A Look Back at 22 Years as an
Open Access Publisher
Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

Introduction

In June 1989, I launched PACS-L, a LISTSERV mailing list. PACS-L was one of the first library-oriented mailing lists, and, at the time, it was unusual in that it had a broad subject focus (public-access computer systems in libraries, such as online catalogs) rather than a narrow focus on a specific library automation system. Although PACS-L's greatest contribution may have been in raising librarians' awareness of the importance and potential of the then fledgling Internet, it was also the platform on which my initial scholarly digital publishing efforts were based.

In August 1989, I began my scholarly digital publishing efforts, launching one of the first e-journals on the Internet, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review.1 This journal, if it was published today, would be called a "libre" open access journal since it was freely available, allowed authors to retain their copyrights, and had special copyright provisions for noncommercial use. It was the first open access journal in the field of library and information science.

Aside from Public-Access Computer Systems News (also "libre" open access), my subsequent digital publications, such as theScholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, were "gratis" open access until 2004, when all new versions of existing publications and new publications became "libre" open access under various versions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.2

To date, my major open access publications have been:

Recent digital works have been published at my Digital Scholarship site, which covers digital copyright, digital curation, digital repositories, open access, scholarly communication, and other digital information issues. See the "Digital Scholarship Overview" for current use statistics and more details.

Chronology

Below is a brief chronology of my digital publishing efforts from June 1989 through June 2011.

1989

  • June 29, 1989. Established the PACS-L mailing list, acted as list owner and, later, as its first moderator. Sent the first PACS-L welcome message to subscribers. The establishment of PACS-L facilitated the development of my scholarly digital publications.
  • August 16, 1989. Established The Public-Access Computer Systems Review (PACS Review, also known as PACS-R), a free scholarly e-journal, and acted as its first Editor-in-Chief.

1990

  • 1990. Published 3 issues of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, including the one described below.
  • January 3, 1990. Published the first PACS Review issue. Articles were selected by the editors. They were distributed as ASCII files using the LISTSERV software; table of contents messages were e-mailed to subscribers.
  • March 5, 1990. Established and acted as co-editor of Public-Access Computer Systems News, a free electronic newsletter Acted as co-editor until the end of 1992. Published 12 issues in 1990.
  • August 30, 1990. Published the first version of "Library-Oriented BITNET Lists," a directory of mailing lists. Published 3 versions in 1990.

1991

  • 1991. Published 2 issues of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, including those described below.
  • 1991. Published 11 issues of Public-Access Computer Systems News.
  • Published 8 versions of "Library-Oriented Computer Conferences and Electronic Serials."
  • August 26, 1991. Published the volume 2, no. 1 issue of the PACS Review. This was a special issue on open access journals, such as Postmodern Culture and Psycoloquy.
  • October 29, 1991. Published the volume 2, no. 2 issue of the PACS Review. Adopted a more flexible PACS Review publication schedule that took advantage of electronic publishing capabilities and reduced article publication time.
  • November 11, 1991. Changed the PACS Review to a peer-reviewed journal.
  • November 15, 1991. Announced that I was stepping down as PACS-L moderator. PACS-L had over 3,100 subscribers at the time.

1992

1993

1994

1995

  • 1995. Published 5 issues of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, including the one described below.
  • 1995. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, Volume 5, 1994 was published as a paperback by the Library and Information Technology Association, with all profits assigned to LITA.
  • 1995. Research and Development of Scholarly Information Dissemination Systems: Report for the Fiscal Year 1994, a Grant-in-Aid Research by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan for the Year 1994/95 (06302076). Papers from The Public-Access Computer Systems Review were translated into Japanese and published as a paperback by the National Institute of Informatics.
  • March 21, 1995. Published the volume 6, no. 1 issue of the PACS Review, the first HTML version of the PACS Review. Established a policy that allowed authors to update articles. This issue was composed of the first version of my "Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works: A Selective Bibliography." Fourteen versions were published in 1995.

1996

  • 1996. Published 6 issues of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review.
  • 1996. Published 3 versions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, including the one described below.
  • 1996. Published 12 versions of Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works: A Selective Bibliography", with the last version (no. 26) being published on October 25, 1996. Starting with version 23 (June 25, 1996), the bibliography was searchable.
  • September 12, 1996. Announced that I was stepping down as PACS Review Editor-in-Chief at the end of 1996.
  • October 25, 1996. Published the first version of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (SEPB), a free, updated electronic book (announcement) that provides references to new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers. The bibliography was searchable. See the "Evolution of an Electronic Book: The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography" for a detailed history of the bibliography from 1996 to 2001.

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

  • 2006. Published 6 versions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, including the one described below.
  • 2006. Published Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog posts biweekly as needed.
  • 2006. Published DigitalKoans posts.
  • January 8, 2006. Established the digital-scholarship.com domain to replace the escholarlypub.com domain.
  • February 6, 2006. Published the Open Access Bibliography Author Index and the Open Access Bibliography Title Index.
  • March 22, 2006. Published an HTML version of the OAB.
  • April 28, 2006. Published version 62 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography. Ceased publishing a corresponding Acrobat version.
  • October 25-28, 2006. Created Google Custom Search Engines for the OAB, SEPB, and SEPW.
  • November 1, 2006. Resigned my position as Assistant Dean for Digital Library Planning and Development at the University of Houston Libraries, where I had worked since November 1987 (previously as either Assistant Dean for Systems or Assistant Director for Systems).
  • November 3, 2006. Migrated SEPB, SEPR, and SEPW from the University of Houston Libraries' servers to escholarlypub.com. Discontinued the SEPW LISTSERV mailing list, and replaced it with a FeedBurner mailing list.
  • December 14, 2006. Established the digital-scholarship.org domain on a second hosting service in order to mirror DigitalKoans and other files for increased reliability.
  • December 18, 2006. Announced the digital-scholarship.org domain, branding it and digital-scholarship.com under the name "Digital Scholarship."

2007

  • 2007. Published 4 versions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography.
  • 2007. Published Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog posts biweekly as needed.
  • 2007. Published DigitalKoans posts.
  • January 8, 2007. Replaced the mirror Blogger SEPW Weblog with a new one on the digital-scholarship.org domain using WordPress and FeedBurner.
  • February 11-12, 2007. Redesigned the Digital Scholarship Web sites to give them a common look and feel. Published an HTML version of the "Open Access Webliography."
  • March 14, 2007. Published the first annual PDF version of SEPB.
  • September 25-27, 2007. Redesigned the entire Digital Scholarship site. Converted version 69 of SEPB to the new design, and recoded all other site documents in XHTML and CSS to comply with the new design.

2008

2009

2010

2011

Notes

1. In 1989, the global network was much smaller and more fragmented than it is today, and the primary information access tools were e-mail, FTP, mailing lists, telnet (terminal emulation), and Usenet newsgroups. In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote "Information Management: A Proposal," which tried to persuade CERN officials to support a global hypertext system (it was not called the World Wide Web until October 1990, when he coded the first server and browser). Gopher servers, which represented a significant advance in information access, would not become available until 1991, and NCSA Mosaic, an early Web browser that ignited interest in the Web, until 1993. You can place my publications in the context of the development of the Internet by consulting the Hobbes' Internet Timeline and Internet History. Thanks to Robin N. Downes, then Director of the University of Houston Libraries, for his strong support for my digital publishing efforts from 1989-1996.

2. You can place my publications in the context of the development of the open access movement by consulting the Timeline of the Open Access Movement.

3. Printed annual versions of the The Public-Access Computer Systems Review were published at the recommendation of the journal's editorial board, which was concerned with the problem of limited Internet access by some readers during this early period.

4. Thanks to Peter Suber for his assistance with the Open Access Bibliography and his encouragement during its writing.

Digital Scholarship > A Look Back at 22 Years as an Internet Open Access Publisher

Copyright © 2011 by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

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