The Future of Cyber-Based Resources in Communication: The Anatomy of an Opinion
John A. Courtright
Department of Communication
University of Delaware
Editor, Communication Quarterly
Because of my current position as Editor of Communication Quarterly, the Editors of ACJ have invited me to comment (“speculate” would be more accurate) on the impact that existing and soon-to-be-developed cyber-based resources will have on the type of communication research that is published in CQ. I also have been asked to share my thoughts about the future of print-based journals in our discipline. These are interesting and serious questions for which ready, objective answers are obviously unavailable. If objective data are not available, then a subjective opinion must suffice, but an opinion based on what?
Experiences form opinions, of course. Almost from the moment I received this invitation to speculate, I have had my opinion well-formed and readily available. What has changed numerous times and created several false starts is, What set of experiences I would employ to support that opinion? In fact, after all but completing this essay, I decided to discard my musings and begin anew. The result, I believe, is a somewhat stronger essay; at the very least, I am more comfortable with defending what I have written.
Equally important, my struggles (recall, not to find an opinion, but to support it) have provided me with a more coherent way to share it with others. What I wish to do is to relate the conceptual wrestling match that preceded this essay in the hope that my emerging thinking will lead others to a similar conclusion. Let me begin with my opinion (after all, that came first) and then outline my several trial runs at supporting it.
I am more than a bit sad to report that my 18 months as Editor of CQ has made me quite pessimistic about the widespread adoption and use of cyber-based resources, at least in any foreseeable future. Perhaps as a consequence, I believe the print-based journal is here to stay for a long time. That said, I have mixed reactions about these two observations. I was very surprised and somewhat disappointed by the experiences that led to my first conclusion; I am equivocal in my reaction to the second.
I have no doubt that many of the regular readers of ACJ will vehemently disagree with these positions. You almost certainly consider yourselves to be reasonably competent users of a variety of communication technologies and cyber-based resources. Moreover, I suspect you are convinced of their utility and importance to your research, your teaching, and our society as a whole. Although I would like to share many of those beliefs, my experience as an Editor, as well as a practicing communication researcher, has prompted me instead to question them.
In order for the readers of this essay to have some basis for evaluating my experiences and subsequent opinion, I believe some introductory descriptions are in order. What type of scholarship does CQ publish? Who are the authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members? And finally, what is this Editor's attitude toward computers, communication technology, and cyber-based resources?
Once these brief descriptions are completed, I will share some of the experiences that have informed my relatively pessimistic outlook. Finally, I will offer a few suggestions for moving our journals and their readers a bit further along into the cyber-age.
Perhaps the best summary of where the scholarship published in CQ would be placed within the discipline of Communication is found on the “Editor's Page” that appears in each issue:
The Editor is committed to maintaining the philosophy of his predecessors concerning an openness to a wide variety of approaches to the study of human communication. Regardless of the epistemological or methodological position that is taken the primary criterion of acceptability for publication will be the quality of the scholarship in the manuscript.
Eclectic to say the least! The published research in CQ is qualitative, quantitative, rhetorical, pedagogical, interpersonal, oriented toward mass media, and (eventually I have to leave out somebody's research interest) lots more. As a result, submissions to and eventual publications in CQ represent a true cross-section of the topics and issues scholars are studying in the discipline of communication. To take this ecumenical spirit even further, CQ accepts and publishes articles in both APA and MLA style.
Given this wide range of approaches to numerous topics, the membership of the Editorial Board is also representative of the many constituencies within our discipline. Board members have specialties that range from ancient rhetorical theory to contemporary communication technology, with over forty others falling somewhere in between. When coupled with the occasional reviewers that are always necessary, these individuals look like a microcosm of the several thousand other scholars and teachers who have allied themselves to study human communication behavior and processes.
So, what about the Editor? I would call myself a true (but not fanatical) technophile, having been involved with computing and technology since the days when the only input medium was punch cards and the only place where one could process words was in one's head. Since that time, I have been an early adopter—both personally and professionally—of almost every new communication technology that has come along. Moreover, I study communication technology, I use that technology in my teaching, and I am an advocate of its use by my colleagues and students.
Equally important, I am fortunate to work at a University and in a Department where communication technology is highly valued and frequently used. My departmental colleagues and I are as technologically current as any department can financially afford to be, and with few exceptions, my colleagues share my attitudes about the utility of that technology to their professional endeavors.
My initial attempt to flesh out my cyber-doubts was based almost exclusively on my 18 months of experiences as Editor of CQ. I had entered the Editorship with high hopes for bringing a modicum of technology to the administration and production of the journal. After all, we're in Communication. We should be leaders in the use of communication technology. Couldn't I reasonably assume that basic and accepted technological tools such as e-mail, attachments, electronic publishing, and the like could be put to good use to save money, speed turn-around time on manuscripts, and generally make the entire administration of the journal more efficient? The answer, it turns out, was a resounding “No.”
Hence, in my first draft of this essay—the one that was all but finished—I shared a variety of anecdotes about the inability or unwillingness of others to employ these basic electronic tools. I wrote about colleagues who didn't use e-mail and had no intention of doing so; about researchers whose campuses didn't support e-mail that contained attachments; about several others whose computer systems were quite capable, but they personally were not; about individuals whose departments couldn't afford the expense of the paper to print attachments when received; and about a printing company that actually charged more when the journal was received electronically than when we mailed them a hardcopy.
In retrospect, I was hopelessly naïve. My experiences as an Editor have shown me that many of our colleagues in Communication are personally and materially (i.e., hardware and software) unable to take advantage of current technology, let alone whatever innovations may be appearing in the near future.
I chose not to pursue this line of thinking for two reasons. First, the more I wrote the more I felt these anecdotes were too critical, perhaps even too personal. I had no right to find fault with the skills of my colleagues, the vast majority of whom I respect and admire as scholars and teachers. Besides, I was going to lose some friends and make several enemies.
My second reason for abandoning this approach was more personal. Granted, a disconcertingly large number of the folks I have encountered as Editor have been lacking in basic technology skills. Not surprisingly, they don't make use of cyber-based and on-line resources, because they can't. But then I thought of myself. I am reasonably adept with those same tools. I have at my disposal all of the hardware, software, and free access that any scholar in any discipline could conceivably want. I have constructed Web pages, created along with a colleague a totally on-line course for our majors, and taught multimedia presentation skills numerous times. Yet despite over 20 years of using technology in many ways, I don't make use of those resources either.
Oh sure, I browse the Web occasionally, and I check out various professional sites where I can pick up some tips for my teaching, but I don't use either on-line or cyber-based resources (assuming the two are different) in my research. Why not? More importantly, if somebody who has the skills and opportunity to access these resources chooses not to, how can I or anybody else expect other colleagues to be more active?
Now we have, I believe, the beginnings of an interesting question. More importantly, this would seem to be a question that I might actually answer. Let me try.
The pessimism I have outlined above is heightened by my perceptions that relatively few cyber-based resources are available-resources, at least, that might be more than of marginal assistance to a communication scholar.
Certainly, the use of electronic communication such as e-mail has the potential to make collaboration across distances much more rapid and more efficient. That said, my experiences concerning the unwillingness or inability to use attachments make me question just how fully that potential is being exploited. I can just imagine e-mail messages that say, “I put my sections of the manuscript in the mail today. Let me know when they arrive.”
In a similar fashion, there is an extremely large number of Web sites that might potentially be of interest to communication scholars, with arguably the most complete listing found on the Web pages of the American Communication Association. Having explored these various listings, I found them to range in utility from complete published articles (for example, the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior ), to gopher archives with minimal information, to (sorry to report) dead links. Granted, they were interesting to browse and I even bookmarked a few for future reference, but I am hard pressed to believe that they could serve as primary material for more than a few scholars focused in highly specialized areas (e.g., public address may be a notable exception, with quite a few sites containing transcripts of famous historical speeches).
Once again, I have no intention of being critical of anyone, least of all those individuals responsible for compiling the excellent and exhaustive listing of on-line resources that the ACA presents. Rather, I want to make the point that, if communication scholars are going to make extensive use of on-line resources, then two primary conditions must be met: (1) those scholars must be as competent with and as comfortable using the Internet (including downloading, using attachments, using FTP, conducting systematic searches on the Web.) as they are in the library or laboratory, and (2) on-line resources must provide quick and easy access to information that is at least as good or ideally better than that currently on our office and library bookshelves. As we rapidly approach the end of this millenium, I do not believe that either of these conditions have been met.
I will ignore the obvious call for Communication scholars to have more and better skills, because I believe such calls will only be heeded when there is a sufficient incentive for having those skills. Accordingly, let me concentrate on some of those incentives.
In order to take the discipline of Communication “on-line,” I believe a minimum of six necessary conditions must be met. (For an alternative view, see Varian, 1997.)
These collections of journal articles, of course, must possess several essential attributes. First and perhaps most important, the collection must be permanent; i.e., once established, the locations and URLs cannot change. This collection should also be indexed on numerous key words, as well as being searchable with a standard search engine interface.
Equally important, this collection should be formatted to “look like” journal articles, and capable of being printed in the same format. This will ensure that those among us who prefer reading from the printed page or those who use the “piles on the floor” method of organizing their work will still be able to function much the same as before.
This first requirement is being admirably fulfilled by the folks who operate the JSTOR project for digitizing and storing past volumes of numerous journals (alas, but none in Communication). Using a combination of very high resolution images for viewing and the Portable Document Format (pdf) for printing, this site comes very close to my ideal. Files are very large and take an extremely long time to load or print, but future enhancements to bandwidth will overcome that obstacle.
To look at Communication journals online, one can certainly go to the InfoTrac collection, which houses reproductions of many Communication journals. Although the information is very current (as I write this in May, 1999, I can view journal articles published as recently as two months ago), there is little or no correspondence between how the InfoTrac copies are laid out and the layout of the original articles. For example, no attempt is made to make page numbers the same. How does one accurately use a quotation from these reprints? Equally disturbing, in some articles (this caveat is necessary because I obviously could not compare them all) the Figures are omitted from the InfoTrac reproductions. I guess the attitude is, Who wants a bunch of silly old figures anyway?
While this InfoTrac approach is better than nothing, it is certainly not good enough to prompt the majority of Communication scholars to abandon their print journals. Instead, we need to aspire to the JSTOR model, but include the attributes I describe below.
I believe this requirement is simply a reflection of what is most appealing about the interactive, yet asynchronous nature of the Internet. Readers can agree, disagree, praise, or criticize the articles that appear. Moreover, the author(s) can respond and react to these comments, thus allowing scholarly interaction that may last for months or years. Just think of the learning opportunity for students, particularly graduate students, who can read an article, form a personal evaluation of its contents, and then compare their thoughts to the experts in that area of our discipline.
Frankly, I do not know how other scholars would respond to this requirement. In an ideal world of scholarship, there would be complete agreement. After all, the ability to replicate social scientific findings, including the replication of the analysis of data, is asserted to be one of the primary advantages of the scientific method. Personally, I would not mind, because I use many of my data sets in graduate classes already, but others may feel differently.
In defense of this idea, I would argue that the potential for educating young scholars, as well as providing a check and balance on established researchers, far outweighs any disadvantage that opponents of such an idea might raise.
Given the recent advent of “electronic books,” the idea of having entire books presented on-line does not seem unreasonable. Obviously, permanence is again an issue, as well as some type of security system that allows access (lifetime access!) only to those who have “purchased” the book.
In the recent past, this is the issue that has seemingly received the bulk of attention and discussion, no doubt because these are serious pocketbook concerns. I have listed this issue last, however, because I believe the advent of my first five conditions will naturally alleviate the sixth.
Let's be fair; currently, there is a plethora of less-then-mediocre scholarship residing on the WWW—the present journal most notably excepted. In fact, if we are really honest, we'll admit that when a colleague tells us “I decided to publish my book (article, essay, monograph) on the Web,” we immediately suspect that his or her decision was motivated by having been rejected by one or more “real” publishers. There clearly are exceptions to this rule (for a wonderful treatment of introductory social statistics, see Trochim's The Knowledge Base), but they are just that, exceptions rather than the rule.
The first five conditions I propose above, however, should change these perceptions a great deal. On-line journals will have the same criteria for publication and print-based periodicals (as ACJ currently does). In fact, publishing on-line could actually become more desirable than publishing in an old-fashioned, static journal. Similarly, books published on-line will have the backing and legitimacy of established publishers. At that point, needless to say, promotion, tenure, raises, etc. will no longer be areas of concern.
Let me quickly add that I am not naïve about the enormity of the concepts I have listed above. There is considerable expense involved, as well as the issue of maintaining the revenue generated by subscription fees, membership dues, library subscriptions, and the like. I seriously doubt whether the membership of any of our associations would be willing to have their dues foot the bill for free and unfettered access to our discipline's scholarly journals. I know I would balk at such an expenditure of my dues.
To be fair, however, I see these as details that have been addressed in other venues, and, thus, could also be handled by our discipline with existing technology. For example, I am currently able to view literally every aspect of my retirement benefits on-line, with the use of my social security number and a PIN. How much more difficult could it be to create subscriber “profiles” that would control access to specific journals for given years? Not much, I suspect. The debate over these details would be vigorous and prolonged, but in the end, a workable and satisfactory solution would emerge.
Perhaps more importantly, if and when a scholarly collection such as I have described was created, the incentive to use it would be enormous. Scholarly material of all types would literally be at our fingertips; citations and quotations could be followed-up instantly, and critiques, controversies, and disagreements would provide a rich context for evaluating the quality of our scholarship. If such an environment would not prompt even the most technophobic scholar to hone their cyber-skills, then I am hard-pressed to imagine a scenario that will.
THE DEATH OF THE PRINTED JOURNAL?
Taking into account my previous requirements, what does this all say about the future of the printed scholarly journal as we know it? To be honest, I would be totally in favor of all of our journals—international, national, and regional—being moved on-line, assuming they met the various requirements I have outlined above.
My preferences notwithstanding, I do not see this happening any time soon. I see at least three obstacles that will inhibit if not prevent the complete movement to electronic journals, i.e., the death of the printed journal: cost, human inertia, and the ubiquitousness of paper. Let me briefly discuss each.
Cost is the most obvious obstacle constraining the widespread movement to cyber-based scholarly resources. To be clear, this cost is not the ongoing expense of maintaining an electronic database or publishing current issues of an electronic journal. Although not trivial, these would seem to be much cheaper than the costs for a comparable printed journal (see Day, 1997; Odlyzko, 1997). Instead, the overwhelming expense will be in converting all of the hundreds of back issues to a digital format. Reading the description of the people and procedures involved in the JSTOR project will certainly convince anyone that conversion to a digital format will not come cheaply. For the discipline of Communication alone, I would speculate that several dozen people (with salaries, benefits, office space, clerical support) would be required to launch the project, and I suspect they would be employed for quite a few years.
An associated and nontrivial question is, Who would pay this bill? As I said earlier, few among us would be happy to have our professional associations double or triple our dues. Even for folks who enthusiastically support the type of large-scale project I have described, a surcharge to pay for it of $300 to $400 a year would draw serious and sustained protest.
Obviously, some type of external funding (i.e., external to your wallet and mine) will be required. I must be honest and say that I have not had the time nor the inclination to search for such a sponsor, so I have no suggestions. I believe it is fair to assume, however, that interest will be high in early projects, but will wane as time passes. Hence, the longer we wait, the more difficult such a source of funding will be to find.
I assume that the principles outlined by Everett Rogers in his treatment of the Diffusion of Innovations will apply equally to the adoption of cyber-based scholarly resources. This is particularly true, I believe, of the s-shaped adoption curve prominently discussed in many treatments of diffusion (see Bruce Klopfenstein's excellent Web site). Adoption begins slowly with only the most innovative individuals and proceeds through various stages.
What this should suggest to us is that even if our discipline were to spend the money and the resources necessary to move much of our scholarly enterprise to cyberspace, we would have a considerable time lag before a critical mass of people were to follow. Yes, if we build it, they will come, but not right away.
Why would we assume otherwise? Communication scholars are certainly like other people. They become set in their ways of doing things, and the inertia of conducting research in the same way will hold sway. Learning new approaches takes time and energy, both of which (they will say) can better be put to doing actual research, instead of learning how to do it. Only when the pressure becomes unbearable and the learning curve is flattened somewhat will these colleagues choose to adopt.
But remember: I have just described the vast majority of our colleagues! These folks are not the laggards who may never adopt such a new technology.
To paraphrase a contemporary television commercial, cotton may be the fabric of our lives, but paper is the fabric of our scholarship. We read from it; we write on it; we transfer digital information of all types to it; we even doodle on it. And most of us like it that way. I will be the first to admit that I do not like reading more than a page or two on a computer screen, even a good computer screen. In fact, I wonder how many folks are reading these words right now from a piece of paper instead of their screen?
Technology, of course, is always moving forward, and innovations such as e-books and Personal Digital Assistants are steps in the right direction. But until we can easily take these electronic substitutes to all the same places we take their paper equivalents (e.g., the bus, the beach, the bathroom), most of us will continue to prefer paper as the primary medium for written communication. This preference will most likely change with time and technology, but for the present it is one of the primary reasons that the printed journal will be with us for quite a long time.
For those who would like to read a variety of other opinions on virtually every aspect of electronic publishing, see the outstanding collection of references on digital information compiled by Charles Bailey. Even the most avid reader will be kept busy for quite awhile by this lengthy list of sources.
Also, if you wish to disagree or discuss the issues I have raised, do not hesitate to e-mail me. Remember, however, that I continue to serve as a journal Editor, so that even if I am not be able to respond immediately, I will get back to you.
Finally, I will conclude by saying that I hope I am completely inaccurate in my negative assessment of these issues. I truly hope that, in my lifetime, a student waves a digital version of this essay in my face and asks how I could have been so shortsighted. Being wrong will feel so good.