Women, Autobiography and New Media

There is a growing literature which deals with the putative “death of the journal”[1] , with the increasing cost of print based journals for individual subscribers and libraries, with the possibility of new forms of document distribution online, and with the perils and costs of such publication [2] . Harnad argues for a system in which various drafts of academic journal articles should and can be made available online through university based servers “author/institution self archiving”, thereby making them much more accessible and reducing costs to readers. In an argument which has resonances with the “open source” movement in software (see for example “The cathedral and the bazaar” [3] ) Harnad argues that refereeing can still be used as a means of quality control and to ensure that academic standards are met, but he does not provide detail on how this would occur if journal publishers were to lose their monopoly on the distribution of articles published initially in their journals.

One solution, of course, is to publish journals electronically, as Screening the Past does. This provides the advantage of free distribution and of maintaining the conventional processes of academic review. It also provides flexibility in that we are able to include images, even vides sometimes, we can increase the size of issues as required and we can aim for a faster turnaround from time of writing to time of publication of articles.

This is becoming a more common solution as the increasing range of electronically published journals attests. However, the economics of electronic publishing cannot be ignored (see, for example, Mings, and Odlyzko  [4] ) and they came crashing down on Screening the Past this year.

Since its inception the journal has been funded by a special grant from the Publications Committee at La Trobe , but it is the nature of such grants that they are of limited duration. Recognising this fact, and the fact that public institutions such as universities are currently grossly underfunded, we sought to find additional sources of funding. The Australian Film Commission provided one grant, but again as a public institution its funds are limited so the grant could not be repeated. Attempts to find corporate sponsorship, and our ill fated “friends of Screening the Past” have been unsuccessful. The journal does not require large funds as most of the work of producing the journal is voluntary, but during the year several postgraduate students either graduated or were required to change priorities, so we also faced a staffing crisis. My own high teaching load, the (unfulfilled) requirement to conduct paid research and the recognition that editing the journal was not regarded as part of my “research and publication productivity”, forced me to accord it the lowest priority. All of these difficulties account for the deplorable delay in getting this issue online.

It was decided to offer the journal to another institution, at which point the Media Studies Program at La Trobe provided a grant for 2002 to keep the journal going. This money, of course, was still limited so we have decided to make some changes to save costs:

The layout, with notes on the side, was time consuming to mark up. This was compounded by a recent decision to produce printer friendly versions which solved problems some readers had with printing articles, but did add to the time involved, again because of the sidebar notes. So we have adopted a much simpler format, which is easy (and therefore cheaper) to mark up, and does not require a printer friendly version to be created.

At least for this issue, and possibly in perpetuity, we have eliminated many of the sections in trailers as they were labour intensive (although the editor for this section in the past 18 months has been unpaid).

For this issue we have had the services of a new postgraduate student, Morwenna Crago, who has been a meticulous copy editor. Any errors remaining are due to errors on my part, rather than on hers. As there had been a significant delay in getting the issue ready, a rush was inevitable at the end of the year and this is responsible for any errors found. We will work to correct any errors in the coming weeks.

Technical work is still being done by our very able production manager Caroline Kruger, the reviews section continues to be edited by Anna Dzenis and Val Forbes continues to do valuable research and to provide links to other sites and journals.

Issue 14 is due to go online in Mid 2002, and will be unthemed. This will provide the opportunity to publish a number of unsolicited submissions and articles held over from past issues. Currently we plan to have two issues a year until (if ever) we have sufficient funds for a third issue a year. In 2002 the second issue will be guest edited, details will become available as they are confirmed.

So, this issue: there are two “themes” in this issue. The first is the theme of “women, autobiography and new media” a theme which was prompted by a posting to a discussion list by Elayne Zalis, whose article appears in this issue, along with a number of other approaches to this theme. In the (reduced) “trailers” section there is a link to the new electronic iteration of the journal “Jump Cut”, and to the personal web site of Julia Lesage, who taking up the option of publishing some of her work online, has published a number of her articles on this theme also.

We have also published a tribute to Erik Barnouw who died earlier this year, not a common practice, but one which seemed fitting given the focus of this journal on media history.

The second component of this issue is a continuation of the theme of “Auteurism 2001” guest edited by Adrian Martin. We are very grateful to Adrian for his diligent approach to this two part series, and for his patience in the face of the journal’s difficulties this year.

Peter Hughes
December 2001

Endnotes

[1] (see for example: Tony Barry and Joanna Richardson, “Death of the journal – will it be replaced by document delivery?” (paper presented at CAUSE in Australia Conference ’97, Melbourne, April 1997 1997).
http://tony-barry.emu.id.au/pubs/1997/cause97/paper.html(Accessed: 8 November 2001)
[2] Tony Barry and Joanna Richardson, “Death of the journal – will it be replaced by document delivery?” (paper presented at CAUSE in Australia Conference ’97, Melbourne, April 1997 1997).
http://tony-barry.emu.id.au/pubs/1997/cause97/paper.html(Accessed: 8 November 2001)
Stevan Harnad, “For whom the gate tolls? How and why to free the refereed research literature online through author/institution self archiving, now,” Internet Librarian International, March 2001, http://www.cogsci.sotn.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.html (Accessed: 24 May 2001).
Dan Kohn, “Steal this essay,” Tidbits Electronic Publishing, issues 602,603,605, http://www.tidbits.com/).
Andrew Odlyzko, “The Economics of electronic journals,” First Monday, 1997, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issue2_8/odlyzko (Accessed: 12 August 1997).
[3] Eric S Raymond, “The cathedral and the bazaar,” First Monday 3, no. 3 (1998). http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_3/raymond/index.html.
[4] Susan Mings and Peter B White, Making money from the web? Business models for online news. (Bundoora: La Trobe University Online Media Program, 1997).
Andrew Odlyzko, “The Economics of electronic journals,”  First Monday, 1997, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issue2_8/odlyzko (Accessed: 12 August 1997).