Executive Notes
At JSTOR we strive to provide authoritative archival reproductions of scholarly works and broaden access to them. Initially, this meant creating "faithful replications" of printed journals by presenting their scanned pages online while enhancing their usefulness through text indices and detailed metadata. As user expectations and electronic publishing evolves, we are pursuing these aims as ambitiously as ever.
Features resulting from these goals will be evident throughout the archive this year. While pursuing more faithful journal replications, we developed a process called "image compositing." Compositing, which allows users to see high-resolution images embedded in the onscreen display alongside crisp text, has begun to replace the practice of linking higher resolution images from bitonal scanned pages. We pioneered the process with the College Art Association, in order to better represent art journals online. For more on our collaboration, please see this issue's Perspectives column.
Adding functionality to increase user efficiency is another JSTOR priority. Reference linking, which allows users to follow links from articles to cited works is increasingly prevalent, visible as small arrows alongside references. This month, users may see search terms highlighted on page images, reducing the time required to locate search terms and evaluate an article's relevance .While these enhancements were not part of the original publications, our implementation aims to provide an authoritative and functional copy.
Faithful replication of born-digital work presents new challenges: publication templates may be proprietary and vary widely. As JSTOR begins displaying born-digital works this year, our objective will be to define how best to provide the archival copy in this new environment and increase its scholarly usefulness. As always, I welcome your thoughts.
Michael P. Spinella