Maria Bonn

Impact of distance independent education

Distance independent learning has the potential for a fundamental and beneficial transformation of higher education. By combining the best aspects of our present university and college systems with the opportunities offered by recent developments in communications and information technology, distance independent learning could lead to high quality, highly individualized instruction and the creation of intellectual communities that transcend the limitations of time and space. This potential infuses the rhetoric of the proponents of distance independent learning. But much of the rhetoric around distance education is misleading and fails to articulate the potential negative effects of widespread adoption of these new instructional delivery vehicles. In this article, the authors examine the motivations behind proponents of distance education, as well as the potential impact of distance learning upon instructors and students. They also raise questions as to curricular subjects and pedagogical styles that may not be appropriate for this type of instructional delivery. The authors emphasize that the educational community must consider not just the benefits but the non-monetary costs of relying on distance independent educational delivery. Educators must not see distance education as a universal innovation applicable to all types of instructional situations, but must carefully analyze the appropriateness of distance independent learning to various types of instructional situations.

A Report on the PEAK Experiment: Usage and Economic Behavior

Electronic access to scholarly journals has become an important and commonly accepted tool for researchers. The user community has become more familiar with the medium over time and has started to actively bid for alternative forms of access. Technological improvements in the communication networks, paired with the decreasing costs of hardware, create greater incentives for innovation. Consequently, although publishers and libraries face a number of challenges, they also have promising new opportunities.1 Publishers are creating many new electronic-only journals on the Internet, while also developing and deploying electronic access to literature traditionally distributed on paper. They are modifying traditional pricing schemes and content bundles, and creating new schemes to take advantage of the characteristics of digital duplication and distribution.

Preserving intangible heritage: defining a research agenda

The past decade has seen tremendous progress in the field of preservation, particularly with respect to preservation of digital materials. To date, however, there has been only minimal research activity within North America on the preservation of intangible cultural heritage, and its relationship to the preservation of material expressions of culture. Given the importance of intangible heritage to the cultural and scholarly record, we believe that a more significant research program in this area would be of benefit to the scholarly community. This panel will focus on the nature of intangible heritage and the problems in preserving it in a digital age.

Interactive distance-independent education : Challenges to traditional academic roles

Distance-independent learning environments will necessitate shifting roles for instructors, research assistants, libraries, administrators, and computer support personnel. This paper reports on a distance-independent class taught at the University of California and the University of Michigan, and examines the challenges this course posed to existing academic culture.

An Editorial Farewell

It is now just over 10 yr from the time 2 large cardboard boxes filled with stacks of paper, handwritten notes in blue ink, some rolls of scotch tape, and a pair of scissors arrived in my office in Charlottesville. Those boxes contained the essence of our Journal and sincere good wishes for success from my predecessor, Dr Philip Clement, as I assumed my role as the fifth Editor in Chief of this Journal. At that time the Journal was a quarterly of 60 pages. All correspondence was by US mail. Almost all images were B&W and editing and layout was done by hand. The above describes how 24 volumes were published by Phil and his 3 prestigious predecessors, Drs Ancel Blaustein, Steven Silverberg, and Henry Norris. With some trepidation, I was surely walking in the footsteps of giants that fall of 2004. It is hard to believe that was just 10yr ago. Oh did I mention, both Phil and my biggest concern centered on having enough quality submissions to fill each issue? We kept that one just between us, no need to trouble the Board with such trivia. But the change of editor coincided with other changes. With the timely and essential modernization of the publication process, promoted and lead by our publishing partner Lippincott, the entire physical process of journal production transformed literally overnight to one that was (ok almost) exclusively web and email based. This allowed the editor, reviewers, and authors to focus their truly valuable time on quality and content. The layout of the journal was updated. The review board and the community responded with increased submissions. Just 18mo later we had an unprecedented experience, a backlog! By 2009, more major changes and upgrades for both readers and authors were instituted, a product of the ongoing productive partnership between the Society and our publisher. A new Journal layout, 6 issues per year and 100 pages per issue, color images on the cover, a new Web site for readers, and free color images for all authors. WOW! Submissions increased with improved ratios of original articles to case reports and impact factors improved. By 2010, submissions were up over 150% from the prior 5 years and impact factors continued to improve. In many respects, the last 5 years have flown by. Time flies when you are having fun and especially when you are busy. In my opinion, the Journal is well positioned to move to the next level. The official version of the Journal is no longer paper. The app version, I am proud to say, is a beautiful, state-of-theart piece of software that will only get better. Submissions have grown to the point where further expansion of the Journal to 8 issues per year or even monthly publication should be a serious consideration. Monthly publication would clearly bring the Journal into direct competition for even higher quality submissions, a good and necessary thing to move the impact of the Journal to an even higher level. And so dear reader, it has been one of the great privileges of my career to serve as Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Gynecological Pathology. Believe me, I learned a lot being in the position to have my fingers on the dynamic pulse of our specialty. I deeply and sincerely thank all the members of the editorial board for their support and hard work over this decade, of what I hope all will agree, was one of great progress. I especially thank and acknowledge the indispensable support and talent of Ms Leslie Thacker, whose role as managing editor made it all possible. The future possibilities alluded to in the brief history above and many others yet imagined, all directed at From the Department of Pathology, University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, Virginia. The author declares no conflict of interest. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Mark H. Stoler, MD, Department of Pathology, University of Virginia Health System, 1215 Lee Street, Office #3032, P.O. Box 800214, Charlottesville, VA 22908. E-mail: ijgynpath@virginia.edu.

A case study in library‐based scholarly publishing: The university of Michigan library's scholarly publishing office

In recent years, institutions of higher learning and research and the libraries that support them have become increasingly concerned about the costs and conditions of the publication and distribution of scholarship. In response, several universities have begin to explore the possibility of their libraries functioning as publishers, particularly looking to explore the possibilities and costs of electronic publication. The University of Michigan Librarys Scholarly Publishing Office(l) (SPO) is one such institutional venue for the electronic publication and distribution of scholarly content. This discussion summarizes some of the policy issues that led to the creation of SPO, and describes SPOs organisation and some of the activities that instantiate its mission of building sustainable publication models that bridge the gap between academic self‐publishing and large, aggregated, commercial publishing. It also raises several questions about how libraries should function as publishers, and about cooperation and collaboration in building alternative venues for scholarly publishing. In detailing the work of SPO, the author hopes to use it as a case study to illuminate the mission of library‐based scholarly publishing efforts and the challenges such efforts must meet in order to succeed.