Myths and Realities of Online Publishing

Dana L. Grisham
Bridget Dalton

As we come to the end of our first volume year as editors of Reading Online, we thought it wise to stop and take stock of where we started and where we are today. Of course, starting and ending points only tell part of the story; most of the interest lies in the journey. Our first task as editors was to assemble a team to share that journey. We were fortunate to line up some of the most talented scholars in the business. Throughout our first volume year, our watchword has been “teamwork.” It’s been a wonderful collaboration.

We could get a little teary-eyed about this, especially as we bid farewell to two of these outstanding colleagues. Larry Miller, who has contributed creative and unique pieces to our International Perspectives, is retiring from Queen’s University and his role as department editor. We will sorely miss him but are hoping that he will contribute “on the road” pieces as he and his wife travel across the continent and around the world. Thank you, Larry, for your many contributions to Reading Online.

Ken Weiss, who ably steered our Online Communities, is taking on new responsibilities at his university and is stepping down as facilitator of our listserv. Thanks, Ken, for all your hard work and for the beautifully synthesized pieces you wrote to introduce each issue. You are a hard person to replace!

Fortunately, Chuck Kinzer (Electronic Classroom) and Ann Watts Paillotet (New Literacies) are re-embarking for another volume year of our journey. Thanks to them also, for their dedication to making ROL such a valuable resource for our readers.

In the July issue of Reading Online, we will welcome two new members to our editorial team. Jan Turbill, a renowned scholar and teacher from the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, will become editor of the International Perspectives department. Jan has a host of ideas for showcasing literacy in all corners of our global village. And Gary Moorman, of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, USA, will take the helm of our Online Communities. Gary is a leader in the field of literacy and technology and has been experimenting with the role of the Internet in building communities of learning. He’s busy formulating his strategies for increasing the visibility and utility of the listserv and for launching new forums for discussion. We think we have a great crew for the next part of our journey.

A Retrospective of Our First Volume Year

As editors, we have always had a vision for this journal. At the start of our editorship we noted three important goals:

1. Developing and sharing knowledge
2. Building communities
3. Evolving the medium

We think we have made meaningful progress toward these goals and, along the way, have learned some important lessons about publishing in the new environment of the Web.

Use of the Electronic Publishing Medium

The Reading Online instructions for authors strongly encourage (but do not require) that authors take advantage of the interactive and multimedia capabilities of the electronic medium to enhance their content, promote reader engagement with the text, and support opportunities for interaction among readers and between the author and readers. Articles about traditional print literacies, digital literacies, and new literacies constitute appropriate content for the journal. Technology can be applied in a variety of ways to communicate the content.

Our work as editors of an electronic journal differs from that of print-journal editors in a number of ways, but perhaps the most important difference is found in the attention we pay to the medium. Traditionally, editors focus on content; the conventions for how content is structured and presented in a print format are well known and codified. In an electronic journal, the “medium is the message,” and the rules for how the medium is to be used are evolving as new technologies emerge and as readers’ expectations about Internet communication and presentation change. As a result, we work with both authors and our publisher, the International Reading Association, in a highly collaborative way around this important aspect of writing and publishing on the Internet.

Within the literacy community, we are learning how to communicate in hypertext and networked environments, to compose using multiple symbol systems, to embed interactive elements in our texts, and so on. For the majority of us, this is a new literacy. Composing in hypertext is different than in print, and we shouldn’t underestimate the new demands and challenges involved in developing these new literacy skills. Our goal at ROL is to publish quality articles (content still reigns supreme) that represent a range of use of the medium, so that there are multiple entry points for authors -- and for the readers who are reading and responding to these new forms of text. In the following sections, we describe how ROL authors are currently using the medium, highlight some of the challenges we face as authors and editors, and close with some thoughts about what we find most rewarding about participating in this collaborative endeavor of writing and publishing an online journal.

Linking in, Linking Out

Links serve a navigation function (e.g., linking from the abstract to a section of the article; linking to a resource, either internal to the article or external at another site on the Internet) and a content function (linking to additional information that may complement or supplement the article content).

The majority of the articles published in ROL are written as linear texts with links that extend to additional materials, just as a print article would present additional material in an appendix or a figure. A few articles are composed as nonlinear hypertexts, with each node representing a discrete unit of content that the reader may choose to read at any point (see, for example, John McEneaney’s “Ink to Link,” or David Reinking’s “Me and My Hypertext :)”).

There is a range in how authors use links to convey content, from basic, self-contained articles with perhaps a few links to supplementary resources on the Internet (e.g., the series of articles based on work published in The Handbook of Reading Research: Volume III) to articles in which the links are the content (see Michael McKenna et al.’s “Hot Links to Literacy”).

Links serve multiple purposes but generally function as a window on the world of the Internet (see Denise Johnson’s article on Web resources for struggling readers) or on the specific world represented in a specific article (see Mary McMackin and Barbara Siegel’s article on writing research).

Integrating Media

The Web is a multimedia world. Graphics, animation, video, and audio are commonplance on the Internet. They are present, but not yet commonplace, in ROL. This is not surprising, given that few literacy professionals have experience composing in multimedia. But a review of articles in ROL shows that media use is increasing and taking a number of forms for multiple purposes. Table 1 presents several examples of the types and roles of media use.

Table 2 presents an example of an invited article by Arlette Ingram Willis and Julia Johnson that integrated multiple forms of media. The media were integral to the message, serving both informational and aesthetic purposes. With the text, these authors used media flexibly to show student responses, to share classroom learning experiences, and to show the books the students were reading. They also linked extensively to external resources that included multimedia (e.g., an online version of a picture book, a link to a Web page about a novel and author, a link to a television corporation Web site).

Challenges

Technology: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Users

An online publication depends on readers having the equipment necessary to access the publication. Users’ desktop computers must have sufficient capability to connect with the World Wide Web, and must be configured to support the programming that governs display of the Web site on which the publication is housed. And not only must the reader be able to connect with the World Wide Web -- he or she must have a sufficiently high-speed connection to make viewing and using the Web site an easy rather than frustrating experience.

Reading Online serves readers around the world who have all types of computing equipment and connect to all types of Internet servers by all types of means and at a range of speeds. Thus, ideas that sound creative, innovative, fun, and exciting sometimes must be tabled when we think them through and realize that many of our readers wouldn’t be able to receive our message. The capacity for streaming video, for example, would make publication of longer video clips possible, but the quality of the clips as viewed by readers without high-speed Internet connections would be very poor.

On what might seem a simpler level, we grapple with the issue of translation. Our readership is international, and although we publish in English, we are open to the idea of publishing in other languages. For example, in October 2000, we published Ileana Seda Santana’s work on literacy research in Latin America in both English and Spanish versions. Getting accurate translations from one language to another is a familiar challenge in the publishing world. But getting accurate translations with the proper Internet coding to display non-English diacritical markings that will remain constant across browsers, platforms, and servers is a challenge unique to the online environment.

The technology in our journal must continue to serve the needs of a broad audience. At the same time, we wish to push the envelope, to be innovative about what appears in the journal and how it appears. Reinking (1998) likened the digital revolution to a “juggernaut” bearing down upon us all. So we all remain behind the curve of technology to some extent. What is cutting edge today may be obsolete in a very short period. Staying abreast of the possibilities of new technologies is an ongoing challenge.

Resources

A constant infusion of resources both in terms of hardware, software, and technological expertise is absolutely critical to the continuing success of an online journal. Only a literacy giant such as the International Reading Association could provide the resources to publish a journal like Reading Online as a free service to the worldwide literacy community. But our ability to move toward cutting-edge technology is not constrained only by the possibility that our readers may not be able to access it, but by the sometimes tremendous cost of including it. The support of the Association’s membership is critical for the journal and will be essential as we work to attract the resources needed for further technological refinements and innovations.

Besides financial resources, another critical resource is the creative vision of people associated with the journal. As editors, we have a vision for Reading Online, as do our department editors and our colleagues at IRA headquarters. Sometimes our creative vision gets ahead of our financial resources, but we are always working to provide innovative content within the parameters of the possible.

We are assisted in this endeavor by the wonderful contributors to the journal, the ROL authors, who often see clearly what they would like to achieve in the new medium. As editors, we believe that our relationships with authors are unlike those experienced by most editors who work in the print environment. In an electronic journal, the format is often inextricably intertwined with the message. To put it another way, content is often realized creatively through media. We work closely with authors to make this happen. Reading Online’s content has fallen along a continuum from things that might readily be published in a print journal (e.g., the Handbook of Reading Research series) to pieces that probably could never be published in a print journal because their effectiveness depends on multimedia and links to other resources on the Internet (e.g., McEneaney’s hyptertext history or Johnson’s piece on Internet resources for struggling readers).

Time Line and Time Crunch

One of the biggest challenges of publishing online is time. On one hand, time is our friend because we can publish time-sensitive materials quickly, without the long period necessary for print production. However, time is an unwelcome friend at times because it pushes us relentlessly to publish sufficient material for ten new issues a year (we “go live” on the first day of each month). If we try to get lead time for our content, we run the risk of having it become stale; if we work on too tight a time frame, we run the risk of coming up empty on some parts of our journal. There is a balance to be maintained, which we are still trying to figure out.

Getting Manuscripts

A final challenge is one that attends all new media of expression. We must earn the respect and the approbation of our colleagues. Questions abound. Will a publication in Reading Online count as much as a print publication for purposes of performance review, tenure, or promotion? We believe that most universities and colleges are coming to recognize that online publication, provided it is in a peer-reviewed, professional journal such as Reading Online, counts as much as print publication in a journal with an equivalent acceptance rate. In addition, authors and administrators are coming to realize that readership may be wider with an electronic journal, and that an article’s message can be transmitted to an audience far larger than is possible with print publication. Reading Online is visited between 50,000 and 70,000 times a month by readers from around the world, an audience that we hope will continue to grow.

Creating a piece for publication in an online journal can be a challenge for authors. Our profession has focused on the conventions of print and traditional print literacies. Learning how to put an article into hypertext mark-up language (HTML), importing and converting graphics or pictures into appropriate formats, and building in interactivity are new communication tasks for us all. There is a certain amount of risk-taking involved, along with frustration, as we are learning new ways to express ourselves. As editors, we are happy to assist authors with this process and to “sell” the importance of publishing online.

Why We Enjoy Editing an Online Journal

Ideas and Creativity

In a rapidly evolving medium, we are constrained only by the limits of technology (and the resources required by technology) and our own imaginations. As editors, we are privileged to collaborate with, and learn from, visionaries who are taking the field in new directions so that we can meet the challenge of teaching children the new literacies that are defining their future.

Personal Relationships

A benefit of being editors of ROL is the relationships that we build with colleagues -- our department editors, contributors and authors, and IRA headquarters staff. E-mail is an informal, immediate style of communication that seems to facilitate personal connections.

Timeliness

The electronic medium gives us the potential to respond to issues in a timely fashion. Since we operate in a paperless environment, things move rapidly from submission to revision to acceptance to publication. Average turn-around time from submission to publication is 3 to 6 months, and that is a good thing for our field.

Expanded Possibilities

We are part of an evolving medium with unknown possibilities. We are intrigued by the opportunities to bring new ideas to the ROL readership quickly, in formats that are not possible in print journals.

A Final Word

Interactivity and integrated media are two defining characteristics of Internet literacy (Reinking, McKenna, Labbo, & Keiffer, 1998). Electronic journals in our field offer opportunities to contextualize knowledge, personalize the reading/viewing experience, scaffold learning, and build social relationships and communities. Reading Online serves as one example of how literacy professionals are approaching the challenge of writing and publishing their work in a new and continuously evolving literacy environment. In the short time that we have edited the journal, we have seen increasing use of the unique capabilities of the Internet in the manuscripts that are submitted. And that is true whether the topic is traditional print literacy or new literacies.

We just returned from IRA’s annual convention, this year in New Orleans, where we had the opportunity to meet with the team that makes Reading Online possible -- the department editors, review board members, advisory council, IRA staff, and authors and readers of the journal. We appreciated the feedback and opportunity to plan for the journal’s future. We predict that our journey as editors will continue to provide many lessons for learning and opportunities for celebration. We enjoy hearing from readers and invite you to e-mail us (bdalton@cast.org or grisham@mail.sdsu.edu) or to post your comments about the journal to our Online Communities.

References

Reinking, D. (1998). Introduction: Synthesizing technological transformations of literacy in a post-typographical world. In D. Reinking, M.C. McKenna, L.D. Labbo, & R.D. Kieffer (Eds.), Handbook of technology and literacy: Transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. xi-xxx). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [Note: This book is reviewed elsewhere in this journal.]
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Reinking, D., McKenna, M.C., Labbo, L.D., & Kieffer, R.D. (Eds.). (1998). Handbook of technology and literacy: Transformations in a post-typographic world. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [Note: This book is reviewed elsewhere in this journal.]
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Citation: Grisham, D.L., & Dalton, B. (2001, June). Myths and realities on online publishing. Reading Online, 4(11). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/editorial/edit_index.asp?HREF=/editorial/june2001/index.html

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted June 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232