OR/MS Today - October 2001 President's Desk Where is E-Publishing Going? By James Bean INFORMS President jbean@umich.edu Electronic publishing is happening. Whether a teacher, practitioner or researcher, you will be affected by the changes in scientific communication brought about by electronic publishing. The changes in INFORMS journals are apparent: INFORMS Publications Online, IPOL, has been in existence since June 1999. All INFORMS publications are stored, full-text, in a database of PDF files. One can search the database for papers of interest. As a new subscription option, members may access all 10 INFORMS journals online for only $99 per year. Refereeing for INFORMS journals will become more efficient because of a new Web-based manuscript tracking system being evaluated. It allows editors to track papers and referees performance. We are experimenting with style sheets that allow submission of papers in a format that allows direct publication — it requires no typesetting. We are hoping for a reduction in production costs and increase in quality as fewer hands touch a manuscript between acceptance and appearance. Operations Research now publishes electronic addenda to print papers. These addenda need not follow the traditions of linear, static publications. They can include large databases, dynamic simulations, computer programs and other material not found in traditional publications. INFORMS Transactions on Education is an entirely electronic journal specializing in ORMS pedagogy. Electronic publishing will change the way you think about submitting, searching for and reading papers. Randy Kiefer of INFORMS reminded me of the quote from "Built to Last" by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras. They write, "... visionary companies distinguish their timeless core values and enduring purpose (which should never change) from their operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world)." What are the core values of INFORMS publications that we must maintain during the transition to electronic? Randy suggests that they include the concepts of peer review and formal dissemination. The peer review process gleans information from the immense collection of data available on the Internet. A paper published in an INFORMS journal has been judged to be among the very best of submissions. This core value is implemented in various operating practices (review processes) employed by our journals. As electronic publishing develops we must not lose our core value of peer review, but be flexible on the operating processes employed. Electronic publishing may allow practices never available in traditional paper publications. An example is a pyramid, community, online review process rather than formal refereeing. INFORMS' other core value is dissemination. INFORMS distributes new thought on ORMS around the world. The economic model of traditional publishing is fixed cost plus marginal cost per issue. Fixed costs include supporting journal editorial staffs and a publications department, paying for redaction, etc. Marginal costs are primarily print and mail. Electronic publishing has higher fixed costs, since the Internet database system must be maintained in addition to the costs mentioned above. But marginal costs are essentially zero. While we must price our journals to recover the fixed costs, the negligible marginal costs allow consideration of opportunities not affordable in traditional publishing. For example, should INFORMS give free access to electronic journals in developing nations? The organization of our publications (journals, volumes and issues) is based on traditional operating practices. Should this organization change with electronic publishing? One Society has suggested that they would prefer not to subscribe to a traditional journal with their membership, but to have the right to access on IPOL a "journal's worth" of papers from across the INFORMS collection. I suggest that the various journals of INFORMS, at their core, are differentiated to allow for a variety of peer review processes appropriate to our wide rage of constituencies. Will INFORMS publications evolve into a database of accepted papers, each tagged with a line such as "Accepted by the Management Science review process"? In such a system, how would our peer review change? The limits of page counts could disappear so that all appropriate papers would be accepted. There would be no backlogs. Would this dilute our brand name? To the practitioner, a variety of ORMS papers are now available at your desktop — even for the isolated ORMS professional. Papers can include real datasets behind the published applications, or immediately applicable computer codes. To the teacher, case studies, instructional games and teaching discussion threads will be part of your INFORMS publications. To the researcher, full details of proofs, simulations of results and commentaries will be immediately available. For any of the constituencies of INFORMS, the advent of electronic publishing will change and enhance your professional capabilities. There are many unknowns as electronic publishing evolves, but INFORMS is near the cutting edge in defining this future. We challenge the membership to participate in this discussion by contacting me at jbean@umich.edu, VP Publications Bill Pierskalla at wpierska@anderson.ucla.edu or Director of Information Technology Randy Kiefer at randy.kiefer@informs.org. Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 2001 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. 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