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
HEP Submission
Cond-Mat Submission
Astro-Ph Submission
Monthly Submission
Submissions by Domain25910: 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