Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship | Summer 1997 |
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DOI:10.5062/F4668B6W |
URLs in this document have been updated. Links enclosed in {curly brackets} have been changed. If a replacement link was located, the new URL was added and the link is active; if a new site could not be identified, the broken link was removed. |
The mission of the HighWire Press is to form partnerships with publishers of scientific information and to apply technological expertise to promote scientific communication. The goals are to ensure that professional organizations and scientific societies maintain their market share as publishing moves to electronic formats and to promote cooperation among these organizations as publishers to enhance the delivery of information to readers.
HighWire titles
Cell (http://www.cell.com/)
Immunity (http://www.immunity.com/)
Journal of Applied Physiology ({http://jap.physiology.org/})
Journal of Biological Chemistry (http://www.jbc.org/)
Journal of Cell Biology (http://www.jcb.org/)
Journal of Clinical Investigation (http://www.jci.org/)
Journal of Experimental Medicine (http://www.jem.org/)
Journal of General Physiology (http://www.jgp.org/)
Journal of Neuroscience (http://www.jneurosci.org/)
Journal of Nutrition ({http://www.nutrition.org/})
Journal Watch (http://www.jwatch.org/)
Journal Watch Cardiology (http://www.jwatch.org/)
Neuron (http://www.neuron.org/)
Pediatrics ({http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/})
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org/)
Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/)
The HighWire web page also lists approximately 40 journals that are in development. These include the EMBO Journal, Genome Research, Genes and Development, the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Plant Cell and Plant Physiology. These journals range from clinical medicine to basic biomedical research and molecular biology to plant science. An indication of a future direction of HighWire's subject coverage is the inclusion of Reviews of Modern Physics, published by the American Physical Society, on the list of future sites.
In the discussion below, the Journal of Biological Chemistry is cited most frequently as an example, but most of JBC's features are available in all HighWire journals.
The search page allows searching by author, title words, or words anywhere in articles. The page offers a simple form for entering searches but help pages describe how to perform more complex searches. For example, the help text describes how to use Boolean operators. It is not possible to limit searches to methods or other sections of articles.
Cross-journal searching is possible among HighWire journals. If you enter a search in JBC, for example, along with a list of results is a link that allows you to try the search in other journals.
In the HTML version, figures are represented by thumbnails. These can be expanded to an intermediate size that is useful for most purposes, or they can be expanded to a full-size JPEG.
From cited references, JBC offers links to MEDLINE records in PubMed. For JBC articles, there is a link to the full text of the cited article. The inter-journal links that are scattered in the cited references demonstrate the power of hypertext links. In each HighWire journal, there are links from cited references to abstracts or full text of articles in other HighWire journals. For example, if you are viewing an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which cites a recent article in JBC, there is a link from the cited reference to the full text of the cited article. A great feature of these inter-journal links is that in most cases they are toll-free. The value of these toll-free inter-journal links is limited at present but is expected to grow as a larger number of journals become accessible to subscribers only.
In JBC, links between citing articles and cited articles are bidirectional. Find a reference to a JBC article in the cited references of a recent JBC article and view the full text of the cited article. Here you will find a list of articles that cite this article, including the article you started with.
Finally, JBC offers links from GenBank accession numbers in text to full GenBank records. Links to other external databanks are being considered.
Among the HighWire journals, only the Journal of Biological Chemistry offers institutional subscriptions at this time. For 1997, the electronic and paper versions of JBC are completely independent in pricing. For institutions, the price of a subscription to JBC in paper is $1,400, and the price for the electronic version is $1,100, and there is no discount for a subscription to both formats. Unlike price structures that link the paper and electronic products, JBC's prices give subscribers a free choice of products.
Some HighWire titles, including Cell, Immunity, the Journal of Neuroscience, and Neuron are accessible to individual subscribers only in 1997 but most or all of these will offer institutional as well as personal subscriptions in 1998. Science will announce an institutional subscription plan shortly. More information can be found at the web site of each journal. Each journal also offers a feedback button which allows readers to send comments or questions, including questions about access control and subscription rates, to the publisher and the HighWire team.
Many of the currently available HighWire journals are offering a free trial period and will implement subscriber-only access in the coming months. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example, will implement access control beginning in 1998 after a 12-month trial.
Science is engaged in an interesting experiment in web publishing with its Enhanced Perspectives. Each weekly issue of Science includes two or three Perspectives -- brief articles that highlight some recent significant scientific research. Perspectives are written for the general reader of Science and often refer to a report or research article appearing elsewhere in the same issue of the journal.
Each week, one of these Perspectives is selected for enhancement. Enhancements consist of hyperlinks to related web sites, either referring to specific statements within the Perspective or providing more general background information. For example, a Perspective on the biosynthesis of insulin is enhanced with links to Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) for general information on the role of insulin in diabetes mellitus, the Dictionary of Cell Biology for definitions of some of the terms used in the article, the World Wide Web Virtual Library for lists of related web sites, and web sites providing specific information on insulin and its biosynthesis. Links to web pages of authors and their institutions are also included. The Perspective in the paper journal is a brief review, but the Enhanced Perspective on the web is a pathfinder leading the reader to web resources related to a very specific topic of current interest.
Significant challenges remain for web publishing. Archival issues need to be resolved, particularly as electronic-only publication grows and the paper journal no longer serves as the archival format. Electronic-only publishing also suggests that the issue model of journal publishing may become obsolete. Electronic-only articles need to be presented in a form that can be cited and located. The diversity of pricing models for electronic publications will continue to confuse subscribers. It will be interesting to watch as HighWire moves forward on these and other issues facing electronic publishing.