Introduction

The commitment to create and disseminate new knowledge is as old as the academy.  For centuries, researchers have distributed their writings as widely as the technology of the day would allow.  The advent of the printing press revolutionized public access to information by making it possible for scholars, and everyone else for that matter, to distribute text-based material to the general public using relatively inexpensive means.  However, during the last two decades of the twentieth century the price of scholarly publications has risen dramatically. Publishers have raised subscription prices to the point that nearly all universities in the Western world have had to reduce drastically the number of print journals to which their libraries subscribe. Current web-based publishing technologies make possible a return to the philosophy of a gift economy for the distribution of scholarly work. The concurrent proliferation of free or low-cost electronic journals permits academics and professionals to regain control of knowledge dissemination and allows readers around the world to access freely the information published in electronic journals.

This is not to say that electronic publication is cost-free.  To the contrary, electronic journals carry many of the costs associated with print journals, such as the cost of support staff, computers, and editors’ time.  However, electronic journals have numerous features that print journals simply cannot come close to matching: much faster submission-to-publication times, reduced storage space, wider professional and public access, interactivity, multimedia capabilities, international profile, and the almost complete absence of printing and mailing costs.

This article discusses the preceding features of electronic journals in more detail in the context of one electronic academic journal, the International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning (IEJLL), freely available online at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~iejll

Online Format

Most print journals have World Wide Web sites that contain information about subscription costs, plus lists of the titles and authors of articles contained in recent issues.  Some print journals even publish in a hybrid format with a sampling of articles or abstracts freely accessible on the journal web site but with the complete version of the journal published exclusively in print format and available only to fee-paying subscribers.

In contrast, the IEJLL is published exclusively online in a manner that offers several advantages over traditional print-based scholarly publications.  The first advantages are a more responsive publishing schedule and a faster "submission-to-publication" cycle. Most academics are well aware of the drawbacks to the current scholarly publishing process. The time lag between initial submission to final publication of an article in a peer-reviewed print journal is seldom less than a year and can often extend to more than two years. The IEJLL sends articles for peer-review as they are received, and publishes an article as it is ready for publication. Instead of relying on the postal system or couriers, submissions are accepted occasionally on floppy disk or much more frequently as attached files through electronic mail. Articles are sent out for peer-review using email, and reviews are submitted using a web-based form. In the first year of publication, 1997, the IEJLL achieved a two-week "submission-to-publication" rate. As the number of articles and subsequent editorial workload increased, the turnaround time became somewhat longer. However, over the last four years, the editorial team has averaged four-to-six weeks from submission to review to publication, which is still a much shorter publication cycle than print-based academic journals ever manage to achieve.

A second advantage of electronic versus print journal publication has to do with cost to the reader. There are additional obstacles faced by scholarly papers on their way to the intended audience of a print journal. For example, if a journal is subscribed to by a relatively low number of specialists world-wide, then subscription prices tend to be high. In turn, high subscription prices for individuals and institutions lead to fewer subscribers and, inevitably, spiraling publication and subscription costs. What this usually translates into are increased journal expenditures in higher education and decreased numbers of actual journal subscriptions. The IEJLL has been developed within an open architecture philosophy and the belief that there should be widespread public access to past and present articles. Inherent to the design of some online journals is a closed architecture philosophy -- articles are password protected, and information is only accessible to the public that pays for a subscription. The IEJLL circumvents the subscription price obstacle between readers and scholarly papers because it is available at no cost to anyone with an Internet connection and web browser. As a result, articles can be accessed and read online or printed to be read offline.

Print journals that enjoy a high subscription base, and even a relatively low subscription rate, still may not reach their intended readers. If the audience consists of organizations that each subscribe to one copy of a publication that must be shared by all of the staff, then individual readers may have to wait a long time before accessing the entire publication if indeed they ever end up seeing the journal. Importantly, the IEJLL is intended for a broad, international audience of persons interested in leadership in learning, including members of government education departments, school boards, school councils, faculties of education, parent organizations, and school staffs. Because interested readers are not required to subscribe or to pay any fee to access the articles and reviews on IEJLL, the online publication is able to reach a wide array of resource-constrained educational communities, just as its mandate requires.

In order to balance production and operating costs with subscription (and often advertising) revenues, editors of print journals are forced to make judicial decisions about the number and length of articles and reviews to include in any one issue or volume. Similarly, the editorial committee of the IEJLL has a self-imposed publishing guideline of 3000 words, excluding references, for scholarly papers and 1000-1500 words for reviews. Because of the electronic format, it is the intent of the editorial committee that the IEJLL publish works that can be read in one sitting without the reader having to resort to print copies. Given these guidelines, however, the IEJLL is not limited by production and operating cost restraints on length. Instead, because the articles are published using HTML, the only limitation is server space. If a lengthier article warrants the space, then the IEJLL is free to publish it with virtually no cost or access ramifications.

Interactivity

There are several value-added interactive features of IEJLL's web-based format that offer advantages over a print-based format. For example, readers have the opportunity to learn more about authors, and even to initiate contact, by using the email and web site links to the authors.  Readers also have access to brief author biographies and, when authors agree, to online photographs of authors. Wherever possible, hyperlinks are provided to online information sources cited by authors. These connections allow information to be contextualized, and offer an invitation to readers to investigate referenced sources further.

The online availability of scholarly articles has enabled many of our colleagues to integrate the IEJLL with their teaching. Colleagues have displayed and discussed IEJLL articles in class using an overhead projection system, referred students to article URLs for their research needs, and have distributed article URLs to colleagues that share an interest in the content of a publication.

Importantly, the IEJLL has the capacity to include photographs, color charts and graphs, animated sequences, audio clips, and video segments in the articles it publishes. An article soon to be published by IEJLL includes a number of color photographs to illustrate the concepts and ideas presented. The electronic publication of multiple media formats is only constrained by disk space and network speed; a print-based journal is often severely constrained by the inherent publication costs of color photographs and charts, and unless a CD-ROM distribution method is employed, the inclusion of animation, sound or video in a print-based article is simply not possible.

Finally, the online format of the journal makes it extremely easy to link the journal to an associated international electronic mail discussion group called the Change Agency where issues relevant to the journal articles are debated. The editorial team has also created the Talkback Forum, a section of the journal that extends an invitation for readers to submit reflective commentary on material published by IEJLL. Submissions to the Talkback Forum will be reviewed by at least two referees before a publication decision is made. To date, the Talkback Forum has not generated the interactive discussion that the editorial team originally hoped for, and a future goal is to encourage more reader interest and participation in the Forum.

Journal Design

How does the idea of an electronic journal become a reality? First, a few interested people have to come together to discuss the idea -- in our case, this lead to the creation of an editorial team, and eventually an editorial board. Then, the editorial team has to roll up their sleeves, and get to work! For the IEJLL to reach the stage of full-scale publication, several tasks had to be undertaken and completed by the editorial team: 1) discuss and develop mission statements, 2) define the intended audience, 3) outline the purpose of publishing the journal, 4) establish publication, ethical, and submission guidelines, 5) establish a review process and criteria for evaluating manuscripts, 6) consider who might become reviewers, 7) design advertising and promotion strategies, 8) canvas for academic and financial support, 9) establish an email account and web page directory on the University of Calgary server, and 10) design and develop the website. Initial planning and development tasks took approximately six months for the editorial team to complete.

The information and interaction design work on the IEJLL web site proceeded from the decisions made about the overall vision and goals for the journal. The webmaster built upon these initial discussions, and organized the content into a flowchart that was presented and discussed with the editorial team. Feedback on the preliminary design and ongoing discussions about the project goals, infrastructure resources, and delivery technologies, informed an iterative design process that led to further refinement of the flowchart into a storyboard that reflected navigational strategies, types of desired interaction, and user controls. Once the editorial team agreed upon the style and layout of storyboard elements, an IEJLL web site prototype was constructed. The production of the web site required designing and creating dozens of HTML documents and graphics for the core web site, and creating an interactive review form that would send peer review submissions directly to the editor.

Once the IEJLL prototype web site was approved by the editorial team, and final changes and refinements were implemented, the journal was launched on March 20, 1997, with Brandt's article, "Public Education in the 21st Century", and Le Metais and Jordan's article, "Emotional Intelligence and Student Behaviour." Support for the IEJLL has come from several sources.  The journal’s web site is located on a University of Calgary web server, and linked to the official Faculty of Education web site. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, a large American professional organization in the field of education, has supported the journal and its affiliated list server, the Change Agency, with small annual grants targeted toward operational expenses.  Computers necessary to operate the journal have come from the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary and, initially, Apple Canada. Finally, an educational consortium housed at the University of Calgary, the Centre for Leadership in Learning (CLL), has offered ongoing support in the form of advertising and affiliation with CLL programming.

Adjudication Process

The review and publication processes employed by the IEJLL are almost identical to those used by most print journals except that the process is far faster.  Almost all authors submit manuscripts as attached email files that are downloaded, then "blinded" or read to ensure that references to authors and their institutions are removed, and sent to at least three reviewers.  The editors strive to ensure that each manuscript is read by reviewers with expertise in the field covered by the manuscript that, at the minimum, collectively represent two countries, two roles, and both genders.

The authors, editors and reviewers are bound by the journal’s ethical guidelines that protect the peer review process, ownership of intellectual property, and individuals’ right to privacy.  Authors, for example, are expected to have conducted their research and report writing within the usual parameters of ethical behavior that ensure the safety of research participants, the use of inclusive language, and recognition of significant contributions of others to the research.  In addition, authors must have secured written permission for the inclusion of copyright material in their manuscripts and disclosed the existence of any related articles published previously or under consideration by the IEJLL or other journals.  Authors also are informed on the journal website that they must not republish an article accepted by the IEJLL unless a minimum of ten months has lapsed.  After this time period, submissions may be republished only if appropriate reference is made to the original publication.  Finally, authors are asked to archive their original research data used in their articles, within the time parameters included in the ethics approval granted by their institutions, so the data may be accessed by the editors or other researchers.

The editors must ensure that proper review procedures are followed and are responsible for accepting or rejecting manuscripts.  As well, the editors are responsible for complying with their university’s policies on appropriate use of computer and electronic networks and for protecting the privacy of the authors’ identities prior to publication of their work.  The IEJLL editors are committed to giving equal consideration to all submissions regardless of philosophical orientation.  Finally, the editors are bound to inform readers when IEJLL articles are found to be plagiarized or when duplicate publication or falsification of data is discovered.

Referees who participate in the adjudication process must adhere to several key ethical guidelines.  First, any referees must inform the editors when they do not qualify to review manuscripts because of bias, limited expertise, or inability to meet the usual two-week return deadline.  Second, referees must treat manuscripts sent to them to review as confidential material.  Importantly, the permission of the IEJLL editors must be provided before referees consult with others about specific manuscripts.  Referees are asked to support their comments to authors with examples from the work and references to relevant literature.  Finally, referees are not allowed to use manuscripts submitted to them for review in any part of their own teaching or research prior to publication in the IEJLL.

Adherence to the preceding ethical guidelines for authors, editors, and referees is particularly important in the context of electronic publication.  That is, the speed with which information in electronic format can be circulated means, for example, that authors’ work can be reviewed, rejected, and resubmitted to another journal within such a short time period that editors or reviewers can be uncertain about the potential for duplicate publication.  For instance, it is possible for reviewers for two electronic journals to find that an article they reviewed recently for one journal can appear as a submission to a second electronic journal within a matter of days.  In the context of print journals, these almost concurrent appearances of the same manuscript would almost certainly suggest duplicate submission.  However, the speed with which the business of electronic journals is conducted can see a manuscript reviewed and rejected by one journal within a matter of days, then appear within a matter of hours or days as a submission to a second electronic journal without any transgression of ethical guidelines.

International Profile

Electronic journals are by their very nature international in scope. That is, online journals such as the IEJLL are accessible to readers from around the globe. For this reason, the IEJLL editorial team was designed to include members from a variety of countries, including Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and England. The authors whose work has been published in the IEJLL represent these same countries. Apparently, the only restrictions to participation in the online journal are imposed by the language of publication, English, and access to computers and networks that allow access to the Internet.

Although the IEJLL does not have fee-paying subscribers, individuals are able to "subscribe" to the journal by registering with a listserv (i.e., IEJLL-L@majordomo.ucalgary.ca) used to notify readers as new manuscripts are published. The IEJLL list server enables us to leverage the advantages of a push versus pull technology -- instead of readers having to determine "what's new" each time they access the journal, the editor announces new publications to subscribers as they appear. As of March 2000, there were 213 registered subscribers who represented a variety of nations:

The international mix of readers, although certainly not proportionally representative of all nations or even all continents, does add credence to the claim of one IEJLL editorial team member who stated that publishing in the IEJLL was tantamount to "putting up your shingle for all the world to see."

IEJLL editors continue to seek greater international readership and representation among authors by employing several strategies. These include circulating calls for papers on international listservs such as those sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (http://www.aera.net), submitting the IEJLL URL to search engines, distributing brochures describing the journal at international academic and professional conferences, and asking colleagues in various countries to distribute information about the journal within their professional networks.

Site Maintenance and Archiving

One of the most debated aspects of electronic publication is the ongoing archiving of articles for future use.  Certainly, electronic formats change as technology evolves and researchers already know that electronic data bases saved in recent years are no longer decipherable by current computers. Therefore, it is important to the IEJLL editors that the articles published in the IEJLL be archived in reliable and accessible formats.  Several archiving strategies are employed.  First, the journal web site is backed up regularly by the University of Calgary web maintenance staff.  In addition, the students who serve as webmasters for the IEJLL regularly save copies of the journal web site on zip disks.  Perhaps the most durable and yet ironic archive is the inclusion of IEJLL articles in the microfiche files of ERIC.

It is important to note that none of the preceding archiving strategies ensures that articles published in the IEJLL will be available to researchers and professionals in the next century or even within ten years (though ERIC does an excellent job).  However, because archiving accessible copies of journal articles is critical to the ongoing credibility of the IEJLL and other electronic journals, a triangulated form of archiving has been established.

Conclusion

The IEJLL is but one example of the exciting new frontiers being explored in the field of electronic publication.  Journals such as the IEJLL are helping to reestablish author and editor control of copyright and information dissemination after an era of restricted reader access to print journals because of out-of-control subscription costs. The knowledge sharing philosophy of the IEJLL moves away from profit as a publication motivator, and puts the dissemination of new knowledge using a gift economy philosophy in the hands of academics. Electronic journals are honoring past academic practices such as peer review while considering new directions for web-based publication such as moving beyond text to include video, audio, and animation for relatively low costs.  The multimedia possibilities for online publication have the potential to reshape academic and professional understandings of what constitutes acceptable, credible dissemination of information.

While electronic journals are reshaping the culture of academic publication in some very positive directions, they also are raising new questions that shake our understandings of information dissemination. For instance, traditional publishing houses may find that online journals threaten their sources of income. Electronic publication is very attractive to academics because this medium provides the largest potential audience for the dissemination of theory and research. Moreover, the currency of information in online journals jeopardizes the ability of print journals to claim cutting edge status.

Electronic publications also serve as an anarchic and disruptive force that pushes at the boundaries of traditional academic norms and practices.  University tenure and promotion committees must grapple with the definition of academic publication as professors present evidence of their scholarly work in venues other than mainstay print journals. For the first time in the history of academia, publishers of electronic scholarly journals are reaching effectively and consistently beyond the boundaries of their national and continental cultures to inform and challenge the thinking of colleagues around the globe, with all of the inherent possibilities and pitfalls of cross-cultural communication.  Furthermore, a whole generation of researchers trained to write for print publications are facing the challenge of "writing" in multimedia formats.  Clearly, electronic publishers have the potential to have a fundamental impact in their fields of a greater magnitude than ever has been imagined in the past.

Dr. Michele Jacobsen is an Assistant Professor specializing in educational technology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary. She completed her MSc. and PhD. in educational psychology at the University of Calgary. Current research foci and publications include integrating technology into teaching and learning, distance education learning environments, educational partnerships, online psychological and educational research methods, and electronic publishing. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in educational technology, classroom measurement, and teacher preparation, as well as web design and HTML courses in the Faculty of Continuing Education. She is currently a review editor for the International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning, and on the editorial team of the EGallery.

Dr. Charlie Webber has worked as a classroom teacher, curriculum consultant, principal, and university professor. He is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean in the Graduate Division of Educational Research in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in educational leadership. His areas of research and publication include educational leadership, school reform, staff development, and electronic publication. He is the editor of the International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning.