Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 17:01:52 +0100
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
Subject: Times Higher Education Supplement

Friday May 12 an essay about electronic journals by
Stevan Harnad, and a counter-essay by Steve Fuller will appear
in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Multimedia Page.

The first paragraph of each of these essays appears below.
Both essays can be accessed through the World Wide Web at the URL:
http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk:80/~harnad/THES/thes.html

There is a reply to Fuller as well, and more commentaries are invited
(see Instructions on the Web Page in question). The discussion will
also be archived at the Times Higher Education Supplement's Gopher
site:

http://gopher.timeshigher.newsint.co.uk/
email: izitim@pavilion.co.uk (Tim Greenough, Multimedia, THES)

        THE POSTGUTENBERG GALAXY: HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE

                Stevan Harnad
                Cognitive Sciences Centre
                Department of Psychology
                University of Southampton
                Highfield, Southampton
                SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
                harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk
                http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/

It is time to stop making apocalyptic predictions about the coming of
the electropublication era and to start providing concrete strategies
for hastening the day. But before proposing anything, I have to
describe in some detail an important parting of ways that will be
taking place as the literature is launched into cyberspace: The "trade"
literature (for want of a better word, though Shakespeare was hardly a
tradesman) will go one way, whereas the "esoteric" literature (of
specialised scholarly and scientific research) will go another. This
esoteric/trade distinction must be clearly understood and kept in mind
or none of what follows will make any sense... [see URL for rest]

      Commentary by Steve Fuller (University of Durham & University
      of Pittsburgh Steve.Fuller@durham.ac.uk fuller@vms.cis.pitt.edu)

The electronic medium is undoubtedly revolutionizing academic
communication. But it is still unclear who will benefit in the long
term by this revolution. Since so much is up for grabs at this point, a
clear sense of where we have come from is needed to make sense of where
we might be going. To his credit, Stevan Harnad offers such an account,
the "Faustian bargain", which is very much part of the folklore of
academic life. Its image of the profit-driven publisher provides a
convenient scapegoat and remedy for academics who feel that they never
quite get their message across to all who could potentially benefit
from it. Unfortunately, like all such self-serving stories, its grain
of truth is buried under a mountain of mystification... [see URL for rest]