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