APS and E-Print

[Ad absurdum per aspera <JTCHEW -at- LBL -dot- GOV>]

[Written by individuals at the American Physical Society and
merely posted by me, so respond to addresses below.  Enjoy! -jc]

The American Physical Society is examining its role in the operation of
electronic-print archives sometimes referred to as "e-print" for the
dissemination of physics manuscripts in advance of their being published
or even peer reviewed (as is currently the practice in physics).

The often stated objective of The American Physical Society (APS) is the
advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. In the last few
years, a major goal of the Society has been to move its scholarly
publications away from print and toward electronic production and
dissemination.  The current explosion in the use of information technology
for early dissemination of scientific information dovetails with APS's
interest in electronic publishing and consumption of scholarly journals
and provides both physicists and the Society with an opportunity to join
forces to support and improve scholarly communication in physics.

Many manuscripts published by APS and other physics publishers start their
journeys as preprints.  The E-print archives, pioneered by Paul Ginsparg
at Los Alamos, are revolutionizing the circulation of preprints, and are
making the dissemination of information quicker and more efficient, at
least in some major subfields of physics. We imagine that this phenomenon
will spread to subfields not thus far affected.

The American Physical Society has followed the e-print archive phenomenon
with great interest. The APS may have an important role to play at this
critical juncture. Accordingly The American Physical Society has
established
the E-Print Forum linked to its home page (http://aps.org/) on the World
Wide
Web. This Forum will serve as a temporary archive for discussions, meeting
bulletins, papers, etc., concerning e-print (preprint) archives and the
potential role of APS.

The American Physical Society has also established a listserver, for
discussion on ideas and issues pertaining to e-prints. You may subscribe to
the listserver by sending a message to listserv -at- aps -dot- org and include the
words
'subscribe eptalk' in the body of the message. Instructions for
participation
in discussion related to e-prints are in the information and FAQ file that
will be sent to you. Instructions also appear under the topic "Introduction
to Archive of discussions on E-print archive issues and opportunities" on
the
APS E-Print Forum page.

All messages posted to eptalk -at- aps -dot- org will be indexed, by author, subject
and timing under the topic "Introduction to Archive of discussions on
e-print archive issues and opportunities" on the APS E-Print Forum page.

Bob Kelly
APS
Director Journal Information Systems
rakelly -at- aps -dot- org