In August 1999 I presented a paper at the Infog 99 conference in Melbourne, which was based on our experience to that point in time, of publishing Screening the Past. The conference was an optimistic attempt to bring together librarians, archivists, media scholars, and educators, to consider the implications of new cultural technologies for all our fields, including the possibilities of convergences of these fields.

I thought it might be fitting for this issue to return to my notes for that paper and see what I said about Screening the Past at the time and how I felt about those comments now. In what follows the original ideas (and they were in the form of notes for a presentation, rather than written for publication) are in red font, while my 2007 responses to them are in black font.

What is the focus of the journal?

To introduce the journal I think the best thing I can do is quote from the “review” of the journal at the web site of the CTI Centre for Textual Studies at Oxford University which awarded the journal its inaugural web site of the month award in May this year [1999]:

Screening the Past is an online journal with a three-pronged focus: the history of media; how these media represent history; and the role these media play in our social history. The journal presents itself to an audience of film and media historians and archivists, but appeals to any scholar interested in cultural and social history. The journal is primarily constructed around articles and reviews published for the first time on site, yet also republishes pertinent articles from other journals and digitises articles that have had significant impact on the field. The journal is housed at La Trobe University, Australia and is edited by Ina Bertrand and Peter Hughes. The Editorial Board has an international constituency and, like the journal itself, reflects a great cultural diversity. By addressing an under-appreciated social history, the journal becomes a more valuable learning resource.

I think the citation nicely describes the nature of the journal and captures some of the aims and motivations of the journal.

However they did miss some of the other motives of the team …

Origins and motives

The journal began as an initiative of Ina Bertrand who has a recognised expertise and considerable publication record in the field of media and history. We had an initial budget of about $500 which was left over from the History and Film Conference Screening the Past held at La Trobe University in 1993.
Sam Hinton, one of our production managers has made the point that content is the starting point of this site. Unlike some commercial sites which set up with a very high tech appearance, lots of Java and Shockwave etc and then have to look around for something to fill the site, we begin with content and then have to find the most appropriate way to present it.

Production has perhaps been one of the most interesting parts of the journey we have undertaken. Initially production (marking up, site maintenance) was done by two postgraduate students: Sam Hinton (now a lecturer in Creative Communication) and Caroline Kruger. When they both moved on I took over the role (along with editing the journal). This proved too time consuming and the site as a whole suffered as a result. We now have a professional web designer and manager: Cerise Howard. Throughout all these changes we have continued to use mainly HTML, and have not used Java or other more recent and complex web design languages (although some years ago we began to use style sheets which gave the journal a more unified look which Cerise has enhanced significantly since she took over the role). One reason for this no doubt conservative stance is that I had no expertise in anything more complex than CSS. However another reason is a hang over of one of our original goals which was to keep the journal simple, so it could easily be accessed by a mythical user with a dial up connection to the web and a very old, low powered PC.

So, our emphasis was on ‘content’ and we were very concerned with ‘access’, about which more below.

Motives for establishing the journal:

* established as a means of research into electronic publishing both as a form of basic research, and as a worthwhile publishing project in its own right.

* seeing publishing of academic work as a means of linking scholarly research and teaching it seeks both to serve as a medium for teaching screen studies in a digital environment and to provide opportunities for electronic publication of research and writing on screen to an audience which is at once local and global.

* the desire to create a journal in an area in which there was a lack – the recent emphasis on cultural studies in the humanities has meant some turning away from historical scholarship. This journal represents part of a movement back, but it is, I think, informed by work that has been done in media and cultural studies in recent decades. So in marketing terms, we are seeking to fill a niche not previously filled.

* To fill this perceived “niche” in a medium which gave the most opportunity to reach an extended audience with minimal cost.

In other words our motives were academic and teaching motives fuelled by a desire to maximise access – themes of this conference. The journal is not a commercial site, and although it is addressed to an intelligent reader, it is not assumed that it will reach a mass audience in any sense. The analogy is with an academic research journal rather than with a popular magazine. The journal is being produced by people who are professional scholars, and in most cases, at least, amateurs when it comes to the Web (one of the production managers has had professional experience as a web manager). Personally I think this is one of the strengths of the web, that it enables publishing of this type.

Although it was not clearly articulated at the time, for me one of the main justifications of the journal, and of using the web for publishing was access. I personally was determined that we would not charge readers to use the site or to subscribe to the journal. This was a decision found strange by some of those from whom we sought funds, but it was fundamental to my understanding of the journal. Ina Bertrand (elsewhere in this issue) has spoken about the notion of the ‘gift economy’ and this was one the motivations behind the journal in my mind: to provide a space for fully refereed, research based, writing beyond the very costly academic journal publishing environment. Before concepts like ‘creative commons licences’ were well known we were seeking to provide a freely accessible journal, so charging subscription fees was never a consideration for us. A short flirtation with a voluntary subscription, along the lines of ‘shareware’ software was tried, but only one reader took up the option, so clearly this was never going to provide an income stream!

For individual people involved in the production of the site there are other motivations. For example (a post grad student):

I became involved with the Journal because I was familiar with the pre-production tracking of articles and book reviews for peer reviewed journals in a commercial setting and hoped that such knowledge would be useful. I also had some computer skills and all the necessary hardware and software but had little knowledge of the internet. Regular meetings would get me onto the campus more frequently, and with luck, reduce the loneliness of the research student. My academic profile would be increased in that the job would be entered on my academic record, and I would have access to a wider range of academic thought which might assist my research project – it’s called networking!

Results: There was great satisfaction in seeing the journal come together. I have gained a variety of computer skills associated with marking up web pages, in manipulating files between applications, and in using the internet.

Naivete

We were pretty naive in setting up the journal:

* We had no technical expertise, minimal design expertise. Our expertise was purely in the area of academic work, only Ina had real expertise in academic publishing or editorial work;

* we assumed that because there was no printing process involved it would be cheap;

* we assumed that because we were using electronic methods communication would be easy;

* we had no idea how labour intensive it would be.

Our naivete extended most to the costs and to attracting income to pay for the journal, as Ina Bertrand indicates elsewhere in this issue. In our early days we did succeed in attracting some funds from the Australian Film Commission, and some from the La Trobe University Publications Committee. The latter, by very careful budgeting has lasted for a number of years, but given our desire to make the journal accessible and free, a viable business plan has so far eluded us. We have made some tentative approaches to business with a view to obtaining sponsorship, but again our naivete in fund raising has been most evident.

It is clear looking at comparable journals that to be viable free, accessible online journals are largely subsidised by the parent institution, and in the current climate of funding of universities and other public institutions this is becoming less and less likely.

Policies

We made the decision to make it low tech and “user friendly”. On one level we aimed at the lowest common technical denominator – our imagined user was a person using a 486 PC from home over telephone lines, hence the avoidance of Java, Shockwave etc. Coming as I do from a media studies background one part of me wants to make the site full of colour and movement. However another part of me wants to retain the emphasis on the content and to assert (with Simon Pockley) that the web is not another form of television, and that a concentration on words and ideas is the central focus.

Clearly the web has moved on considerably since I wrote these words. Java, flash, and various other methods of delivering audio and video have moved on considerably and our position now seems very dated. Interestingly it seems authors are less likely to provide images (still or moving) to accompany articles in recent times, and if anything although the web in general uses many more embedded images our articles seem to use less.

Academic considerations

It is my personal opinion that we are still working through some contradictions in our site. Our desire to work within an academic framework means that we are using some conventions from the print world which I am not entirely happy with. I would like to explore some of the benefits of hypertext more than we have done. However we base our choices at present on the desire to ensure that the articles are able to be cited correctly by scholars who use the site. This is a real problem, especially as the journal has moved more and more content into a database. This has provided many benefits – as I’ll discuss below – but it means that URLs become very cumbersome to cite in academic work.

We have sought to retain the academic benefits of citation and footnoting etc, but in the name of readability we place all notes in a side bar along side the text. This has been the policy of the print journal Screen for years, and we have sought to adapt it to our format. I think it works on the whole, but frankly it is a designer’s nightmare, and certainly does not simplify the process of marking up!

I think changes that have been made to the site since I made these comments have dealt with these issues, although it would still be a very valid criticism of the site that articles are rather linear. The model is still that of a print article transferred to the web as a distribution mechanism. We could still be criticised for making little attempt to use the inherent hypertextual capabilities of the web.

One of the benefits of sites such as this is that they serve as “gatekeepers” in much the same way that print journals do. As a person who teaches, among other things, research methods to undergraduates a concern that I have is the number of web sites being put on the web by people with no more expertise than the undergraduates who use the web. While I think the “democratic” nature of the web is great, it is important that students learn the critical skills to assess individual sites. …

I find this paragraph a little quaint in its naivete now, although there is still a considerable discourse in pedagogy about student use of the web in their work.

Is the journal a success?

The following section now reads as somewhat self congratulatory, however after some consideration I decided to leave it in this article because I think it is an historical document in its own right. The flavour of the comments reported below is indicative of the ways in which readers responded in the late 1990s to the world wide web and especially to its use in academia.

We have an audience all over the world. In the period Nov 1998 to April 1999 we had 35,000 hits, coming from the following countries: Australia, Portugal, USA, UK, France, Belgium, Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Philippines, Italy, Malaysia, Israel, Switzerland, Denmark, Hong Kong, Norway, Austria, Spain, Singapore, Argentina, South Africa, Turkey, South Korea, Poland, Uruguay, Hungary, Colombia, Luxembourg, Taiwan, India, Latvia, Saudi Arabia, Czech Republic, Russia, Lebanon, Indonesia, Bolivia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Oman, Iceland, China, Croatia, Greece, Trinidad and Tobago, Estonia, Bermuda, Belize, Romania, Bahamas, Bulgaria, Slovak Republic, Georgia, Malta.

A search using Alta vista for sites which have links to Screening the Past I found that there were 116 such sites. On checking some sites have been listed several times, and I removed Screening the Past itself as a site. The result still leaves 110 sites and allowing for my having not been thorough enough it still suggests over 100 sites link to Screening the Past.

We have received kudos from a variety of sources, such as:

Congratulations on a great journal. We’ve added a link to your site from Docos.com (go to Industry > Publications > Cultural Titles), which is the world’s largest information system for the documentary film industry world wide. We’ve also bulletined news of your new issue No 7) to our client list of about 3,500 documentary professionals. Please add us to your mailing list and keep us in touch with developments, new issues etc. Best wishes, John Marshall, Docos.com
…
Inspired by the H and F conference in Brisbane, I have just spent half an hour thoroughly going over your site – it has certainly developed since I last paid a visit. Congratulations! and may it have a long life!
…
It’s taken me a while to get around to it but I just wanted to say thank you for updating me about this article’s appearance on your site [Film theory in China]. It really contains a wealth of information and will fit in well with the other material I’m covering (as part of a survey of Chinese cinema).
…
Just checking out the site; I’ve been out of the country until the last couple of weeks so all this has happened in my absence! Congratulations. It has a nice clean design and there is a lot more there than I expected there to be. I know how hard it is to HTML things. And there is an underlying sense of a breadth of vision that should attract contributors. – Welcome to the online community! It has taken up so much of my life these past three years! I imagine you have all been starting to wonder whether it was all worth it. All the best.

We are getting requests for information from all over the world:

currently studying at the University of Sheffield, England, for my postgraduate MSc in Information Management and my dissertation is on free electronic scholarly journals. At the moment I am researching readership of these journals, and I wondered if you could help me. For your journal, Screening the Past, I am interested in how many people have registered with you, and also if you have any data on page accesses; hit rates and host information. As registering is not compulsory for your journal, do you think that the number of people registered reflects the number of people who read it?? . . . .

In 1999 we could easily track readership of the journal (and found that one third of the hits on the site came from robots originating from US military sites) but in 2007 that is not so easy. One reason for this is that our IT section no longer makes available the software to track hits on the site.

After issue 6 we received the comment (in person) that there were four articles or reviews in that issue that had direct relevance to research being undertaken by the individual postgraduate student concerned. This is purely anecdotal evidence, but it is clear evidence that the journal is of benefit to some in the community it seeks to serve.

There is a facility on the site for readers to ask to be notified of updates to the site. So far there are just under 200 people who have registered for this update service. This is an index of the size of that community – especially when added to the data about hit rates.

We are not a commercial site, so as far as I am concerned the sort of feedback we are getting is very gratifying because it reflects the aims of the site very well.

“Scholarly publishing is a public good, paid for largely (although often indirectly) by taxpayers, students’ parents, and donors” (Odlyzko, 1997). I am not an accountant, but I am sure that attempting to get a genuine costing of the expense of running Screening the Past would be almost impossible. Such a costing would have to include a component for infrastructure such as computers (but there is no computer dedicated solely to the journal); electricity, heating and other services which are embedded in the budget for the department of media studies at La Trobe; for software (but although the journal has paid for some software licences, much of the software used was already installed on the computers, and hence paid for from other budgets – including personal funds of individual staff); staff from the media studio and information technology services who assist but whose work is never specifically charged to the journal. The editors receive no payment (and almost no recognition of the time spent on the journal).

This last comment is as valid as it was in 1999. In the Research Quality Framework assessment and in other assessments of academic performance editing of journals has very low esteem. The result is that when ordering priorities such work has to be given very low priority. The journal is very lucky at the moment to have the services of Rick Thompson who, since retirement, has been devoting more and more (unrewarded) time to the journal. Rick is largely responsible for this issue. It is an indictment on the current state of universities in Australia (and I suspect more widely) that a project such as this relies so heavily on unrewarded labour.

Such funds as are available for the journal are spent on payments to one section editor and the production managers who receive some payment (but more a token than a realistic amount). Translations are paid for. Rights are generally negotiated away, but their value should be accounted for as income foregone by the National Film and Sound Archive, Film Australia, individual artists or whoever.

We were naive when we assumed that producing a journal on the web is cheap. There are some costs associated with a print journal which we do not incur, but we still need funds and we still massively subsidise the journal with our labour. In terms of funding the future is not rosy, however.
Exactly the same can be said now!

The remainder of the paper dealt with a number of immediate technical matters and plans for issues for 2000. In relation to technical matters, the development of a database for searching has now been implemented (and at the moment is being moved from a very old Macintosh computer in my office to a server in the Faculty IT area) while the use of a database to serve all articles to the web, and of MP4 video technology for videos have not happened.

So, some of our aims and assumptions were naïve, but given that the journal has had a budget over the last ten years which would keep some corporate offices in flowers for just one year, or provide one business class fare to the UK, our achievements should be celebrated!

Peter Hughes (at various times editor, production manager and gopher for Screening the Past)

Created on: Thursday, 13 December 2007