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The Future of Physics Publications in the American Physical Society. Stewart C. Loken Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Some Background. In 1988 the APS formed a Task Force on Electronic Information Systems to make recommendations on the future of APS journals
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The Future of Physics Publications in the American Physical Society Stewart C. Loken Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Some Background • In 1988 the APS formed a Task Force on Electronic Information Systems to make recommendations on the future of APS journals • The report of this group predates the Eprint Archive or the Web but anticipates an electronic library of science • The APS convened a new task force in 2000 to revisit these issues and make new recommendations
What Changed in 10 Years • Eprints • The World Wide Web • Networking infrastructure • Electronic Journals
What did not change • Document preparation • Support for multimedia and other features
The Eprint Archive • Introduced in August 1991 by Paul Ginsparg at Los Alamos • Now a major forum for results in physics and mathematics • Archive works in parallel with traditional refereed journals • Most papers are submitted to journals • Archive now located at Cornell with new funding
Submissions by Domain 25910: edu = US Educational (25.5%) 11703: de = Germany (11.5%) 6282: uk = United Kingdom (6.2%) 6199: it = Italy (6.1%) 5752: jp = Japan (5.7%) 4973: fr = France (4.9%) 3468: gov = US Government (3.4%) 3118: ch = Switzerland (3.1%) 2953: ru = Russian Federation (2.9%) 2676: es = Spain (2.6%) 2225: in = India (2.2%) 2120: ca = Canada (2.1%) 2019: br = Brazil (2.0%) 1755: il = Israel (1.7%) 1728: nl = Netherlands (1.7%)
Electronic Publishing by APS & AIP • All APS journals are now online, as are AIP • Electronic version is now the first and definitive version • Archive maintained in two parts: • Current journals (OJPS) • Journals more than 4 years old (PROLA) • Pricing restructured to reflect electronic journals • Online-only • Multi-tiered pricing pricing reflects expected usage
APS Archives • AIP delivers • Postscript files • PDF files • SGML files • high-resolution TIFF images for scanned figures • Low-resolution TIFF and JPEG • All are loaded into electronic archive
APS Archives • Beacon delivers • Print and online PDF files • SGML • Encapsulated Postscript for figures • These and the AIP data constitute the APS archive outside of PROLA • PDF and Postscript are a reasonable format to treat as ‘archival’ • The mixture if SGML (with evolving DTDs) is not suitable for long-term archive
PROLA Archives • Physical Review Online Archive goal was to put all APS journals online • From July 1997, journals had PDF and SGML for archive • 1985-1996 scanned at 300 dpi , with XML derived from AIP’s SPIN SGML • Earlier journals scanned to give 600 dpi b/w TIFF, 200 dpi JPEG figures and XML • PROLA now provides access to all journals back to 1893 • 1985-1996 are being rescanned at higher resolution
PROLA Subscriptions • Starting in January 2001, 1997 material was converted to PDF for PROLA use • Each year, another year will be moved into PROLA • APS offers a single subscription to PROLA • Also bundled with any single current journal
New Journals / New Models • Subscription model under pressure for some time as subscriptions decreased • APS has explored new models • Physical Review Special Topics Accelerators and Beams funded by accelerator laboratories • Virtual journals provide access to articles in a specialized field from all journals (AIP journals in biophysics and nanotechnology)
Other Initiatives • CrossRef involves 65 publishers to make easier reference linking • Promotes use of Digital Object Identifiers • Needs system to map citation information into DOIs • STIX seeks to ensure that mathematical content can be displayed in future browsers • Includes APS, AIP, AMS, ACS, IEEE and Elsevier • Open Archives Initiative
Role of Scientific Journals • Journals provide a basis for archiving • Refereeing process provides formal verification of paper content • Publication is an important credential for review of author • Editorial process makes manuscript clearer and more readable
Logic of Eprints • Submitting paper makes it very widely accessible • Papers are not refereed but are widely used by scientists • Abuses prevented by the openness and the archive time-stamp • Use of the archive varies widely by field
Link to Physical Review • APS has cooperated with the eprint archive • APS hosted first mirror in the U.S. • Allows submission to Physical Review by giving reference to archive with additional metadata • Some commercial journals (e.g. Nuclear Physics) have adopted a similar policy
Journals and Peer Review • Though we embrace eprints, we propose retaining peer review • A sanity check from outside immediate circle • Selection of most important papers for reader’s attention • Provides a credential for evaluation in promotion or funding
Journals and Readability • Journals seek to improve readability of papers • Part achieved by clarifying arguments and presentation • Part into editorial redaction and typesetting • Latter is essentially obsolete with present computer tools
Eprints and Archiving • One benefit of editorial redaction is to assure that papers can be recovered many years after publication • Eprints provides papers in whatever form the author provides as long as they meet standards • Best choice for archive is an open and well-accepted standard • For today, the choice appears to be PDF
Review Literature • Review journals play an important role in physics • Detailed scholarly reviews • Pedagogical articles for new people in field • Brief articles aimed at a wide audience • These are less likely to be submitted to eprint archive • Editors need to seek out authors to prepare reviews and assist them to complete them
Other Literature • Conference proceedings including rapporteur talks and other papers • Technical reports from current and future projects (e.g. DOE’s PubScience) • Databases that bring together experimental data and references (e.g. Particle Data Group) • Presentations, lecture notes and computer programs (often on personal web sites)
Why are Journals Needed? • Eprint archive alters the rationale for existance of scientific journals • Peer review is an essential part of process and may be the primary role of journals • Role of journals in distributing and archiving science is less clear
Searching the Literature • Two tiers of service • Commercial: INSPEC, Web of Science • Field-specific: SPIRES, ADS • Quantity of bibliographic information will increase • We expect that use of eprints will grow • There will be the potential to search all of the physics literature
Cross References • Desirable to link immediately to all references in a bibliography • Potentially, the search engine can provide links to eprint, refereed version, references and links to papers citing it • The challenge is the creation of uniformly computable DOIs to address the desired electronic versions
APS Information Services • We assume that all physics communications distributed as preprints in automated server • APS provides those aspects that cannot be made automatic • Peer review • Soliciting review articles • Managing search engine • Archiving of APS journals
Financial Models • Three models discussed • Pay-per-view • Site license • Publication charge • We advocate that APS move to a model where author pays a charge for the reviewing of a paper • Charge independent of acceptance
Culture Shift • Over the past 20 years, physicists have been resistant to payment of publication charges • In the 1980’s, high energy physicists moved from Physical Review D to Nuclear Physics to avoid page charges • This move was independent of the higher cost to libraries
First Steps for APS • Encourage the use of eprints across the physics community • Define archive strategy taking into account the eprint servers • De-emphasize editorial redaction • Adopt tools to reduce authoring efforts • Introduce refereeing charge
Conclusions • These are times of rapid change in scientific communication • The APS and other professional societies are moving into an era when electronic communication is the dominant form • This change will dictate a new role for the journals and new models of funding