Electronic publishing of scientific journals – the (new) economics
Pieter Bolman, Academic Press, USA

Developments in Information Technology have had and continue to have a profound effect on the production and distribution of scientific journals. The transition to scientific electronic publishing has actually just begun and, contrary to popular belief, it has not come cheaply, nor will it do so in the future. The high fixed to variable cost ratio characteristic of electronic publishing, combined with the rapidly increasing demands of end users in terms of access, functionality and connectivity, will give rise to large investments on the part of publishers. New business models are needed to take full advantage of new opportunities. Neither publishers nor librarians have found it easy to cope with associated challenges in the current transition period. An announcement will be made as regards dramatically improving access by low income countries.

1. Although the Chinese government tries to achieve major developments in science and technology, the budget allocated for purchasing scientific literature, especially journals, is still insufficient. Since most of the imported scientific books and journals are very expensive, the best way for foreign publishers to go into the China market is by giving licenses to reprint journals.
2. To promote popular science publishing, the Chinese government should consider subsidizing the publications.
3. In China, papers that are published in well-established international journals gain greater recognition both by the Chinese government and by international scientists than those published in local journals. Hence, the local publishing industry should seek to improve the quality of their journals further, especially the English language journals. The Chinese government can help support journals by giving incentives to those scientists who publish in local journals whereas now the Government gives bonuses to authors who publish abroad.

TAWAIN

During the last 30 years, Taiwan has developed rapidly in the manufacturing industry, especially in IT and in electronics. Because of Taiwan's rapid growth and progress, its higher education and industrial research have developed to advanced stages. In terms of scientific publishing, Chinese language publishers are still active, especially in the areas of publishing popular science titles and textbooks up to the university level.

In summary, Mainland China as well as Taiwan will definitely be one of the biggest markets for STM publications in terms of manpower and resources.

JAPAN

Undoubtedly, Japan is most advanced in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of scientific research and scientific publishing. Traditionally, Japanese are willing to learn in detail and eager to get new information. These characteristics are also reflected in their publishing industry.

Between 1920 and 1950, Japan imported important scientific books in German and English from abroad, particularly in the fields of physics and mathematics. During the 1930’s, many important books were translated into Japanese, including some books on quantum mechanics. Those books had a strong influence on research in Japan. The fruit of the research was to produce two Nobel Laureates, Yukawa and Tomonaga, and many eminent world class physicists such as Sakata, Nambu and so on, as well as many outstanding mathematicians.

Japan is a very good market for scientific books and journals. In fact, it is one of the biggest markets in the world. At the same time, Japan itself produces quite a number of good scientific journals in English such as the Journal of Applied Physics, Progress in Theoretical Physics, Earthquake Engineering, etc. However, their scientific readership is still very much dependent on imported publications in English.

Compared with the U.S.A., Japan is a small country. However, the circulation of Japanese scientific publications in Japan is higher than that of English language scientific publications in the United States. If I am not mistaken, the total number of scientific publications published in Japan every year is higher than that in the USA (certainly per capita). This is especially obvious in the field of popular science. For example, the BLUE series, which is a popular science series published by Kodansha Publishing House, has a print run for each volume ranging from 20,000 to 500,000 copies.

Another example is the Newton magazine, a top popular science magazine in Japan. Taiwan has published a Chinese edition for many years. Recently, an English version has been published for the Australian market. In this particular case, we see that good scientific publishing material need not just be a translation from the English language, but that there is plenty of good material that originates from other languages.

INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT and OTHER THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES Like other developing countries, the Indian sub-continent is able to import only limited numbers of scientific publications from abroad, due to budget constraints. Also the gap in local scientific publishing between the developed countries and Third World countries is getting bigger. The way to help the developing countries is to offer them special discounts on their purchases, to grant them licenses to reproduce the publications or provide them with on-line materials at very low charges.

The late Professor Abdus Salam, a Nobel Laureate in physics, was very concerned about promoting science and scientific knowledge in developing countries. He strongly proposed that one should reprint important textbooks, from primary school level to research level for developing countries. We should help these countries to publish important textbooks at different levels, especially the elementary and secondary school levels.

SUMMARY I would like to offer some suggestions on STM publishing in developing countries.

Countries such as China, India, and even Russia have very large communities of scientists. Therefore, it will not be healthy to exclude them from the international scientific community. These scientists will greatly influence scientific research and education in the 21^st century.

It is useful to publish collections of important papers in different subjects in China, India and Third World countries, as these countries have no resources for accessing the information. Unfortunately, the current STM publishers still charge very high prices to reprint journal papers. To overcome this problem, I feel that copyright should belong to the scientists, and not the publishers, so that information can be disseminated widely to other parts of the world, at lower cost. (Even when copyright belongs to the scientist, the problem of dissemination still exists and various electronic schemes are beginning to assist authors and readers to gain access to scientific literature, Ed.).

The English language has been the main language for publishing Science, Technology and Medicine. However, scientific publications in other languages also have rich content, so it will be important to look into the issue of translating publications from other languages to English. (It is important to make scientific literature available in whatever language it is written. However, the cost of translation must be considered and dealt with, Ed.)

In the Asia-Pacific region, there is no regional organization for STM publishers. Perhaps now is the right time to set up an Asia-Pacific STM publishers’ association. One of the main objectives is to help the science and education in the Third World countries. (The next international conference of the International Federation of Science Editors will be held in Beijing in August 2002. Also there is a large Association of Editology in China., Ed.)

The problem of lack of science textbooks in primary and secondary schools in some Third World countries (e.g. Pakistan and Bangladesh) is very serious. We hope that the UNESCO, and other organizations of the United Nations, can provide some funding to support textbook printing and production in these countries.

Financial Considerations in Scientific Publishing in Developing Countries:
The Case for the People’s Republic of China
Steven K. Luk, Ph.D, Director,
The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong,
 

Introduction

Many scientific journals are available on the web. This is particularly true for huge collections of historical information, which can be more conveniently provided via an electronic database available online for reviewing, or that which is ever changing since the speed of delivery is as important as the contents. The issue of pricing for electronic products, just as for printed products with a limited circulation presents a challenge to publishers. The industry is searching for a business model for pricing and discussing standards of peer review and editing, distribution/sales and copyright management.

In this paper, I will try to briefly summarize the present state of electronic publishing of science in the People’s Republic of China, and to explore how Chinese scientific publishers seem to be more successful in resolving the very same issues that confront their Western counterparts. Not being a scientific publisher myself, I owe a great deal of the information to publishers and librarians who I have interviewed [1].

THE CHINA SYNDROME

Before we proceed to discuss electronic publishing, we must recognize the unique characteristics of the media/publishing industry in the People’s Republic of China. State ownership/management control of the entire media/publishing industry Under a "socialist country with Chinese characteristics", the Chinese media including all facets of the electronic publishing industry is administered and staffed at various levels by government institutions whose purpose and mission is to promote policies made by the Chinese Communist Party. As such, all publishing houses (about 500) and electronic publishers (50) are numbered and licensed. Each publishing house is allowed to publish a certain number of titles annually, and each manuscript has to be approved prior to publication. In fact, the publishing industry is one of the few areas in the economy that is still within the grip of the government.

In China’s Four Point Modernization Program, scientific education and R&D are given top priority. Given China’s ability to attract overseas capital in recent years, universities and scientific institutions have earned increased funding to buy books and equipment for updating their facilities. This scenario has provided a good base for the electronic publishing industry to flourish in recent years. Late development in the electronic publishing field Prior to the digitalization of Chinese characters on a large scale around 1996 (Microsoft Windows 95 did not come out in Chinese until 1996), the computer was seldom used for word-processing. Indeed, Beida Fengzheng, the corporate giant in electronic publishing software, was not established until 1996. The digitalization of Chinese characters, the appearance of the www and the introduction of affordable desktop computers happened at almost the same time – around 1996. Coincidentally, this was also a period of high economic growth and regained political/economic confidence since the Tienanmen incident of June 4, 1989. Thus, there was no better way to build up the basis of scientific education than by deploying increased funding to establish electronic libraries (as many of the traditional libraries have been in sorrowful shape). China wants an independent scientific community Scientific publishing in most third world countries is conducted in the English language since the number of copies sold would be too low to be economically sustainable. Furthermore, the English language is the lingua franca of the scientific community in most areas in Asia such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. Owing to China’s large population, or perhaps because of its ideology, it insists on maintaining an independent scientific community. Thus, China has engaged in the active promotion of electronic publishing in the natural sciences in Chinese in the past several years.

On the other hand, there is an active movement by editors and publishers in China to have Chinese journals recognized by mainstream databases Therefore many of the journals are published in English or at least have abstracts in English. Electronic publishing materials in Chinese have a market outside Mainland China Libraries with collections on Asia in some scientific research institutions and major universities in the US, UK, Japan and Korea, must acquire research materials in Chinese. It is estimated that as many as eight consortia have been set up to negotiate electronic publishing products with Chinese publishers.   China’s Electronic Publishers

There are two tiers of electronic publishers in China, namely, those that produce for the public/educational market, and those that publish for the scientific research community.

Electronic publication of computer titles in a market economy According to the registration records at the News and Publication Administration in Beijing, a sub-cabinet level agency overseeing the country’s published media, among the 136 scientific publishers, only around 50 are licensed to publish electronically. There were 1,800 publications in the scientific field in 1999, most of which in fact were paper-based books on popular science and family medicine.

The so-called "Four Big Electronic Publishers", namely, the Electronic Industry Publishing House, the Heavy Machinery Industry Publishing House, the Tsinghua University Press and the People’s Postal Services Publishing House, have been very active in acquiring rights to computer titles pertaining to software such as Microsoft, Linux, Apple, Cisco, Java, Oracle, Lotus, etc. Indeed, entities affiliated with government institutions such as the Beijing Hope Electronic Press http://www.bhp.com.cn,Wanfeng Database Publishing House, and the typesetting software provider, Beidai Fangzheng, were set up by the government for the development of publishing software in the Chinese operating environment, the promotion of computer education, and the publication of books and electronic products for the popular/professional market. The Year 2000 Publication Catalog for the Beijing Hope Electronic Press, an affiliate of the Academy of Science, was a combination of computer titles from the Microsoft Press, Simon & Schuster and McGraw-Hill. The range of titles included operating manuals, books on database and graphic design and internet literature at all levels as well as testing/certification self study manuals and papers.

Although these publishing houses can easily publish their titles exclusively in an electronic format such as CD-ROM, most of them are paper-based, or are bundled with colorful manuals. According to the company’s senior management, this is due to the rampant piracy pertaining to popular electronic publications in China. Consumers and law enforcement personnel can better distinguish the real from the fake if colorful manuals are attached. There were as many as four different pirated editions of Adobe Photoshop 6.0 at one time in the Province of Sichuan. The Copyright Agency of the News and Publication Administration are working hard to stamp out piracy. Officials there pointed to their recent successes, particularly after 1994 when information leading to a successful conviction can earn as much as RMB300,000 (USD38,760) at a time when the average household income in big cities is around RMB1000 (USD120) monthly. It was reported that eighty production lines for pirating CD-ROMs were confiscated in 1999.  

Electronic publishing for the scientific community The largest and perhaps the most comprehensive and serious online publishing project today is the government-funded China Journal Net  administered by the Chinese Academic Journal Electronic Journal Publishing House, which was specifically set up to coordinate this project.

The full text databases of the Chinese Academic Journal (CAJ-CD) cover more than 3,500 scholarly journals in nine disciplines, including Mathematical and Natural Sciences, Engineering, Electronics and Information Science, Agriculture, Medical and Health Sciences, History/Literature, Politics/Law, Social Sciences, and Education. It is reported that 31 issues and 233 volumes of optical discs (totaling 1.5 million pieces of literature) have been published since its initiation in December 1996. Additionally, half a million full-text articles will be added annually. One thousand two hundred major libraries in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland have subscribed to this service. According to their plan, most literature collected in the database will have bibliographies in both Chinese and English, and all academic journals will carry abstracts in both languages. Also, more than 200 journals of the social sciences with full English language texts will be added gradually.

Structure: The establishment was approved by the Chinese government and administered by the database/information design and publishing unit in the Tsinghua University, which is regarded as the MIT of China. Other members include the National CD-Rom Research Institute and Tsinghua Tongfeng CD-ROM Manufacturing, Ltd. (which is probably the production arm of the design unit of the University). The Ministry of Education is the sponsoring agency within the government. This is in line with the Communist Party’s call to "strengthen China through science and education".

Organization: The literature is selected, evaluated and edited by the research libraries of the Academy of Science and the Academy of Social Sciences. Since this database is unique in China, they have designed their own platform and software, which are also supplied to journal publishers who have neither the financial resources nor the expertise to digitize their publications.

Distribution: Eighty "mirror substations" are maintained all over the country to deliver some seventy specialized databases of serialized journals to its clients. Subscriptions are available for the entire set or for selected literature pertaining to certain disciplines. They are also available in CD-ROM format at a specified charge.

In a marketing brochure, it is claimed triumphantly that "[the Chinese Academic Journal Electronic Journal Publishing House] has successfully established the China knowledge infrastructure, aiming to create a comprehensive information environment for Chinese scholars".  

China’s "Business" Model The issue of how to digitize the contents of scholarly journals through the most economic means for the greatest public good has been in the minds of public policy-makers in academia for several years. The US National Research Council’s Committee on Intellectual Property in the Emerging Information Infrastructure released The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age on November 3, 1999 after nearly two years of meetings by "the widely divergent members of the committee." While admitting that the implications for archiving the national output of intellectual property are formidable, the report recommends that "the Congress, the Administration, and combined managements of the top research libraries and archives should lead efforts in developing an archive system that will work as well with digital information as previous systems have worked with hard copy information."

Indeed, the statement seems to be begging the question [2]. It continues:

"The economics of the digital environment entails a redistribution of power away from creators and distributors. The committee introduces the term disintermediation to refer to the new capacity of authors and artists to deal directly with consumers, bypassing the traditional role played by publishers and distributors [3]."

A more concrete proposal has been made by David Stern, Director of Science Libraries and Information Services at Yale University in his article, "Pricing Models: Past, Present, and Future?" It can be summarized as follows:

1. The goal of this cost model is to create a relatively simple, predictable, reviewable flat-rate budget scheme for quality STM items with market value and support for the archiving of non-marketable information items in relation to both local and global needs.

2. Recognizing that not all quality scientific information can be distributed on a commercially successful revenue basis, a sizable amount of information may need to be housed on non-profit servers.

3. A two-tier pricing model is needed. The tier 2 arena will be subsidized by a balance of direct or indirect government, commercial and society dollars.

4. New aggregator roles for research, charge, tracking and validation across publishers will record both costs (hardware and software) and revenues [4].

Is the Chinese business model referenced-above sustainable inside the People’s Republic of China? In a telephone conversation with Mr. Wan Jinkun, Managing Director of the China Journal Net Project, he indicated that the RMB5 million (USD625,000) initial loan from the government for setting up the venture was repaid in 1997, and that current revenues can sustain the ongoing operations. They can borrow additional funds should there be a need to develop new projects.

Indeed, the success of the electronic publishing venture in China owes as much to government funding as to the monopolistic nature of the business. Let us delineate the income/expenditure scenario of the entire enterprise:

• Initial capital investments probably came from the government, which has a significant interest in capturing the thematic trends of Chinese scholarly journals from the perspectives of planning, education, and control. (The writer was told repeatedly that the China Journal Net routinely supplies statistical information to the government.)
• Royalties to journal publishers/content providers is 11% of the sales revenue of the specific journal. It is not exclusive in nature, and the China Journal Net will also provide a standard platform to help the journals to digitize their contents as previously noted.
• Operating expenditure in the area of salaries is probably provided by various scientific and academic institutions such as the Academy of Science and Tsinghua University. It is not uncommon in China for a person to hold several concurrent positions, some of which might pay a salary and/or a bonus. The Tongfeng Database Publishing House is a commercial entity which handles certain areas (software design/development) that might have commercial value. Staff working in this venture may receive an additional bonus.
• China Journal Net adopts a two-tier pricing system whereby international clients including those from Taiwan and Hong Kong are charged much more than their counterparts in the Mainland. Since all scientific and educational institutions in the Mainland are government-owned, a basic flat-fee subscription plus pay-per-view would not constitute a problem. Given that the annual subscription fee for the 8-party consortium in Hong Kong is as high as HKD10 million (USD1.3 million), proceeds from the eight overseas annual subscriptions (as previously estimated) would be around USD10.4 million. This is a large sum of money when a full college professor in China is paid around RMB2,000 (USD250) per month.

It is argued that the business model for electronic commerce has to meet the formula of "fairness, legality and efficiency" in order to induce all parties to cooperate. [5] While the electronic publishing of general titles in China is plagued by wide-spread piracy, the electronic publishing of scientific journals has by and large attained the level of fairness, legality and efficiency as Odlyzko defined. This is because the communist state owns and controls and operates the publishing industry exclusively in both the educational and scientific fields. There is no commercial cost attached. As such, the sole consideration is efficiency and affordability. Also, the publication and distribution of scientific materials in electronic format must be far cheaper in the long run than printed copies, particularly when it is evaluated from the government policy-making perspective. This might well be one of the many "advantages of Socialism" as their daily slogan goes.

What do we gain in this survey of China’s electronic publishing in scientific fields? China and its people are worthy of attention to the outside world; and as such, the sales of its products/services probably can cover the exceedingly low production expenditure, although their publication activities in the scientific fields are still marginal. The unfortunate part is that most of the scientific ideas that are worth publishing are published in the English language and distributed via Western channels. Thus, the scientific publications in China, similar to those of many countries, are of marginal monetary value, unless they are published in English. Obviously, this phenomenon is not limited to publication in the scientific fields. Nevertheless, as scientists are more amenable to electronic formats, the dominance of English in electronic publication in the sciences will continue.

  References
1.The author is grateful for the information he obtained from many individuals who are working in the electronic publishing field in the People’s Republic of China. He has also received valuable information from Mr. James K.M. Cheng, Librarian of Harvard-Yenching Library, Mr. Karl Lo, Director of International Programs at the Libraries of the University of California, San Diego, and Mr. Leo Ma of the Serials and Electronic Resources Department of the University Library System, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. It goes without saying that the interpretations and the mistakes therefrom belong to the author.

The following papers were read online as posted by the Association of American University Presses on March 30, 2000 under the title "Andrew Odlyzko: Papers on Electronic Publishing and Electronic Commerce".

2.Melinda Koyanis, "The Digital Dilemma: A Summary", Exchange Vol. 2 (winter 2000): 1 and 4.

3. Ibid., 12

4.David Stern, "Pricing Models: Past, Present, and Future", Serials Librarian 36 (1999): 301-319.

5.Andrew Odlyzko, "The Bumpy Road of Electronic Commerce", WebNet 96-World Conference Web Society Proceedings, ed. H. Maurer, ACCE, 1996, pp. 378-389.

address: Hong Kong, Shatin NT, China. Tel. +852 2609 6460, Fax +852 2603 6692,
E-mail: stevenkluk@cuhk.edu.hk

The role of non-profit organizations such as learned societies in Japan
Kunio Tada
Faculty of Engineering, Yokohama National University , Japan

Abstract

Large numbers of Japanese papers in English are submitted to foreign journals now. This is partly due to the fact that journals in English published in Japan are relatively few, and not fully established. It is true that founding and maintaining a special journal in English in Japan is not an easy task. Nevertheless, hundreds of learned societies in Japan have been exerting all possible efforts in establishing society journals in English, which accommodate contributed papers by members and non-members, and which disseminate new information to the international community. Among them perhaps physics societies are the forerunners. In this paper, as a case study on the situation in Japan, efforts made by the Physical Society of Japan (PSJ), the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP), and their related societies are introduced with emphasis on the recent electronic publishing.

PSJ, JSAP, and their related societies presently publish four journals in English. These are open for original contributions from the international physics community. Until now these four journals have been published through four separate publication offices. To cope with common economic problems and the urgent necessity for electronic publishing, an alliance among the four journals is now being formed. The Institute of Pure and Applied Physics (IPAP) was founded in April 2000. This is a non-profit organisation that was established for the purpose of publishing physics-related journals and other relevant scientific and technological information.

The Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (JJAP) is the biggest among the four journals (actually the biggest in Japan) and was the first to respond to the challenge of electronic publishing. As a result of the efforts by a volunteer group of experts from the editorial board, editorial staff and a printing company, and owing to new government support, JJAP online has recently achieved international recognition for high quality and is available to the public free of charge. The IPAP total management system, which is perhaps the first fully Web-based editorial and publishing system of scientific journals in Japan, is being developed and will be installed in May 2001. It is expected to provide dedicated services to authors and subscribers at much reduced labour cost. All these improvements in JJAP are to be extended equally to the other three journals; the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan (JPSJ), the Progress of Theoretical Physics (PTP) and the Optical Review (OR). It is also hoped that the new organisation IPAP can serve as one of the world centres of communication for the international physics community.

Since 1998 two new government projects have been carried out. One is to develop the editorial system through the National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS), now called the National Institute of Informatics (NII). The other is to develop a hyperlinking system through the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JSTC). PSJ, JSAP, IPAP, JJAP and JPSJ have been keenly collaborating with both projects. Now both systems are to be found on government Web-sites, and are open for academic societies in order to provide access to electronic publishing of scientific journals in Japan.

1. Introduction

In Japan, more than 50,000 books are published annually. Most of them are in Japanese. This is true even for textbooks in higher education. Therefore, an international language such as English is not very necessary in daily life and routine works. For researchers in various fields, however, the necessity to read and write papers in English is sharply increasing now for international communications and exchange of scientific and technological information. Today, large numbers of Japanese papers in English are submitted to foreign journals. This is partly because journals in English published in Japan are relatively few and not fully established. It is true that founding and maintaining a special English language journal in Japan is not an easy task. Nevertheless, hundreds of learned societies in Japan have been exerting great efforts to establish society journals in English which accommodate contributed papers by members and non-members, and which disseminate new information to the international community. Among them perhaps physics societies are forerunners. In this paper, as a case study on the situation in Japan, efforts made by the Physical Society of Japan (PSJ), the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP), and their related societies are introduced with emphasis on recent electronic publishing.

PSJ, JSAP, and their related societies presently publish four journals in English, which are open for original contributions from the international physics community. These four journals were published through four separate publication offices. To cope with common economic problems and the urgent necessity for electronic publishing, an alliance among four journals is now being formed. An umbrella co-operation agreement between PSJ and JSAP was made in July 1999. After a period for preparation, the Institute of Pure and Applied Physics (IPAP) was founded in April 2000 by modifying and expanding the Publication Office of Japanese Journal of Applied Physics.

In order to build a system of communications, which will provide fully electronic submission and publication of papers, databases for the storage of full text articles and a system for fast, selective retrieval of published materials, IPAP has carried out intensive studies and works for almost a year. Now two of the four journals are published through IPAP and the rest will be transferred to IPAP in the near future. Several learned societies in the field of physical science and engineering have become interested in IPAP and seem to be willing to join IPAP in the future. It is hoped that the new organisation can serve as one of the world centres of communication for the international physics community. The necessity for such a centre, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, was discussed by various speakers at the Second World Congress of Physical Societies (RACIP 2) held in Tokyo in 1995.

2. Constituents of IPAP

The Institute of Pure and Applied Physics (IPAP) is a non-profit organisation that was established for the purpose of publishing physics-related journals and other relevant scientific and technological information. The Institute was launched on April 1, 2000 with its main office located in Tokyo.

Figure 1 shows the relation between IPAP and related academic societies and journals at present and in the near future. These societies and journals are briefly described in the following.

The Physical Society of Japan (PSJ) is an organisation of about 19,000 physicists, researchers as well as educators, and engineers. The origin of the Society can be traced back to the Tokyo Mathematics Society founded in 1877 as the first natural science society in Japan. It included physics and in 1885 the Tokyo Mathematics Physics Society started a membership periodical in Japanese and partly in English. In 1919 it evolved into Proceedings of the Physico-Mathematical Society of Japan where all the papers were in English. In 1945, due to the difficulty and confusion at the end of World War 2, the Society was disbanded and the Proceedings were discontinued. Next year in 1946, the Physical Society and the Mathematical Society revived separately and the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan (JPSJ) started as a continuation of the famous Proceedings mentioned above.

JPSJ is published monthly, and is devoted to the publication of original papers in all fields of physics. It has won a world-wide reputation with a high impact factor (2.38 in 1998). PSJ has a separate membership journal in Japanese titled "Butsuri" (Physics).

Progress of Theoretical Physics (PTP) is a monthly journal in English which contains academic research papers on theoretical physics such as particle physics, field theory, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, statistical physics, astrophysics and cosmology. It was founded by the late Professor Hideki Yukawa in 1946 (the year after the end of World War 2) and before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949. Around the time of the end of the War, almost all the academic journals in Japan had been discontinued or suspended and Japanese physicists had no means to make their work known abroad. Realising acutely the necessity of publication of the many excellent works performed during and after the War, Professor Yukawa dared to launch PTP. It was the only means of disseminating the research results to countries abroad at that time, and the outstanding achievements in theoretical physics were published in PTP. These included the re-normalisation theory by the late Professor Shin-ichiro Tomonaga and his collaborators, which created a sensation in the world. Later on, PTP came to be published for PSJ and the Yukawa Institute of Theoretical Physics that was founded in Kyoto in 1953.

The Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP) is a unique academic society in the world with its name associated with applied physics. The Society’s interests cover a broad variety of scientific and technological fields, putting emphasis on state-of-the-art and interdisciplinary topics. JSAP has more than 23,000 members, 60% of them belonging to private companies. Members’ scientific and technological backgrounds and interests also cover a wide range. Its precursor dates from 1932 when an informal group at the University of Tokyo published a journal in Japanese through a commercial publisher. The journal was titled as "Oyo Buturi", which means applied physics, and this was the first one in the world with that title. This journal narrowly survived through World War 2 and was converted to the membership journal in 1946 when the informal group was upgraded to a nation-wide official academic society of JSAP, with a unanimous hope of reconstructing Japan through the promotion of science and technology. JSAP and PSJ jointly launched the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (JJAP) in 1962. Now-a-days JJAP publishes about 2,000 papers annually and is distributed to more than 50 countries world-wide. JJAP is recognised as an indispensable source of technical information in such wide areas as semiconductor devices and processing technologies, blue lasers, magnetic and optical storage, liquid crystals, ceramics, and high-temperature superconductors, to name but a few. JJAP papers have been cited more than 25,000 times in major international journals in 1999, which is the third largest for publications in the applied physics area.

The Optical Society of Japan was founded in 1952, and is one of 10 division societies affiliated with JSAP. It has a membership of 2,000 and two membership journals, "Kogaku" (Optics) in Japanese, and the "Optical Review" (OR) in English. The latter was started in 1994 and is the only international optics journal from Japan. It publishes, bi-monthly, contributed and review papers in all branches of optics.

3. Problems encountered by JJAP

Obviously it is one of the major roles of learned societies to publish journals in order to foster communication of research results to society members and other interested people in the world. The society has a responsibility to maintain and promote high standards of journal quality and to distribute journals at affordable prices.

As is well known, in recent years publishing of society journals has been facing unprecedented difficulties. These result from multiple complex causes, which include: <\p>

1. An increase in size of each volume due to the increase of contributed papers,
2. and due to the diversification of subject distribution.
3. A growth in publication expenses and a consequent increase of the journal price.
4. A world-wide tendency of continued decline in numbers of subscribers.
5. A rapid growth of electronic publishing and network services which has been a threat to conventional journals, and which impels a rapid inclusion of, or transfer to, an online information delivery system.

This situation will now be explained in more detail using the case of Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (JJAP) as an example. Figure 2 shows the annual change in the total number of pages published in JJAP. Here, total pages means net pages of papers plus additional pages for index, contents, etc. JJAP is divided into two parts. Part 1 is basically monthly but often semi-monthly, and includes regular papers, short notes and review papers. Special issues (about 8 issues per year) are devoted to international conferences held in Japan on "up-to-date topics". Part 2 is semi-monthly and contains letters and express letters for rapid and ultra-rapid publications. Total pages for all these reaches almost 10,000 with more than 1,900 papers in the year of 2000. These numbers have more than doubled in the last 15 years. This has been pushing up publication costs and annual subscription prices. The latter brought about a decrease in the number of subscribers. The number of individual society member subscribers has decreased from its maximum record in 1990 by 34% during these 10 years. In the same period, the number of library subscribers has decreased by 33% which corresponds to a 4% decline per year.

The decrease in number of library subscribers is more serious from the economic viewpoint because two major sources of income for JJAP are publication page charges and library subscription fees.

Support from the government is welcomed. Taxation on donations is very heavy in Japan for both donors and recipients. Therefore, it is seldom that academic societies receive donations. On the contrary, for many years there has existed a support system by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, that is, Grant-in-Aid for Publication of Scientific Research Result. Last year the policy was largely changed so as to extend a further favour to society journals in English, or in some European languages. Through the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), an agent of the Ministry, 112 society journals of this kind received a total of 554 million yen in 2000. Most of the journals are in the fields of natural science and technology. It seems the support to society journals in Japanese was much reduced. It was fortunate that the accomplishments and efforts by JJAP, especially those for electronic publishing, were highly evaluated resulting in a large increase of the grant by 74%. This kind of government support is indeed helpful to society journals in English, not only from an economic but also a moral viewpoint. It greatly encourages staff and volunteer society members who are engaged in publishing at non-profit organisations.

Rapid publication is an important goal for scientific and technological journals. JJAP has a strong editorial board composed of 2 editors-in-chief, 11 head editors, 89 associate editors and 9 overseas editors. Most of the members of  the editorial board are members of JSAP or PSJ.  As a whole, members of the editorial board have at least a thousand possible names of reviewers, all kinds of expertise within, or outside, of both Societies. As a result precise, fair and rapid peer-review is carried out, and JJAP is proud of its relatively short period for publication. From receipt of a submitted paper to publishing of the issue containing that accepted paper, it takes on average one-and-a-half months for express letters (these were started in 1998 for ultra-fast publication of excellent letter papers), three months for letters, and six months for regular papers.

It can also be pointed out that the paper-submission from abroad is continuously increasing as shown in Figure 3. Now, one-third is from abroad - Asian countries most, then from the USA and European countries.

As described in the previous sections, an alliance among societies and journals was made last year with IPAP, linking them as shown in Figure3. One reason for seeking such an alliance was certainly economic problems as mentioned above, which were more or less common to member journals. Improved efficiency and scale merit, due to alliance and merger, was expected in order to solve the economic problems otherwise anticipated in the future without such a reform. A no less

important reason was to cope with the urgent necessity and requirement for electronic publishing. As explained in the next section, there existed some differences among four journals in experience, skill and accomplishment in electronic publishing. It was hoped to disseminate and distribute this knowledge and skill from the most efficient journal to those less advanced journals. Merger of publication offices was thought to be the best way for that and also for pursuing scale merit and top quality in electronic publishing.

4. Electronic Publishing in IPAP

Among four journals in IPAP, JJAP was the first to respond to the challenge of electronic publishing. In 1995 the editorial board decided to employ a LaTeX-based system for both conventional and electronic publication. It decided also to discount publication charges by 40% for paper submission with LaTeX compuscripts. A volunteer group of experts from the editorial board did a fine job of preparing software, and guiding editorial staff and the printing company. Guided by the same group, JPSJ soon followed JJAP. From 1996 an electronic version of both journals was opened for the public, free of charge, through one of the Web-sites (www.soc.nacsis.ac.jp) managed by the National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS) under the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (MESSC).

People involved in the above project then considered the preparation of two new systems for electronic publishing. The first was a fully automated Web-based editorial system for the submission, refereeing and editing. The second was a Web-based system for online journals with hyperlinking to both the citing and cited articles. However, they soon found the system design and development too challenging. It seemed many trials and errors would be necessary and would require excessive expenditure in money and human resources.

PSJ and JSAP jointly petitioned the government for support in early 1998. MESSC decided to take charge of developing the editorial system through NACSIS, and the Science and Technology Agency (STA) decided to develop the hyperlinking system through its agent, the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JSTC). They prepared a 2,100 million yen budget for these projects to support electronic publishing by a number of academic societies and similar organisations in Japan. JJAP and JPSJ were selected as pilot journals for the system development in the above two projects. Both journals collaborated with two government agents in preparing the basic concept and the basic software design, and in testing the developed systems.

Now IPAP journals and some other journals of academic societies in Japan are available on the two government Web-sites, NACSIS-OLJ (www.nii.ac.jp) and JSTAGE (www.jstage.jst.go.jp) though these sites are not yet fully equipped. The editorial system is now undergoing improvement after some tests performed at IPAP.

IPAP is now developing its own editorial system, dedicated to JJAP at first because the editorial board has some specific requirements to the system. That of the accounting management system and the subscription management system accompanies this development. Therefore, the whole system is called IPAP total management system, and is explained later on. IPAP has also added the hyperlinking system to the Web-based system for its online journals (www.ipap.jjap.or.jp). These were made possible as a result of government projects and support because IPAP could make many experiments through co-operation with the government agents. IPAP will manage its own custom-made system and continue to co-operate with the government agents in improving their standardised systems, which will be useful for many society journals of regular size. Incidentally, in January 2001 the two ministries (MESSC and STA) merged to form the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MECSST).

Before concluding, the present status of JJAP online and the IPAP total management system under development are briefly introduced.

Abstracts of all articles in JJAP are available in HTML. Full text is available in both HTML and PDF formats, since 1999 for JJAP Part 1 and since 1998 issues for Part 2. IPAP is now extending the electronic full text to older issues. As for references, hyperlinks to almost all major society journals are provided through AIP, APS, IOPP and so forth. The hyperlink through CrossRef will be implemented soon. JJAP online is now free to access. This may have influenced the recent increase of the citation impact factors of JJAP.

Outline of the IPAP total management system is shown in Figure 4. It consists of three major systems. The editorial system manages the flow of papers from the paper submission by authors down to the publishing in online journals as well as in printed journals. The accounting management system handles all accounting activities in IPAP. Page charges and reprint invoices are handled in this system. The subscription management system handles the database for subscriber records and current and back issues. All the systems share the same database. Moreover, it is equipped with flexible and friendly interfaces to authors and subscribers. Therefore, it has become possible to provide dedicated services to both authors and subscribers at much reduced labour cost. Such features are very important for non-profit organisations like IPAP.

Figure 5 shows details of the editorial system. The system configuration faithfully follows the current JJAP editorial processing procedure that has been established through many years of experience. The paper submission subsystem receives the electronic submission from authors in PS (Post Script), PDF or LaTeX/EPS format. The submitted papers are all stored in the paper database along with other pertinent information. Then an editor (out of one hundred members of the editorial board) is assigned to each paper for starting the reviewing process. Reviewing process is the most important part in the publication of scientific journals. However, it is sometimes painful for very busy professionals volunteering for paper review. In this regard, the IPAP system is designed to lessen the trivial load of reviewers as well as editors and help them to concentrate on only professional aspects of paper review. Editor assignment is done by an editor-in-chief and/or IPAP editorial staff and the reviewer for each paper is assigned by the editor. The well-established database facilitates the selection process. This helps IPAP greatly to keep the rapid publication policy of JJAP. All communications are carried out on the internet, including inquiry and approval of editor/referee assignment, sending back and forth of manuscripts, the communication among reviewers and editors, and editors and authors, requests for hastening delayed review processing, etc. The authors are invited to ascertain the status of their papers in the reviewing process by just accessing the query management subsystem. Finally, the editor-in-chief gives the final approval of acceptance, or rejection, of each paper. This system allows a very efficient reviewing process with much less load, while keeping the high scientific and technological quality of JJAP papers established so far. After acceptance, the papers are sent to the automatic page formatting system for publication on online journals as well as in printed journals.

Perhaps this is the first fully Web-based editorial and publishing system of scientific journals in Japan. IPAP will start using the system from May 2001. The editorial system is to be applied to JJAP first, but it is planned to extend the system for use in the other three IPAP journals in the near future.

5. Conclusion

Situations surrounding learned societies in Japan for publishing scientific journals in English are explained with emphasis on the Institute of Pure and Applied Physics (IPAP) and its journals as examples.

In spite of difficulties in founding and maintaining a scientific journal in English in a non-English-speaking country, hundreds of learned societies are exerting all possible efforts in establishing society journals in English which accommodate contributed papers from Japan and abroad and which disseminate new information to the international community. Financial support from the government (Grant-in-Aid for Publication of Scientific Research Result) is helpful. It should be pointed out that the support has been extended, a further favour to society journals in English.

In order to cope with common economic problems and the urgent necessity for electronic publishing, an alliance among the Physical Society of Japan (PSJ), the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP) and their related societies, is being formed. IPAP was instituted in April 2000, and all four journals in English of the above societies are to be published through IPAP.

The Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (JJAP) is the largest among the four journals (actually the biggest in Japan) and was the first to respond to the challenge of electronic publishing. As a result of  the efforts by a volunteer group of experts from the editorial board, editorial staff and a printing company, and owing to new government support, JJAP online international high quality has been accomplished for recent issues, and is opened for the public free of charge. The IPAP total management system, which is perhaps the first fully Web-based editorial and publishing system of scientific journals in Japan, is being developed and will be installed in May 2001. It is expected to provide dedicated services to authors and subscribers at much reduced labour cost. All these improvements in JJAP are to be extended equally to the other three journals, the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan (JPSJ), the Progress of Theoretical Physics (PTP) and the Optical Review (OR). It is also hoped that the new organisation IPAP can serve as one of the world centres of communication for the international physics community.

Since 1998, two new government projects have been carried out. One is to develop the editorial system through the National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS), now called the National Institute of Informatics (NII); the other is to develop a hyperlinking system through the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JSTC). PSJ, JSAP, IPAP, JJAP and JPSJ have been keenly collaborating with both projects. Now both systems are installed on government Web-sites and are available to academic societies in order to help electronic publishing of scientific journals in Japan.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge kind help and advice for preparation of this manuscript extended by Prof. S. Kagoshima, Prof. T. Kugo, Prof. S. Kurihara,

Mr. K. Ohtsuka, Prof. T. Shibata, Dr. I. Yamaguchi and Dr. H. Yokoyama.

Address: Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan