 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
JCE Software: Periodical Publication or Software Publisher
|
||
|
Jon L. Holmes
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706 |
||
|
|
||
|
Note: |
This issue is out of print. |
|
|
|
||
|
JCE Software has long suffered an identity crisis. This lack of identity, both in our own minds, and in the minds of the chemistry education community that it serves, stems partly from our struggle to publish software using a periodic journal model. It has manifested itself in the past through the geographic separation of the Journal and Software operations. We have addressed the latter with the consolidation of the print and software operations here in Madison. We fear that we also suffer from the additional misconception about what JCE Software publishes or will publish. Remembering our slogan ÒIt is not about software, it is software.Ó, we may well add ÒBut what is software?Ó For now, I would like to attempt to try to correct any misconception you may have about what JCE Software is and what it may become. Next time, IÕll try to clarify what it is we publish. JCE Software is a publication of the Journal of Chemical Education, which is published by the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society. It is governed by the same Board of Publication that oversees Journal policy and finances. Like the Journal, all submissions to JCE Software undergo peer review. Like the Journal, authors freely submit materials without solicitation or remuneration. Like the Journal, the Software staff expends a lot of time and effort to produce a worthy publication. But JCE Software is also a vastly different publication from the print Journal. In the course of ten years JCE Software has published 100 articles. The Journal publishes 100 articles every two and one-half months. JCE Software averages 2.4 articles per issue; the print Journal averages about 40. JCE Software costs $60 per issue; the print Journal about $3. The process of publishing software is very unlike that of publishing a journal in the print medium. The philosophy is similar but the mechanics are very different. First, many fewer authors can author software. This was especially true in the past when authoring required a good computer programming background. Modern tools have made it much easier to author software, but still few people have the ability, time, and inclination to do so. This is also the case for software reviewers. It is a far more difficult task to review a piece of software than it is to review a printed manuscript. Even the task of installing the software makes many people skittish. It takes a great deal of time to explore every nook and cranny of even a small application. And no one has the time to check on the correctness of the computed answer (many times this is why the program was written in the first place). Then there is the task of Òcopy editingÓ software. I by no means wish to belittle the task of the print copy editor, but I do not know of many people who can competently copy edit computer code! But, it is often the case that this must be done to make the program work as it should. The mechanics of preparing the printed documentation of the software is of course very similar to preparing a print article. But it is fair to say that software authors are not always the best ones to prepare the documentation of their work. Lastly, there are post-publication differences in that software must be supported for a long period of time after it is published. Because of these differences software publishing does not readily fit the print periodical model. First, it is generally the case that unforeseen circumstances delay the delivery of a software issue. Secondly, the number of ÒarticlesÓ in an issue is small. When a problem occurs, we generally cannot drop the article from the issue or there would be little left in the issue. Because the number of articles per issue is small, the subscriber is not assured of receiving an issue that she or he can use. People do not buy software on the faith that issues for which they have paid in advance will contain something useful to them. So the question is, can and should software be published using a periodic journal model? We are all much more familiar with the mainstream model for software publishing and JCE Software is certainly a software publisher. With the publication of this issue, JCE Software has now published 100 titles. We are going to adopt some aspects of the mainstream model and start acting more like a software publisher and less like a periodical. This includes changing our publishing model to publishing programs as they are ready, one per issue. It would mean that there may be more issues published on one platform than another in a given period of time. It may mean that there would be price fluctuations from issue to issue as an issue is priced according to the costs incurred in publishing it. It may also mean that issues are retired and no longer available and/or supported by JCE Software. We will still make every effort to produce high-quality, peer-reviewed, reasonably priced software. We would still publish new materials regularly, if new materials are submitted. JCE Software is suffering from a lack of Macintosh-specific submissions. Most development done on the Macintosh can be deployed on Windows. Also Macintosh projects tend to make liberal use of multimedia elements. This increases their disk space requirements to where such submissions cannot be delivered on floppy disks (8C1). It because of this lack of submissions that we will not be offering a second Macintosh issue in Series C this year. We welcome your input. Should JCE Software publish according to the current periodical model or adopt a more mainstream software publishing model? Feel free to email your comments to me at jlholmes@chem.wisc.edu.
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last Updated: April 26, 2001 Created: November 13, 1997 |
Created by: N. S. Gettys Comments to: jceonline@chem.wisc.edu |
|
|
|
| © 1997 Division of Chemical Education, Inc., American Chemical Society. All rights reserved. | |