Glanz Article Calls Stalled E-journal "Still a Force"

As publishers grapple with how and when to publish their materials by electronic means in electronic format, here's news from the physics community on their latest attempt to change the old paradigm.

In the 9 August 1996 issue of Science (p. 734), there is a brief article by James Glanz entitled "E-journal: Delayed But Still a Force."

In brief, it relates that the all-electronic physics journal planned by Andrew Cohen of Boston University (with supporters from throughout the community such as Martin Einhorn of the University of Michigan, Columbia University's Erick Weinberg, and Ben Bederson, editor-in-chief at the American Physical Society) "may never go online."

Glanz quotes Cohen as saying that "the idea behind the new electronic journal is to submit a subset of those papers [preprints from Los Alamos National Laboratory electronic archives] to peer review, and after any necessary revisions, post them with a tag indicating that they had been refereed." Einhorn is quoted as further explaining their original concept that "the journal is supposed to squeeze costs by handling all submissions, referee reports, and revisions electronically.

In addition, submissions could come in any format and - providing they were comprehensible - would receive no editing for things like spelling or grammar, eliminating staffs of people to read articles for those qualities, independent of scientific content."

As quoted, Einhorn and the others said that the would-be journal's "organizers underestimated what a full-fledged journal would require --- everything from legal advice to secretarial help."

The APS efforts with Physical Review D online are reported along with the comment that "Cohen himself is critical of all of these [APS] efforts because they aren't linked closely enough to the Los Alamos archive, where so many physicists now get their information."

Glanz quotes Weinberg as crediting Cohen's work for spurring the APS activity online and ends with the observation that "these projects will owe more than a little to his [Cohen's] journal, whether it is ever published or not."

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