10: Information Technologies and International Development
Interview with Dr. Michael Best, Co-editor-in-chief, March 2007
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This installment of Periodical Radio is about the scholarly journal Information Technologies and International Development. This relatively new journal began publication in 2003 by MIT Press. It is an Open Access journal. Open Access means that the content is freely available without subscription to anyone with a web connection. The cost of producing Information Technologies and International Development is supported by the Microsoft Corporation.
The Editors, Dr. Ernest J. Wilson III and Dr. Michael L. Best, founded Information Technologies and International Development for the purpose of creating a networked community of thinkers and strategists to discuss the relationship of technologies with international development.
The intended audience for Information Technologies and International Development is academics, the private sector, non-government organizations, and governments. It attracts readers interested in the "other four billion" – the share of the world population whose countries are not yet widely connected to the Internet nor widely considered in the design of new information technologies.
To learn more about the journal and the topics it addresses, I have as my guest co-editor-in-chief Dr. Michael Best.
Steve: Dr. Michael Best, welcome to Periodical Radio. Michael, let’s begin with a description of the journal’s purpose for a listener who’s unfamiliar with its topic area. What’s Information Technologies and International Development about?
Dr. Best: Well, as the name implies, we look at information and communication technologies, everything from radio, broadcast radio and broadcast media, to the internet, to mobile telephony, and how they relate to international development issues--political, social, and economic development primarily--in low- and middle-income countries. That will often be countries in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Steve: On the website, the phrase is used “the other four billion”. Could you describe for me a little bit what that phrase means?
Dr. Best: Sure. Well if you count up the number of folks living in North America and Western Europe and the other sort of OECD countries that are high-income countries, you get about 2 billion folks. If you subtract that from the 6.2 billion, or whatever we’re at today, the number of people on the planet, it turns out there’s about 4 billion of humanity living outside of high-income countries. Living in sub-Saharan Africa, living of course in China and India, those two countries will make up a couple billion of those 4 billion, and living in Latin America.
Steve: How does the journal fit with your interest in global community building?
Dr. Best: The journal is designed to facilitate building of an epistemic community among scholars and practitioners interested in these topic areas, so that’s kind of its core mission, to try to develop through scholarly, peer-reviewed, first rate research a community of interested parties that are engaged in this kind of work.
Steve: That leads me right to my next question, of what spurred you and Dr. Wilson to launch Information Technologies and International Development?
Dr. Best: Yeah, I mean the main reason was, before we were kind of out there, there were very few really tier one, peer-reviewed journals in this space. In fact, let me restate that. There were absolutely no tier one research journals in this space, in our estimation. There were a couple of journals that shared this interest, but either they had weak publishers, or editorial offices, or they were sort of just web based, with what we thought were weaker levels of scholarship. So we really wanted to have a first-rate journal with the backing of a first-rate university press that could hopefully raise the level of discourse among the set of scholars and practitioners in the field. With luck, and we hope, we’ve accomplished that a bit with ITID. Having said that, and let me sort of shamelessly have it both ways, while we wanted to definitely raise the level of discourse, we were always a little, not reluctant, but questioning of the traditional publishing models that traditional university presses have applied to peer-reviewed journals. The MIT Press is our publisher for ITID, and they own the title. We understood, me as a tenure track faculty member, playing the tenure game, that I needed publications in these sorts of journals that are indexed, cited, and have the backing of a top rated university press. But we also wanted to be able to critique and have some sort of debate about that process itself. At some point in our conversation we’ll probably come to the point where that debate has led us to some new models in our relationship with the MIT Press.
Steve: I do want to discuss that, but right before we go there, why MIT Press? It must be a difficult process to choose a publisher. What was it about MIT Press that led you to choose them over a different university or commercial publisher?
Dr. Best: I think we did, as I was mentioning, go with a top university press. The large corporate journal publishers are definitely organizations that I have kind of some problems with in terms of their approach to selling to academic libraries, in particular. We very much wanted to steer away from the very large two or three commercial journal publishers. MIT was a natural choice for a number of reasons. One, was that I was at MIT at the time, I did all my graduate studies at MIT, then I joined the research faculty for three or four years, so I was sitting there next door to the press, almost. I could almost see their offices from my office at MIT. MIT Press is one of the, if not the, most cutting edge university presses in terms of how they envision technology and its relationship to humanity. They’ve done that in many, many different disciplines, not just in the IT world, even in areas as far reaching as cultural studies or cognitive studies. They’ve managed to sort of take this holistic approach, publishing titles in both their book and journal streams that really cross these disciplines with a lot of strengths. They have this kind of ability to think about how technology and society and humanity interact, and of course that exactly where ITID sits, in sort of that nexus between a bunch of engineering issues sitting amongst a bunch of social and political issues. Also, they’re a cool press. I don’t know how to describe it any other way. If you go especially to their books, regrettably the journals perhaps a little less so, they have a design aesthetic and a coolness about them that is . . .you go up the street to the Harvard University Press, and you know that press isn’t cool, but the MIT Press really is. They have for years really pushed the envelope in design sensibilities for university press publications. I find that exciting, just in terms of the publishing world.
Steve: Sounds like your very happy with your press, for good reason.
Dr. Best: Well, MIT Press is a great press. We’ve been working with them as vigorous partners. There are strengths and weaknesses. You know, now that I’m on the other side with the press, they would, I’m sure, admit to some issues as well. They’re only slowing coming to understand some of the editorial office support software that many other presses would offer to their editorial offices. Regrettably, MIT Journals section has yet to institutionalize that, so that’s an example of where we’ve been debating and discussing since the inception of ITID, on ways editorial office work flow can be enhanced via some of these tools. As with any other publisher, you take some of the bad with the good.
Steve: Let’s now address Open Access publishing. I addressed it very briefly in my introduction to this show, so I described very basically what Open Access is. Will you explain for our listeners why you chose to go to an Open Access business model for your journal?
Dr. Best: There are two or three principal reasons. One is that it’s good for the authors. We know that if you look at the library studies research, the citation studies, that Open Access published material enjoys times two, times five the citation rates, the reader rates, than the traditional models of subscription journal articles. So it’s a great way for an author to very easily dramatically increase their impact of their scholarly output. So it’s good for authors. It’s good for readers. Well, I mean, you know that’s kind of a no brainer, insofar as it’s accessible to everybody for free on the internet. What’s the downside there? But in particular for ITID, where a lot of our readers, and authors for that matter, are in low income countries at institutions with very limited budgets, say at a university in sub-Saharan Africa or perhaps an Indian university. The traditional publishing model would be prohibitive, would prohibit them from ever being able to afford the subscription. Parenthetically, I would just add, we always had a special subscription rate for institutions or individuals in low income countries, so they did always did get, even when we were under a traditional subscription model, a discount. That was still prohibitively expensive for many of the kind of institutions that we’re most interested in targeting. Finally, it’s good for libraries, especially university libraries. I’m sure you know as a librarian at the College of Saint Rose that libraries, university libraries in particular, are struggling with journal costs. They now account for 50%, 60% of the library’s budget. You could probably tell me those details far better than I can guess at them. But I know it’s become a major issue. So as journals move to Open Access, which is something that is just natural given the web and internet today, it’s good for libraries. They can get back into the business of archiving of scholarly communication activities and collecting those books that you really still want as a book on a shelf, which you know is not necessarily every last piece of published material requires sort of a book on the shelf anymore. But those special things that do require it are expensive and the library is a natural place to invest in that.
Steve: Sure, and I would add to that a journal like Information Technologies and International Development would not be a natural thing for us to subscribe to as a title, because we don’t have a major in international development or anything like that. But with it being available, an undergraduate student doing a research paper, if they became interested in that topic area, then that would be available to them. We most probably would not subscribe to it, but with it being available, it opens it up to our students and faculty.
Dr. Best: Sure, and that would be true for many, many universities, and it would also be particularly true for ITID, which is very interdisciplinary, and therefore a little more difficult amongst the acquisitions community in a library, which is generally highly disciplinary siloed. Most university libraries have an acquisitions librarian for computer science, siloed in that area, and not necessarily able to think across disciplinary approaches. In some ways the traditional library acquisition approach worked against these kinds of interdisciplinary journals, and perhaps that would restrict our attractiveness to the university libraries under a traditional subscription model.
Steve: Indeed. How did you convince MIT Press to go to the Open Access model? My understanding from the web site is your journal was the first journal published by MIT Press that is Open Access.
Dr. Best: Correct. We are the first and still the only. We convinced them by just making it clear that this is first of all the way the world is moving, and that we were the most natural journal amongst their collections to sort of allow them to experiment with this new world of scholarly publication, and that we as an editorial office was willing to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of getting the journal up and ready for this new model. I think in many ways, to be honest, it was not a hard sell. The press knew they had to begin to experiment with this, they know they had to begin to learn about these new publication approaches, and we were the first to say, “Hey, we’re ready to do this.” So they sort of jumped at the approach. One thing I would say, again having praised MIT Press for all their strengths, surprisingly they are not very tech savvy, which I’m sure seems odd, given that they’re sitting there at MIT. So they’re not actually terribly internet savvy. So we have been willing to work with them and try to keep them on the cutting edge as best we can in terms of whether it’s a paid subscription model or an Open Access model. I guess in many cases it doesn’t matter since all their journals have an online presence. We’ve also been pushing under the Open Access model towards much more cutting edge and interactive web presence.
Steve: Your web site thanks the Microsoft Corporation for generously supporting the journal. Do you see corporate underwriting of journals as an idea that could be applied to other journals?
Dr. Best: I do, I mean I’m sure that it doesn’t apply universally in the normal way that if you’re a university faculty person raising funds across different disciplines, there’s not equality in ability to raise money. What do I mean by that? If you’re a humanities faculty member, there are much more limited places you can approach for funding, and high tech firms are probably not one of them. If you’re an IT journal, Microsoft is an obvious fit. You can approach them and they in this case as you can see, stepped up to the plate and gave us a generous gift. I think it can be applied, but it’s not going to be a one size fits all approach. Different journals will have different constituencies in terms of private sector or foundation donors, and they’ll have to work that on a case by case basis, would be my suspicion. However, boy it would be nice, and one could imagine somebody like the Soros Foundation network, or the Bill and Melinda Gates library component of their foundation deciding that they wanted to really do something big in Open Access journal publishing and approach a university press and say, “Hey, we have the resources.” The Gates Foundation clearly does with their library mandate. The Soros Foundation clearly does with their mandate to spreading information in an open society. Why don’t they just come with the few million a year and create a wealth of Open Access journals? I think that would be a great approach.
Steve: I’ve found editors and publishers very hesitant to talk about costs, but would you be willing to tell our listeners roughly how much it costs per year to produce your journal?
Dr. Best: We’re a little expensive. I think we’re spending about $75,000 a year.
Steve: For roughly how many articles per volume?
Dr. Best: Four full research articles . . .Oh, per volume? Four times four.
Steve: So sixteen, okay.
Dr. Best: And then about three times four, so twelve smaller things, either editorials, or opinion pieces, short items.
Steve: Let’s return to the content of your journal. As I perused it, I noticed many articles address the impact of wireless technologies in the developing world. Why is wireless so big in the developing world, why is that such an important issue?
Dr. Best: Well part of it is this so-called leap frog capability that many low income countries have. They don’t have already heavy investment in fiber or copper infrastructure like we have here in the states. Over the years of Ma Bell and AT&T and the various evolution of the private telco operators and then the parallel evolution of the cable television operators in the states, they have dug up, trenched, and laid a lot fiber networks, a lot of copper networks, and a lot of coaxial networks that would be the networks that bring you your cable TV. If you’re in Burkina Faso, if you’re living in Koudougou in point of fact there is a very limited infrastructure, either in fiber or copper. If you’re in Liberia, living in Monrovia, which you may know, and many of your listeners may remember, just emerged out of a protracted civil conflict only twelve or eighteen months ago. Their entire copper infrastructure was looted during the civil war, so there’s not a single land line. There are no telephones beyond mobile. So what do they do? Let’s take the Monrovia example. There are no copper phone lines anywhere. All gone. No infrastructure. What are you going to do? Are you going to start laying fiber and running copper, which is expensive in terms of just the raw materials. It’s labor intensive, it takes time and also has in a place like Monrovia issues around physical security of the facilities. Or do you just throw up a few microwave mobile cellular towers here and there, a few in Monrovia and a few in other parts of the country? Literally within months you can have wide coverage of most of the metropolitan areas of Liberia with mobile phones and a complete absence of a copper infrastructure and fixed line phones. So that is this green field, leap frog kind of approach that many low income countries have taken. They don’t have the history of significant communications infrastructure in place, and they move straight up to microwaves technology and terrestrial wireless approaches.
Steve: You have a special issue on wireless technologies coming out soon, is that correct?
Dr. Best: Yeah.
Steve: It has guest editors. I’d like to ask about the process of choosing guest editors. How do you do that? What are the benefits for the journal? Why do you choose guest editors?
Dr. Best: The how we do it is completely opportunistic at this point, to date at least. All of our guest editors, for the most part have approached us, or we have been involved in the meetings that sort of germinated the set of articles, or we have ongoing relationships. We’ve just been opportunistic when a clear critical mass of interesting work in a focused area is present, and that there’s some scholar that we have high regard for who’s been sheparding that work, then we sort of jump at that chance to do a special issue. From the perspective of Ernie and I and the journal, special issues are great, because readers like them, because they give you one place to go and really get a range of focused material on one area. So if you’re interested in that topic, it’s the go-to for a specific area. It also helps with our flow and management of submissions. Frankly, it offloads some of the very hard work our so-called editorial office--I say so-called because it’s just Ernie Wilson, my co-editor-in-chief and one editorial assistant--it’s a considerable amount of work that we have already on our plate to manage ITID. Of course for Ernie and I, we have day jobs as well. We’re both faculty members at universities, so ITID is just one of many things that we do. So there’s wrong with offloading some of that work on guest editors, and we get a very high quality product out of that, too.
Steve: Dr. Best, what do you enjoy best about being editor of the journal, given the situation that you just described of having a day job, and it being on top of a normal work load.
Dr. Best: The best part is that it forces me, you know, sometimes I cuss and get angry, but in the end the great thing is it forces me to read a ton of work in my field. Right now my editorial assistant, I think, has seven or eight things that I should read this week. Her job is to nag, and she does that with a considerable capability. So I routinely get the nagging e-mails about how I’m behind on what I’m supposed to have read. The coolest thing is I’m always reading submissions and re-submissions, making final editorial decisions, making initial decisions as to whether something is worthy of being sent for peer review and so forth. That really is great. It just keeps me on top of what’s going on out there, what people are thinking about, and what are sort of the major issues in my field.
Steve: Dr. Michael Best, especially in that context, I very much appreciate you taking the half hour for this interview. We’re just about out of time. Is there anything you’d like to add that we haven’t discussed?
Dr. Best: Well, just to sort of a bit of a hoorah to MIT Press and to the general process of going to Open Access, and to encourage authors in particular to know their rights, to seek out publication platforms that are Open Access, or that have stronger author rights. There still are publishers where you pay them to take your work, you sign the copyright over to them, they own everything, and then you buy back some preprints after they’ve published it, and they’re selling it to other folks. I think with things like the Open Access movement, authors are beginning to realize, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m doing all the work and then I’m buying it back from them, having given them all the rights? Does that make sense?” So my final comment would just be to all the authors out there, know your rights. Seek out journals that if not Open Access, at least offer you as the creator of the material the right to publish copies on your web site, or to deposit the material your institutional archive that allow you rights for derivative works on you own intellectual output, and not to go to these publishers that take everything, and then ask you to buy it back from them.
Steve: Dr. Best, thank you very much for being my guest today.
Dr. Best: My pleasure.
Steve: Information Technologies and International Development is available online at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/itid. Thank you for listening to this installment of Periodical Radio. I'm your host, Steve Black.