Electronic Journals and the Transformation of Scholarly Communication - Constraints and Technical Possibilities

This is my PhD Dissertation. It examined the scholarly communication system and argued for a scholar controlled, open access system to replace the extant predatorial and gate-keeping commercial presses.

Core Arguments I argue that the early scholarly journal system emerged during the Enlightenment to fulfill a “Baconian ideal”—open, rapid, public dissemination of knowledge for societal advancement. However, by the late 20th century, this system had become a “closed access” knowledge system dominated by commercial interests, characterized by:

• High extraction of profit by monopoly-like commercial publishers (Elsevier, Springer, etc.)
• Structured inequality (developing nations, small institutions, and marginalized scholars excluded)
• Slow, inefficient distribution that pushes current awareness into informal “invisible colleges” (resembling Vedic gurukula limitations)

This dissertation is relevant to the notion of Epistemic Infrastructure of society and my notion of a Knowledge System. It describes the Medieval Knowledge System, a system characterized by glacial rates of knowledge production and distribution. It focusses on the Knowledge Technology of that system, libraries, scholarly journals), but also includes analysis of knowledge stewards, and knowledge dialogues. It points to the potential of new knowledge technologies (i.e., the internet, the WWW, SGML) to transform the ancient knowledge system into something more democratic and responsive

Note that while I do not use the terms “Knowledge System,” “Knowledge Technology,” etc., in the dissertation, it is clear that I am talking about these things. Thus this dissertation prefigures and discuss discusses the basic components of the system, including

1. Knowledge Technology: The thesis identifies the shift from paper/microfilm to SGML/XML (he proposes “IXML”). Coupled with the emergence of the Internet, WWW, and associated information technologies, this marked a significant advance. It gave us a transformative knowledge technology that could accelerate knowledge production and democratize distribution. In the dissertation I note that that vested interests (commercial presses) work to maintain high-cost, closed architectures.
2. Knowledge Stewards: The thesis highlights how commercial publishers have usurped the stewardship role from scholars and societies, creating “predatory” pricing models that provide a dual function for the Accumulating Class, the accumulation of wealth from the public university system and the control of knowledge flow.
3. Knowledge Dialogues: The dissertation extensively critiques how publication delay (2-5 years) forces critical scholarly dialogue into informal networks (“invisible colleges”), creating a stratified system where only elite, well-resourced scholars can participate in real-time knowledge exchange.
4. Scalability & Economics: The work provides empirical data showing that electronic journals could reduce costs by 45-75% and eliminate distribution delays, but identifies political/ideological obstacles (neoliberalism, “market discipline” imposed on universities) as the primary barrier to reform—aligning with your critique of the university system’s “closed access” limitations.

This dissertation forms the foundation of a lot of the work I did during my early career where I discussed the political economy of scholarly publication and the potentials of modern knowledge technologies to open up and democratize the system. It also undergirds all the practical work I did creating electronic journals and moving scholarly publication online.

Recommended citation: Sosteric, Mike. (1999). "Electronic Journals and the Transformation of Scholarly Communication: Constraints and Technical Possibilities." Department of Sociology, University of Alberta.
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