How Scientists Get Publications: An Empirical Study of How the Internet Replaces Print Media (2)

The overall situation of scientific publishing For many years, the price of regular magazines published by commercial publishers has risen faster than inflation, which has led to a reduction in the number of subscribers. This vicious circle is called the "magazine crisis." At the same time, many idealistic researchers have discovered free e-magazines available on the Internet. In 1999, Wills discovered that her research field had 387 free e-magazines published. She also found that 25% of magazines advertised here or there on the website of the NewJour Web site. These magazines have actually ceased publication and died. This high mortality rate is typical because it is difficult for these new magazines to attract authors without the support of a senior commercial publisher or academic community.

In 1998, the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information carried out a survey to find out how researchers use online services. 61% of respondents felt that e-magazines or trade magazines are useful or User-friendly service, but only 14% of respondents published articles in these magazines. The situation seems to be this: As readers, scientists are very positive about the attitude of free e-magazines and strongly support their development; but as authors, they are very conservative when they choose to publish their works. At an e-zine economic seminar, Odlyzko suggested a solution for the future: “The scholars will continue to submit the papers to the most prestigious magazines they can find, regardless of how small these magazines are. Because the prestige of these magazines is a crucial factor in ensuring that they get tenure and promotion, any other person who wants to read these papers can get an electronic version from the booking service provider under any circumstances."

"These answers indicate that researchers are still inclined to choose instant queries."
There is a great deal of controversy over the issue of electronic publishing of scientific literature: whether electronic magazines are much cheaper than paper media magazines. For commercial publishers, the electronic version is published, the circulation depends on the user's subscription magazine or the publication media magazine, the cost difference between the three is not very great. Because the number of subscriptions in most scientific magazines is actually very low, the fixed costs of these magazines in terms of promotion, editing, typesetting, general management fees, etc. are much higher than the variable costs of printing and distribution. On the other hand, if we look at it from a long-term perspective, from the time the author prepares the draft to 10 years later, when other researchers obtain and read the draft, there are sufficient signs that the electronic publication is much more economical. An important issue here is that the costs of library preservation magazines and readers' identification and access to articles should be taken into account. In most publishing cost predictions, these costs are mostly ignored.

All major practitioners in the scientific publishing process must now face such a rapidly developing environment:

· Readers of scientific literature are faced with the situation where most of the information they need to obtain is free to delete them with just a few clicks of the mouse or with a few mouse clicks. The side effect of this is the barriers to accessing information, such as extra time spent (such as having to go to a university library first), waiting for a long time (ordering paper media information through traditional inter-library services), or costing extra money. (paying $20 to download an electronic version of the article) continues to grow, and the (technical) effort required to actually obtain information is becoming less and less. Almost all of the reference materials used by students who wrote science dissertations on information technology topics were freely available on the Internet. Butterworth reports that his students who wrote the papers on ion physics never reference printed magazines. Because of this, coupled with the continued rise in magazine subscription prices, college departments and libraries are reducing the number of magazine subscriptions. Even scientists who can subscribe to most of their favorite digital magazines do not bother to handle a lot of passwords and login registration procedures.

The authors face a dilemma in choosing which magazine to publish. Is it preferable to consider magazines that have a high turnover rate from manuscript submission to publication or give priority to those magazines with a large potential readership? Of course, the former refer to those magazines that are published separately in electronic format. These magazines do not need to wait for a given publication date to be published. In particular, research results in rapidly developing fields such as information technology must wait a year or more before they can be published. Meeting with readers is absolutely unacceptable; the latter can only be done by big magazines and free e-magazines. Other important criteria include whether the magazine’s indexing is well-known, and whether the magazine has a high academic status (this helps the author to achieve academic achievements and may even encourage the author’s department to obtain funding).

• Publishers must choose between these issues: whether to publish a full-text version of the document on the web at the same time as publishing the print version, and if so, whether to provide an HTML-only version or a PDF version; or both. They also need to decide how to use the hyperlinks, indexes, multimedia, e-mail alerting services and other functions provided by the network. However, the key lies in the price of the product. Is the electronic magazine the same as the printed one? How to protect websites from being invaded by unpaid customers? Is it protected by a single password or is it granted to the university? Another question is whether to allow only full-year subscribers to obtain full-text documents or to establish a mechanism that can sell single articles in electronic form. Of course, such a mechanism may use third-party services.

· The library will find that there will be a fundamental change in the intermediary role they play in the future. In the future, it will not be necessary to save the text of the paper media for display or archiving. Perhaps the university will negotiate with the site and request that the electronic version of the website be granted access permission. Today, the long-term issue of digital archiving is getting more and more attention. Research shows that in the traditional paper media publishing process, the total cost of archived magazines (the sum of the filing costs for each type of magazine in all libraries worldwide) is much higher than the publisher’s initial publishing costs. However, the cost of archiving in electronic form will be greatly reduced because the copying process in the archiving process is gone. Obviously, in the future, more and more publishers will begin to consider the issue of magazine archiving costs. However, this must involve many unsolved problems and risks. What happens when a university no longer orders an e-magazine? Does this university still have the right to obtain access to their paid magazine volume? (If the magazine publishes paper media, they will keep a physical version of the magazines.) What happens if a publisher fades out of the industry or is merged? What are the measures for those old e-magazines that ensure they are all preserved?

Survey: Methodology and Feedback This survey examines the status quo in both the building information technology and the construction management economy. Because it is assumed that the author of the field of building information technology is the researcher in this field and the publisher of the electronic magazine in this field, it is understandable to choose this field. Building management and the construction economy are also included, as the two research areas are to a large extent overlapping and mutually reinforcing, both from a personal point of view, from the meetings attended, and from the type of magazine chosen for publication. That's it.

The survey began in February 2000 with the aim of conducting an empirical survey of the status quo in that area, as well as confirming the use and perspectives of some of the new trends. The survey method used was a comprehensive online survey of authors and readers including case studies of individual magazines and individual conferences.

Research on the publication of scientific journals and the publication of scientific papers cannot be carried out on their own, but rather should be examined in the context of how researchers can obtain data and knowledge for their own research. Therefore, the survey was designed to be a comprehensive survey of scientific information exchange, reading, and publishing habits among researchers. Therefore, other scientific communication methods such as speeches from participating conferences, informal email exchanges, and visits to construction professional websites are all included in the survey.

This survey attempts to examine the scientific publishing process in a particular scientific field as a whole, rather than focusing on the case of a single magazine or on the overall study of scientific publishing. The survey does not focus on the exchange of information between research and practice. This problem is complicated, but it is very beneficial to a single research project. This understanding can be confirmed from the questionnaire respondents' opinions. E.g:

“I'm generally quite satisfied with the status of readers of my work and the recognition of the academic community, but one thing I'm very disappointed with is that my work has had a very small impact on the actual work. I was also disappointed by your survey. Including the status of the author and the status of the reader, but there is not a single question concerning the impact of the author’s dissertation on the actual work. Are we really publishing for publication (for or for promotion)?”

These issues can be divided into the following categories:

· Problems with personal information such as the age, job, responsibilities, and research topics of the respondent;
· Problems with how people find, reach and read information channels;
· What magazines do people promote, participate in meetings, and how often do they participate in issues?
· Questions concerning the publication of people’s work outcomes, such as how much they publish, what influences on which magazine they decide to publish;
· Issues related to electronic publishing.

In total, 27 major issues are addressed, including 169 subordinate questions that require answers, usually in the form of selecting one of five options. Some questions also require the respondent to enter numbers (such as “How many papers do you read per year?” and the like). The form is designed into the format of Microsoft Word and then converted into a form suitable for the network. In this way, the usual electronic tabulation software can be opened and the completed file can be submitted.

The form was published online on February 14, 2000. The data collected in this paper is the result of one month's investigation up to March 14. The survey was published on the Internet through a subscriber mailing list. These included university students and researchers who studied in this field, activists at any time in the field for the past seven years, and the second author of this article (Ziga Turk). His mailbox was also I received this email. We estimate that 3,000-3,500 people received this email bulletin board. About 800 people are curiously linked to this form. A total of 236 respondents completed at least 45% of the questions. The research results here are based on these 236 responses; 65% of the respondents indicated that they are mainly interested in information technology in architecture, engineering, or construction engineering; another 20% of respondents indicated that they are responsible for construction management and Interested in the construction economy. The respondents answered 82% of the questions on average.

Theoretically speaking, the questionnaire recovery rate is slightly more than 7% relative to the number of emails sent out; but from the number of researchers and the number of activists attending academic conferences, we can estimate that at least in the field of building information technology, we have received very A large proportion of professors and university teachers and college students returned questionnaires. If you compare the recovery questionnaire with those who actually only look at the online questionnaire, the questionnaire recovery rate is close to 29%. We initially hope that more students and young researchers will complete the questionnaire. However, the student population is not stable and it seems that it is not easy to track online e-mail addresses. In addition, e-mail contact with students may not be consistent with their goals, because some students go to other industries after graduation. The survey was anonymous, but respondents could consider choosing whether to provide their email address, and only 20% did not provide email.

We were pleasantly surprised by the speed and quantity of feedback from the questionnaire. Although it takes 26 minutes for the respondents to complete this form, more than half of them completed the questionnaire within the first day and 75% completed it within the first week. A week later, other questionnaires have been completed; therefore we can be sure that: answer the questionnaire