The Future of Physics Publications in the American Physical Society Stewart C. Loken Lawrence...

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