3.3 Journals as portals of electronic publication  (Page 3/4)

Scholars often seek to publish in Art Bulletin and JSAH because their scholarly leadership, editorial guidance and effective peer-review system offer credentialing benefits andprestige. The credentialing benefits are constrained since journal articles are generally not sufficient for tenure in researchuniversities; nevertheless, the imprimatur of these journals is valued. Does it follow that the book-length publication must appearin the shape of a traditional book? Our research showed that scholars would welcome alternative presentations of book-lengtharguments, that is properly vetted electronic editions with the option to print the text on demand, as long as the material couldbe afforded the same preservation and permanent access that books now enjoy.

Our argument thus proceeds from the premises that a book-length publication need not be a book, and that it ispossible to combine the merits of journal peer review with the requirements of book-length argumentation in an electronicextension of the journal. The core requirements are that the electronic extension maintain the journal's high standards of peerreview and access is permanent. Under these circumstances, it is reasonable to suppose that the reputational value of the journalswill carry over from the print format to its electronic extension.

A second asset of the journals of record is their discipline-wide reach, which stems from their role as ashared resource, bridging departments, universities, and countries. While their contents are published in English, the contributors andsubscribers are international. As a result, journals can overcome the limitations built into the first phase of digitalexperimentation conducted in university media labs. These labs have hatched dozens of fascinating projects related to art andarchitectural history. Some of this work is geared for teaching, but other projects are research oriented, should be disseminated,and are coming up against the limits of print publication which cannot accommodate certain digital proofs, such as 3-D models,QuickTime videos and other animation sequences. This work is sequestered in gate-restricted sites, but even if all accessbarriers were removed and one could freely enter the websites of university labs, it would still be desirable to publish the work.Publication involves a vetting and editorial process that benefits the work, and publication positions it in a prominent disciplinarycontext. Both the technology and the digital competence of art historians have reached a level permitting digital work to movefrom the domain of technical experts into that of art history, where the technology itself becomes transparent and the focus is onthe scholarly content. Thanks to remarkable advances in a short period, we are poised to introduce digital research intoscholar-driven vehicles where subject experts can access and evaluate the work.

Cost is a third factor that makes journal publication attractive. The journals famously have a lean coststructure; indeed it is the envy of book publishers, which have much higher fixed costs. Lynne Withey, Director of the University of California Press , has pointed to journals as a low-cost model of publication and has recommended the adoption of the journal modelas a cost-lowering strategy for some university press lines, with the editorial process transferred from professional editors tofaculty. While Withey's proposal may strike scholars as a way to extract more unpaid labor from the professoriate, we can recognizethe economies and other benefits afforded in particular by the design and distribution system of journals, as well as the benefitsto the field of scholar-driven editorial policies.