Something Old, Something New
First, I want to welcome back the National Academy of Engineering as a sponsor of Issues. NAE was an original sponsor and supported the magazine for more than a decade. During a period of transition in its leadership, it suspended its sponsorship, but now that it has regained its equilibrium under the leadership of Wm. A. Wulf, it has renewed its commitment to Issues. Even when NAE was not an active sponsor, Issues addressed the subjects of technology and industry that are of interest to NAE members. With NAE back as an active participant, we should be able to strengthen our coverage of these topics. This issue’s cover stories on the relationship between information technology and economic productivity should be of particular interest to NAE members.
Second, I want to announce an initiative to enhance our online presence. For several years, we have been posting on our website the table of contents and several articles from each issue. Beginning with the fall issue, we will make the entire contents of each issue available online, and we will create a searchable database of back issues. This database will be integrated with the much larger database of publications from the National Academy Press. A search for material about Superfund, for example, will turn up references to National Research Council reports as well as to Issues articles. Our hope is that this resource will be indispensable to public policy researchers.
In addition, we want to transform the Forum section into an active online debate. Forum letters will be posted as soon as they arrive, authors will be encouraged to respond to the letters, and everyone will be invited to participate by commenting on the letters or the original articles. We believe that this feature is particularly valuable for a quarterly publication. It will mean that it’s not necessary to wait three months to hear responses to articles, that realtime policy debate will be possible, and that there need be no space limitations to constrain comment. Forum has always been one of the most popular sections of the magazine, and this can only enhance its value.
Electronic economics
Access to the Issues website will be free. In this, we are following the example of the National Academy Press, which in 1997 put its entire backlist of publications online with free access. Although some worried that this would reduce sales, the opposite occurred. People became interested in what they found online and opted to buy the printed version. Book sales have increased.
It appears that the Internet is a good way to find information but that print is still the preferred way to use it. Reading on the screen is difficult, printing web pages is slow, and bound books and magazines are convenient to hold and store. The time may come when electronic text rivals the printed word for convenience, but it’s not here yet. We expect that web visitors who find Issues useful will want to subscribe to the print version. And for those who can’t afford it or who use it rarely, we will be providing a public service.
The goal of online publishing is not simply to produce the electronic equivalent of the print edition. The true value of the World Wide Web is its unlimited linking ability. An online version can provide much more than a print edition. When an author cites a specific report, a click on the mouse can call that report to the screen. A data reference can be linked to the full set of data from which the reference was drawn. Recommended reading becomes a list of quick links to the full text of the publications. Combined with the capacity for instantaneous online debate, linking makes online publishing much livelier and more interactive.
Finally, we would like to be able to alert you when new material appears on our website. It’s frustrating to pay repeated visits to a site and find nothing new. That’s not likely with the NAS and NAP websites, which are updated regularly, but we would like to make it easier for you to decide when you want to surf in. We plan to develop an electronic mailing list to which we would send alerts announcing the presence of new material on the website. In this way you will know when something of interest is posted without having to take the time to visit the site. If you want to be placed on this list, please send your e-mail address to [email protected]. Eventually, we want to code this list with your interests so that you receive an alert only when it refers to topics that you specify. Although Issues will not be available online for a few months, you can already find an abundance of valuable information at the National Academy of Sciences (www.nas.edu and the National Academy Press (www.nap.edu).
To help us understand how our readers use the Internet (and to update information that is useful to the editorial and business decisions at Issues), we have incorporated into this issue a brief reader survey. We would be very grateful if you would take the time to complete the survey and return it to us by fax or mail. Once we have established an active online presence, surveys such as this will be less necessary. But for now, it’s the best way for us to stay in touch with you. Please respond.