Impact assessment on electronic publishing in the Federal Republic of Germany: part one
| Published date | 01 June 1989 |
| Date | 01 June 1989 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb044921 |
| Pages | 351-360 |
| Author | Ulrich Riehm,Bernd Wingert,Knud Böhle,Ingrid Gabel‐Becker,Manfred Loeben |
Article
Impact assessment on
electronic publishing in the
Federal Republic of
Germany: part one
Ulrich Riehm, Bernd Wingert,
Knud Böhle
Karlsruhe Nuclear Research
Center,
Department for
Applied Systems Analysis
(AFAS),
P.O.
Box 3640
7500 Karlsruhe
1,
FRG
Ingrid Gabel-Becker,
Manfred Loeben
German National Research Centre for Computer
Science,
Institute
for
Integrated Publishing and
Information
Systems,
Dolivo Straβe
15,
Darmstadt,
FRG
1.
Introduction
The impact assessment on electronic publishing (EP) is
a
pro-
ject conducted jointly by the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research
Centre and the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing
(GMD), Darmstadt. The project is partly subsidised by the
Federal Ministry for Research and Technology which has in-
stalled a project board, in that respect following the model of
OTA. It can be seen in the broader context of the two German
EP projects (in the publishing and patent fields), which were
part of the DOCDEL programme of the EEC and were co-
funded by the Ministry for Research and Technology. The
publishers' project experimented with a markup language for
the establishment of full text databases, thus having some re-
semblance with the standard generalised markup language
(SGML) project of the Association of American Publishers.
The project's objective
is
to investigate how EP techniques
are applied in different areas of scientific and technical
information and to assesss their
impact.
A central thesis of the
project is that the success of applying EP is not only
dependent on the technical functionality but also on the
structure of knowledge and the respective institutional
context.
Phase I of the project was completed in December 1986
and concentrated on expert interviews to find out the state of
research, technology, and applications in the Federal Repub-
lic of Germany. Additional expert interviews were conducted
in the USA. An interim report on Phase I of the project is
available (only in German, unfortunately, but already in
machine readable form).
In Phase II (1987) two surveys were performed. The first
concentrated on the function German publishers in the
scientific-technical field are able to fulfill with the advent of
the new technology, what kind of equipment they install, and
how the relations between publishers and authors
will
change.
The second survey was directed towards a sample of authors
to explore their state of knowledge and the techniques they
apply for electronic manuscript preparation. It included a two
week study tour
to
Great Britain to research new concepts and
projects.
In Phase III (1988) we concentrated on the way in which
databases (both online and offline) are actually accessed by
end users. We paid particular attention to the question of
usage in a working context, including the way that users
handle retrieval languages, and access the information they
require. The subject areas covered were medicine, law and
business. This involved a further study tour, this time to the
United States.
In what follows, the general approach of the project, and
the most important results of Phases I and II, are described.
The results of Phase III will be published in a forthcoming
issue of this journal.
2.
Approach and concept
2.1 Project equipment and environment
The EP technology used in the project consists of
two
PCs in
Karlsruhe and two in Darmstadt. At Karlsruhe there are in
addition a CD-ROM drive, an NEC matrix printer, a modem
for telecommunication and a scanner. This equipment is used
primarily for communication, joint editing of texts, and the
accessing of online databases.
Communication is via mailboxes and a teleconferencing
system, which is of great importance to our project, since the
five members are located at three different places. The joint
editing functions are described in detail in the next chapter.
The Karlsruhe centre has access to a number of inter-
national online services, including Dialog, NewsNet, ESA/
IRS,
to experimental databases such as Computer Compacts
and Electronic Magazine, and to German hosts and online
databases, especially in the business, medical and legal
information areas.
The equipment is integrated with the other systems in
operation, including a XEROX Star office system and the
IBM mainframes in the computing centre, all interconnected
by a Local Area Network (see Figure 1).
As part of the project we are trying to develop a concept
(and suitable software) to integrate the different facilities of
electronic document preparation on the basis of SGML
The Electronic Library, Vol. 7, No. 6, December 1989. 351
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