion, tenure, and annual review committees
regard electronic publications? The United Kingdom has legislated
that in review of grants, electronic publications must be weighted
equally with hard copy publications. In the hard copy world, authors
are willing to revise a number of times because without such revision,
their paper does not receive wide distribution through a journal. But
if wide distribution is possible without such revision, the pressure
for honing an article may be reduced. While pressures for high quality
and hence reputation will likely prevail, the transition may be bumpy.

For the short run, mixed paper and online journals are likely, with the
online versions simply being an electronic version of the hard copy
based journal.\footnote{There are many mixed journal projects: Johns
Hopkins Press along with its collaborators have {\it \citeANP{Muse}};
Elsevier and nine U.S. universities have {\it \citeANP{Tulip}};
Academic Press has {\it \citeANP{IDEAL}}; and Kluwer and Dutch
libraries have {\it \citeANP{Pica}}. \citeANP{CH} has a number of its
print journals available online.} Libraries and publishers tend to
see the online future as simply adding another distribution method to
their customers.\footnote{Individually and together they are working
on a number of projects that add distribution of their material by
networks. The NSF, NASA and ARPA are funding the \$24 million Digital
Libraries program at Carnegie Mellon, the University of California
(Berkeley), the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois,
the University of California (Santa Barbara), and Stanford University
(\citeANP{NSF}, \citeyearNP{NSF}); perhaps the largest move is a number
of British publishers will make hundreds of their journals available
online through U.K. libraries (\citeN{Hitchcock}).} Librarians see one
more demand on their budgets from paper journals who charge extra for
the electronic version.  However, we believe that in the long run
something like Harnad's model of widespread online journals is both
plausible and desirable. If that model comes to pass, then the current
business model of libraries and publishers---which is based on paying
for subscriptions---must change.

Finally, there is the obvious problem in the online world of making
connections to the ``installed base'' of paper journals. The Mellon
Foundation has funded some interesting work with
{\it \citeANP{JSTOR}}
where they have taken back issues in a number of economics, ecology,
political science and history journals and used optical character
recognition (OCR) technology to create electronic versions. Details
can be found in Varian's paper in this issue.


\section*{Databases, Access to Data, and Indices}

There is a striking difference between the amount of external reviewing
received by the typical journal article, and the amount received by the
data sets and programs underlying the article. Many published papers
are refereed by at least two reviewers, yet the foundation of many
papers---the data sets and the programs that use the data sets---are
very rarely reviewed.  There is little reason not to require publishing
data sets---journals certainly would not publish theorems without
their proofs, so why publish empirical results without their evidence?
It appears that the availability and quality of data and programs used
in many publications are suspect. As described by \citeN{Dewald} for
the JMCB Project, only 35\% of authors asked by the editor to supply
programs and data after publication did so.  Of the data sets collected,
only 15\% were judged to be complete.  Replications were attempted
with the data sets from nine papers, and only two articles could be
replicated exactly and another two quite closely.  \citeN{Anderson}
found generally similar results. But, if journals require authors
to place their data sets online, clearly availability would improve,
and likely quality as well, as the
empirical
work could be reviewed publicly.

A primary reason for the lack of access to data, of course, has been
the previous technological difficulty of distributing data. However, it
is now possible to archive data and programs. In fact, three economics
journals, the {\it \citeANP{JBES}}, the {\it \citeANP{JAE}}, and the {\it
\citeANP{StLFed}} strongly request or require data sets to be archived
at their sites before the article is published. \citeN{Anderson}
reports the St. Louis Fed's experience of requesting data sets and
programs {\it ahead} of time: ``Authors generally found it imposed
little burden to submit data and programs with their manuscripts so
long as they were aware of the requirement in advance.'' In addition,
the JBES and JAE seem to have had little difficulty in obtaining data
sets since the request is also made before publication.

Some argue that authors should restrict access to their data sets,
but except for a very few cases involving proprietary or confidential
data sets, the freest possible disclosure of information seems more
appropriate. The NSF mandates public disclosure of data from studies
they fund, and much of it is available online at the Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research. The
{\it Publication Manual
of the APA} tells its members to retain
their data for a minimum of five years, and to make it available to
all ``competent professionals'' as long as confidentiality and legal
restrictions are upheld (\citeANP{APA}, \citeyearNP{APA}, pp. 283,
298). \citeN{Disc} makes data from its newest series of space probes,
the Discovery series, available when the data is collected. One suspects
that these organizations have made an implicit cost-benefit calculation
of their decisions, and have come out in favor of open access to data.
Finally, closer to home, the official policy of the AER is to publish
only papers with data that is ``clearly and precisely documented and
readily available.'' An online archive would implement this policy
directly.

Online archives for data sets and programs are likely to change some
professional incentives. As noted by \citeN{Hare} and countless
other economists, those who generate data seldom receive much
credit. Currently, the best way to receive a return from generating data
is to use the data in a published article. But in the networked world,
journals can archive data sets used in published articles and could even
have sections {\it solely} devoted to publishing data sets. Someday
perhaps a citation to an author's  data will be a worthwhile addition
to her vita.

Computer networks have already changed access to many types of data. For
example, U.S. government agencies offer a substantial amount of data
through the Internet. With the exception of the Commerce Department's
Bureau of Economic Analysis, data is freely available. This access is all
but mandated by OMB Circular A-130 (\citeANP{OMB}, \citeyearNP{OMB}),
and section 3506.d of the more recent \citeANP{PRA}. Both state and
local governments in the United States, and international agencies such
as the IMF and OECD that receive U.S. funds, should be encouraged to
follow the U.S. example in disclosure of data. After all, as this data
is first produced for policy makers, the marginal cost of putting it
online is quite low.

To find publications, working papers and data sets, directories
or databases are essential. Without them, one is effectively in a
library without a card catalog. Several indices for information for
economists on the Internet already exist: {\it \citeANP{rfe}} and {\it
\citeANP{WebEc}} are two general indices; {\it \citeANP{BibEc}} is a
database of hard copy working papers; {\it \citeANP{WoPEc}}
is bibliographic database of online working papers; {\it
\citeANP{EconWPA}} is an automated archive of online working papers;
 {\it \citeANP{CodEc}} and {\it \citeANP{ELSA}} are databases
of programs in economics; and {\it \citeANP{GAMS}} lists 10,000
mathematical and statistical programs. There are also many
specialized databases that cover specific subfields, interests and topics
(which are described in {\it \citeANP{rfe}} and {\it \citeANP{WebEc}}).

While economists are understandably skeptical about monopoly providers,
a single database for each type of information may well be preferable
to multiple, partially overlapping or disjoint indices.  After all, single
databases appear to work reasonably well for the phone system, most
libraries and for Internet hosts (the Domain Name System, or DNS,
which lies at the heart of the Internet). We believe that just as
the AEA has taken the lead in setting up JEL classification codes for
indexing articles, it has a role to play in supporting and developing
electronic databases for the benefit of its members.


\section*{Teaching}

It is difficult to predict how the online world will affect teaching
beyond providing articles, working papers, and data sets.  Currently
some publishers are supplementing principles texts with online sites
that have both instructor aids and material for students, including
biweekly current event exercises, news notification services, mailing
lists, PowerPoint slides online, and lists of web sites. There are e-mail
discussion lists for teaching\footnote{The largest seems to be TCH-ECON.
To subscribe, send e-mail to $<$majordomo@majordomo.elon.edu$>$ with
{\it subscribe tch-econ} in the body of the message.} and many local
lists for interaction between students and instructors.  One of us
requires that the book and the lectures be evaluated each week via
e-mail.  Many economists now post syllabi, previous tests, exercises,
and exam results on web sites.

There are beginnings of online textbooks such as {\it \citeANP{ooMicro}}
(an intermediate micro book)
and {\it \citeANP{McCain}}
(a principles book). Whether these will replace, or just supplement
current hard copy textbooks is uncertain. {\it \citeANP{Expernomics}} is
an online and hard copy journal with articles concerning the use of
experiments in teaching economics. For example, the latest issue contains
an experiment which demonstrates the effects on real
aggregate output of anticipated versus unanticipated monetary policy.  The
{\it \citeANP{Budgetsim}} is a simple but well done simulation to show
trade offs in balancing the budget. The {\it \citeANP{Iem}},
used in more
than 70 classes in 30 universities, has actual money futures contracts
which depend on economic and political events---participating in the
market provides
students with real incentives (a \$5 to \$500 investment is required to
participate
in the markets) to learn about markets and follow economic,
financial and political news.
The {\it \citeANP{Electioncalc}} allows one to enter information about the
state of the economy to forecast the winner of presidential elections,
and the {\it \citeANP{Fairmodel}}, developed by Ray C. Fair,
can be used to forecast the economy, adjusting various policy or even
structural components.  Of course most government agencies have web pages
so that, for example, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury can be
directly consulted in teaching about money.
Thus, networks mean that resources invested in developing material for
class can be made available for others at little cost.  Hence, we can
imagine selecting from multiple sources to compile a personalized online
textbook, and certainly a personalized online collection of online
articles, similar to what is done now in hard copy.

Further in the future, videos of lectures for students who miss
class, or videos of lectures from the best people in the field can
be distributed.  Even Nobel lectures can be made available, as well
as sessions from meetings.  The technology for all of this now exits,
only implementation and use remain.



\section*{New Opportunities}

In the near future, computer networking is likely to change our
profession's access to data, journals, and working papers. This section
discusses changes that are further off. Some seem fairly certain;
others are frankly speculative.

Currently, journals are constrained by the medium of paper. While paper
is convenient and time tested, it also has limitations. For instance,
color is quite costly to use and motion is impossible. With an online
journal, color is as easy to display as black and white, and animation
is straightforward. While animation sounds like a silly thing for an
academic paper, consider how changes in the yield curve over time could
be displayed with an animation where each second a new day's curve is
shown---see {\it \citeANP{Holden}} for an actual example.
Another example is
the animation of complicated graphs, as illustrated by
{\it \citeANP{ooMicro}},
a complete interactive intermediate micro text. When graphs are animated
with changes in key parameters, the underlying concepts are much easier
to understand.

Another limitation of paper is that connections within and between papers,
such as references, citations, and endnotes, range from distracting to
difficult-to-use.  With online journals and papers, a reference becomes a
clickable entry, and notes can pop up rather than lurking at the bottom of
the page or end of the paper.  In a world of online journals, this change
can be far-reaching.  For example, not only can an article contain
references to past works, but also a list of works which cite {\it it}.
For example, the abstract page of {\it \citeANP{EPrint}} is
\citeN{Schoutens} offers ``{\it refers to}'' and ``{\it cited by}'' links,
where ``{\it refers to}'' is a link to the usual sort of references within
the paper, while ``{\it cited by}'' is a link to papers that cite {\it
this} paper.  There are 30 citations there, nine from papers written in
1996, and 29 available online.  It takes only a moment to click backward
and more importantly forward through the literature.  In effect, the {\it
Social Science Citation Index} is built into the article---automatically.
This may even lead to new ways of valuing scholarship, where citations to a
paper are more valued than the original place of publication.  At an
extreme, this can even lead to an unrefereed literature, which would be a
literature where the quality evaluation is made by readers after
publication rather than by referees beforehand.

Online journals also offer the possibility of linking present articles to
future comments and references, and thus ushering in a new style of
scholarly communication.  For example, in the {\it \citeANP{EJC}},
\citeN{Alber} was accepted and put online in early May 1995.  The authors
posted a comment in late May 1995 and a mistake in a proof was noted in a
comment on September 19, 1995.  In the hard copy world, it might have been
a year or two before the mistake was published.  Even then, most readers of
the original article would fail to see the mistake as it would appear in a
separate issue, and the original paper issue cannot refer to a later
publication.  But in an electronic journal, present comments can refer back
to a past article, and past articles can refer ahead to future comments.  A
more general version of this interaction is \citeANP{Harnad}'s
\citeyear{Harnad} ``scholarly skywriting,'' which he defines as ``rapid
electronic interaction'' that ``allows authors to interact directly with
their peers at a tempo that keeps pace with the speed of thought (paper
publication being hopelessly slow for it, and spontaneous speech, as in a
live symposium, being perhaps too fast...).'' This sort of interaction is
already occurring in {\it \citeANP{PSY}}.

Communication patterns between referees and authors might shift
considerably as a result of online journals.  Consider a refereeing
system based on an anonymous remailer; that is, an e-mail system
which takes incoming mail, strips off all identifying information,
and forwards it to the recipient. For example, say that an author
posts a paper on {\it \citeANP{EconWPA}}, and then submits the
paper to a journal by filling out its online submission form.
The form is processed by software at the journal site, which assigns
a manuscript number and identifies a set of potential referees. The
referee information and manuscript number are e-mailed to the journal
editor, who selects two referees.  The manuscript number is sent to
both referees and the author, and the referees access the paper on
the archive.  They use the manuscript number in reporting back to the
journal, whose software archives their comments, forwards them to the
editor who can then automatically forward the comments to the author.
Now the referees and the author could communicate anonymously by sending
e-mail to the journal site, which redistributes it anonymously. More
importantly, the author and referees can discuss the problems in the
paper, in-line rather than with such referencing as ``at page 4 line 8,
such and such...'' Notice that this refereeing process involves little
administrative expense at the journal; no secretary need be involved
in transmitting the reports back and forth. In the future, anonymous
``talk'' and writing sessions could
even
be used, and even anonymous audio
sessions where the voice is distorted to keep anonymity will be possible.
Whether this improves and/or speeds the referee process remains to
be seen.  The point is that it is possible and involves little  cost.

To date their work unambiguously, academics could adopt ``digital
time stamps'' to reduce the debates over when ideas were developed
and could even be a weapon against plagiarism. For discussions of
some possibilities, see \citeN{Haber} and \citeANP{PGP}. However,
the greatest deterrent to plagiarism is notoriety---online working
paper archives with notification and search technologies provide the
easiest means to greater notoriety, and hence the greatest deterrent
to plagiarism. While some worry about plagiarism of their online papers,
note that with current technology (scanners and OCR software), plagiarism
from hard-copy works is quite easy today.


\section*{Moving to an Online World}

For existing economics journals, and potential journals of the future,
the benefits of electronic publication are clear: a combination of lower
cost, potentially higher visibility for editors and authors, and easier
access to information for readers. In a rapidly moving technological
world, some journals will ride their electronic versions to a greater
prominence; and other journals will diminish in status by a failure to
adapt to the online possibilities.

For a journal thinking about going online, perhaps the first step
is to consider the front end---how papers are processed before
publication. The costs savings are likely to be considerable if the
processes of submission, copyediting, reviewing, and so on can be as
fully electronic as possible.  Although it seems extremely unlikely that
economists will move to a common word processing system, a journal could
insist on electronic submission in one of a few popular formats---say
Word, WordPerfect, and \TeX\ or \LaTeX\----that cover the vast majority
of economists. Authors who insist on using other formats will then bear
the costs of that decision, as they should. Using the sophisticated
``style sheets'' of these word processing systems, all authors would
submit papers in the ``look and style'' of the journal.

For a journal considering the back end problem of online distribution,
it would be wise to use standard Internet tools\footnote{Many of these
tools are freely available.
 While this may seem odd to economists,
it partly stems from the Internet's genesis as a research and
educational network. Some is done as a hobby by extremely skilled
individuals (perhaps one of the few hobbies whose benefits can
be enjoyed by millions), and for others the indirect pecuniary
returns can be very substantial as these projects advertise skills
to potential employers. Finally, note that the math and physics
professions depend upon \TeX\ and \LaTeX\ for their word processing;
these are freely available
and are developed by volunteers.}
such as web browsers,
HTML and Adobe's Acrobat (PDF) format.  HTML stands for
``HyperText Markup Language.'' Web pages are written in it, so it
describes their elements: text, graphics, and links to other web
pages and various media. Unfortunately, it is not the ideal method of
displaying technical material since HTML does not natively support many
mathematical symbols. Acrobat PDF (portable document format, invented
by Adobe Corporation) is designed as ``digital paper.'' Thus, it can
accurately replicate any sort of table or mathematical expression,
and even supports color, movies, sound, links within and to external
web sites, and can be fully indexed; it is ideal for technical papers.
Adobe gives away ``readers'' for PDF that work closely with web browsers.
The programs that generate PDF files are quite flexible.
			 These tools are rich enough to support almost
anything economists might wish to do.

Even the largest journals can be put online; one vivid example is
the {\it \citeANP{AJEE}}, as described by \citeN{Boyce}. The AJEE
publishes approximately 25,000 pages per year. A chief online design
goal was to handle this material with as little human intervention
as possible. To achieve this, each party to the publication process
had to participate. The authors must submit in AAS\TeX\ (a version
of \LaTeX), with the papers structured by title, author, abstract,
sections, and references. Using this structure, the submitted article
is automatically transcribed into Standardized General Markup Language
(SGML), and the database of references to the extant literature is
automatically linked and checked.
The typesetter does their copy-editing
in SGML. From the SGML, both hard copy and online versions are created.

Clearly, a substantial amount of work on the part of many in our
profession 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. Indices will need to be further
developed, and economists will have to get used to supplying information
for these databases.

The AEA already sponsors a number of programs that support the
profession, in addition to its three journals: a directory of
economists, {\it \citeANP{JobOpeningsforEconomics}} (JOE), and
the indexing of the JEL and EconLit. The directory and JOE are
online (as is a home page with information about the association;
see the {\it \citeANP{AEA}}) and the JEL is distributed on CD-ROM
in Acrobat format.
We believe that the AEA could help its members with additional
network initiatives.
At a minimum, the AEA
should encourage its members to put their papers online, in archives
such as {\it \citeANP{EconWPA}}, or at least register their working
papers in indices such as {\it \citeANP{WoPEc}} so that other
researchers can find them.  It should also encourage authors to
place their data sets in online archives ({\it \citeANP{EconWPA}}
has a section for data sets) and begin their own data and program
archive for their three journals.

There are a number of relatively minor programs the AEA could undertake.
For instance, sessions
at the AEA annual meeting on the nuts
and bolts of electronic publishing could increase economists' human
capital in this important area.
Another step would be
for the AEA to promote development of ``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
online journal.
In a ``baby-step'' toward electronic publishing,
the AEA program could be put online rather than taking up valuable journal
space in the September issue of the AER, and even the entire ASSA Program could
be put online before the meeting.  The Econometric Society did that
for their program this year (see {\it \citeANP{Econometricprogram}}).

The AEA should take a real step towards electronic journals by publishing
the {\it Papers and Proceedings} online.  Currently, only about one
quarter of the AEA seesions are published and those papers that
are published are severly limited in size.  The papers are not
refereed nor is there much editing of the manuscripts.  They are
mostly limited to text with few tables or graphs.  The printing cost
alone is high (\$109,457 for the 1995 issue, \citeNP{Ashenfelter}).
Although the {\it Papers and Proceedings} appear in May, five
months is a substantial lag given the nature of the papers
(presentations, unrefereed and unedited).  We believe that with
electronic submissions (requiring authors or their secretaries to
submit in an AEA style and format), the {\it Papers and Proceedings}
could appear by the first of March, or it could appear in May but
with more refereeing and editing.  There would be no limitations on
size nor on graphs or tables.  The cost savings and experience gained
would provide a basis for putting the other AEA publications online.
Along with publishing the {\it Papers and Proceedings} online,
the AEA should put accepted papers online similar to what the {\it
\citeANP{JournalofFinance}} does.  It has had enormous success.

Another example of how the AEA's costs could be lowered with networks
is by electronic collection of the bibliographical material for the JEL
and EconLit.  Currently, much of this material is typed in. Instead,
journals could submit the material electronically (many already have it
from their production process), and the JEL would process this input for
inclusion into its database. With a sufficient number of journals doing
this, the fall in costs would be so substantial that EconLit could become
freely available. While some costs are transferred to journals, they also
benefit with greater notoriety of their results. Ultimately, journals that
do not participate would be excluded from the the JEL and EconLit.
This database would become more useful to members if it were
integrated with online material.  For example, the {\it
\citeANP{AJEE}} uses the {\it \citeANP{ADS}} in its citations and
bibliographies, and the {\it \citeANP{EPrint}} uses
the {\it \citeANP{SLAC}}
physics database.

Finally, the AEA might consider sponsoring a complete freely
available online journal, similar to the way that the
APA
sponsors {\it \citeANP{PSY}},
or the American Mathematical Society cooperates with the {\it
\citeANP{EJC}}. By providing a template for how this could be done,
an electronic AEA journal would surely help the establishment of
electronic journals across the profession.

\section*{Conclusion}

Steven Harnad (in Okerson and O'Donnell, 1995, p. 90) observed: ``For
scholars and scientists, paper is not an end but a means. It has served
us well for several millennia, but it would have been surprising indeed
if this manmade medium had turned out to be optimal for all time.''

This paper is a first look at how the information infrastructure
for economists will change with the Internet. Since the birth of our
profession, most of our interaction has taken place through the exchange
of paper, but that era is ending. While some changes to an electronic
world might be long in coming, and while there may be some confusion
along the way, the ultimate outcome will be exciting and generate
many benefits. From working papers to journals to teaching to data,
the ultimate changes will be profound---a new era of easy and open
access to the information that lies at the heart of what we do.
 As a guiding light, it will be wise to keep the key academic
principle of the freest possible access to information in mind. During
this period of technological change, there will be many opportunities
for innovative and enterprising individuals and institutions---all that
remains is for them to grab the brass ring.

\mbox{ }
\vspace{.2in}
\mbox{ }


$\bullet$ We are in great debt to Tim Taylor and the other editors for
	extensive comments and suggestions on previous drafts. We owe them
	a beer. We would also like to thank, without implicating, Mark
	Dickie, James T. Lindley, Frank Mixon, and participants at the
	Second International Conference on ``Computing in Economics and
	Finance'' in Geneva, June, 1996 for helpful comments.







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