Editorial: From Print to Gopher to Open Journal Systems:
A Look Back on the Many Faces of the Electronic Green Journal
Maria Anna Jankowska
University of
Idaho Library, Idaho, USA
Upon visiting this issue of the Electronic Green Journal, you most likely noticed some changes. That is because EGJ is going through a transformation into Open Journal System (OJS) developed by the Public Knowledge Project, which provides open source software for the management of peer-review journals. The implementation of OJS will significantly decrease the time it takes to administer and publish EGJ, streamline the submission and review process, and create a consistent look for the journal. This is cause for celebration for both editors and readers. Fewer hours will be spent managing and editing, while a more organized and easy to navigate EGJ is presented to the readers. In addition to current and future issues being accessible through OJS, we have uploaded back issues, providing enhanced usability, full-text searching across all issues, and a consistent look. The new EGJ site will offer reliable usage statistics across all issues, ensuring that we can properly assess the value of moving the publication into this new format, and most importantly, measure the impact on our readers (Jankowska & Hunter, 2007).
In celebration of our new face, it is time to take a look back into EGJ history and commemorate how the journal has progressed over the years with the implementation of new information and communication technologies. Below we draw on some of the images and submissions saved on numerous 4" disks, zip disks, CD-ROMS and other media to give a picture-based historical account of EGJ from its creation.
The history of the journal started in 1991 when a group of environmental enthusiasts from the Green Library in Berkeley and the University of Idaho Library in Moscow, Idaho decided to disseminate and share environmental information in a manner that would promote sustainable scholarly communication and environmental literacy. They agreed that the best tool for this sharing of knowledge would a professional journal that would provide a forum for communication of current research, bibliographies, book reviews, opinions, and information sources on environmental information. This is how The Green Library Journal: Environmental Topics in the Information World (GLJ) started with a mission to assist in information retrieval and access to international environmental information sources. It was vital to the founders that opinions and voices from all over the world be heard, so an editorial board from across the globe was pulled together to create an international information exchange forum for librarians, information consultants, civic groups, organizations, educators, and individuals. The subscription payments from national users were used to distribute free copies of the journal to developing and environmentally "at-risk" countries such as Cuba, Nepal, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, former Czechoslovakia, and Bolivia.
With significant input from the members of the American Library Association's Task Force on the Environment the first issue of GLJ was published in January 1992.
This was the first cover of the journal.
The second issue with articles focused on international environmental topics was published in the spring of 1992.
In 1992 the third issue was published with four leading articles, four columns, and fourteen book reviews.
In winter of 1993 the last printed issue was published. It included five articles, four columns, and twelve book reviews.
Until 1993, Green Library, Inc. sponsored the production of the journal from funds appropriated through grants and donations. After 1993 funds were no longer available for the printing of the Green Library Journal. Yet the journal was beginning to gain readers and submissions, and in light of trying to create sustainable scholarly communication, librarians at the University of Idaho Library decided to launch a peer-reviewed, free-of-charge, full-text electronic journal. Maria Anna Jankowska recruited Terry Abraham, Mike Pollastro, and Francis S. Griego as experts on creating an accessible online journal, and Bill Kerr as a technical expert. In the summer of 1994 the Electronic Green Journal was launched and distributed via Gopher, World Wide Web (WWW) and File Transfer Protocol. According to Peter Suber's timeline of the open access movement EGJ was one of the early free online peer-reviewed journals (Suber, 2007).
The transition from print into online format completely changed the access policy to the journal (Jankowska, 1994). Since its inception in July of 1994, the EGJ has allowed all Internet users unrestricted access to original articles and book reviews. By providing open access to the journal, EGJ assists in international scholarly environmental communication by providing a quality, unbiased, and freely accessible forum for the exchange of environmental information as an alternative to costly, commercially produced scientific journals.
This was the first graphical presentation of the digitally born journal. As Mike Pollastro wrote in 1995 - "to support the transfer of the EGJ articles anywhere in the world, for the first four years each issue was prepared in different versions of files such as HTML, GIF, TXT, and ASCII" .
In April of 1995 for the Earth Day edition the second electronic issue looked more colorful.
In 1996 EGJ access style was changed from one huge file (the whole issue) into an issue with many files so that each of the files could be accessed separately.
This was the first journal's face created in .gif file from issue 11 in 1999.
This was a graphical face of the journal's home page from 2004 until 2007
This newest face inaugurates with issue 25 in 2007 and connects the journal with Open Journal System.
The EGJ became one of the earliest environmental professional journals distributed through the Internet. The journal is "green" not only in the title but also because it is fully electronic, saving money and the environment by using less paper, less ink, and being totally independent from commercial influences. EGJ has more than 1,800 regular worldwide subscribers and between February 2006 and January 2007 had 2,877,304 total hits/accesses and 650,998 visits from users in countries all over the world. In 1999, Ted Johnson stated that the journal was indexed in Public Affairs Information Service, General Science Index, and Biological & Agricultural Index, Environmental Abstracts, CAB International. It was included in the UNESCO Social Science Online Periodicals Directory, the Columbia Earthscape , BioMedNet, Infomine, the National Library for the Environment, and others. Today EGJ is indexed by EBSCO Publishing (Academic Search Premier, MasterFILE Premier, and Professional Development Collection), Elsevier (Geo Abstracts), H.W. Wilson (General Science Full Text), Digital Library of the Commons, Directory of Open Access Journals, EnviroLink Network, and Journalseek. Additionally, since EGJ promotes an open access publishing model, most search engines and directories (Google Scholar, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, KartOO, Grokker, etc.) can be used to locate full-text articles by adding "egj" to the search string.
More then one third of EGJ's published articles were reproduced by commercial and non-commercial publishers as chapters in printed books, textbooks, newsletters, and CD-ROMs. This includes the sharing and publishing of articles around the world. For example, Atlantic Publisher & Distributor in India will publish selected EGJ articles in the book entitled Environmental Studies: Theory and Practice. Also Amazon.com is republishing some book reviews found in EGJ. Through providing open access information, EGJ makes important environmental information available to such publication sources.
What is the future of EGJ? Through publishing in other sources, the journal is a good example of entrepreneurship in the library world. Also, EGJ is a perfect example of how librarians play an active role in facilitating open access publishing in such important territories as environmental information. An idea such as EGJ can provide librarians with experience and activities beyond their job descriptions, which in turn can help librarians develop innovative services and outcomes within the traditional parts of their jobs such as reference or cataloging (Jankowska, 2006). Libraries are at the head of sustainability by their very operative definition of lending one book or information source to many people. Libraries must take responsibility towards promoting future sustainable development. Integration of the journal into teaching environmental literacy at the library and the university as a whole will be one of our focuses in the near future.
Since EGJ is a refereed publication, the quality of its content is substantial and the members of the editorial board are working hard to keep the journal booming in the competitive electronic world (Jankowska, 2000). The EGJ has lasted for more than thirteen years thanks to excellent volunteer work by its devoted editors, reviewers, and readers, and support from the University o f Idaho Library. Thanks to the hard work of those involved with the journal, and the continuing interest from readers and submitters, EGJ is still growing today. We invite you to browse this new OJS format, and hope that you will keep coming back to the Electronic Green Journal as we continue to progress and change in years to come.
References
Jankowska, M.A.,
& Hunter, B. (2007). Sustainable library services as an asset to the university
community. Manuscript. The grant proposal to the University of Idaho
Sustainability Center.
Jankowska, M.A. (2006). A library's
contribution to scholarly communication and environmental literacy. The case of
an open-access environmental journal. The Serials Librarian 49 (4),
117-124.
Jankowska, M. A. (2000). The need for environmental information quality. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. Spring 2000. Retrieved September 20, 2007, from http://www.istl.org/00-spring/article5.html
Jankowska, M.A. (1994). Printed
versus electronic: Policy issues in the case of environmental journal. Serials Review 20(3),
17-22.
Johnson, B. (1999). Journal Reviews
and Reports: Electronic Green Journal. Issues
in Science and Technology Librarianship Fall
1999. Retrieved September 20, 2007, from http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/99-fall/journals3.html
Pollastro, M. (1995). Publishing an
electronic journal: the Electronic Green Journal. CBE Views 18(2), 27-29.
Suber, P. (2007). Timeline of the open access movement. Retrieved September20, 2007, from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
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Maria Anna Jankowska <majanko@uidaho.edu>, Professor, Research Reference Librarian, University of Idaho Library, PO Box 442350, Moscow, ID 83844-2350,USA.
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Electronic Green Journal, Issue 25, 2007
ISSN: 1076-7975