Speaker: Bob Hanisch (Space Telescope Science Institute)
Panel Discussion: Current Thinking Panel
Electronic Preprints in Astronomy
Who am I? Astronomer/technical manager in charge of calibration and
data analysis software development and science computing support at ST
ScI, the institution responsible for operating the Hubble Space
Telescope. Also chair of AAS Working Group on Astronomical Software and
co-author of AASTeX macro package.
The American Astronomical Society is networked and highly computer
literate.
Astrophysical Journal: Letters going on-line in the next
two years
Astronomers use distributed databases extensively: e.g.,
Astrophysics Data System, AstroWeb Consortium
Astronomers value peer review. Some 85% of papers (perhaps more)
submitted to our journals are published, but 85% of submitted papers
are revised substantially as a result of the peer review process.
Definition of "preprint" is not agreed upon.
Non-peer reviewed paper in private circulation to friendly
reviewers
Non-peer reviewed paper in public circulation
Peer-reviewed paper accepted for publication but not yet in
print
Conference proceedings papers, invited talks, etc.
In astronomical community, one reason for prominence of preprints
is name recognition, both for authors and for their institutions.
Why am I here? I organized workshop on electronic preprints in
astronomy two weeks ago in conjunction with Astronomical Data Analysis
Software and Systems (ADASS) conference in Baltimore.
Baltimore workshop on electronic preprint distribution systems for
astronomy (Baltimore, 29 September 1994)
Attended by ~70 people (astronomers and astronomical software
developers, networking experts, librarians, representatives of
professional societies, publishers, journal editors)
Objectives
Review and understand existing electronic preprint
services
Review policy and legal issues (financial impact on journals,
copyright, editorial policies)
Examine technical capabilities and challenges (information
retrieval and delivery, revision control and security, tracking,
disposition of unpublished papers; figures, images)
Understand requirements/needs of users: scientist, author,
librarian
Develop initial plan for implementation of astronomy-wide
electronic preprint distribution and indexing system
Workshop concluded with presentation of strawman proposal and panel
discussion
A Modest Proposal
Objective: Faster dissemination of quality research papers
Method:
Adopt standards of astronomical community: AASTeX, HTML, WWW,
Mosaic, encapsulated Postscript, full Postscript, FITS (thereby
maximizing re-use of the same source material)
Establish network of institutionally-based preprint servers;
each responsible for quality of preprints it provides
Develop master preprint server that indexes all preprints in
all known servers and provides links to them. Question:
resources?
Track preprints through to publication, and provide (semi)
permanent pointer to published paper. Papers that remain
unpublished for more than one year [two years?] are dropped from
the server.
Revisions permitted only from principal author --
authentication service required?
Simple framework for establishing servers needs to be provided
to small organizations, and/or common facility needs to be provided
for open submissions
Proceed cautiously, watching for impact on existing
journals
Metrics:
Compare with existing preprint indexing services for
completeness
Monitor usage
Institutional cost savings, if any
Number of preprints that never make it into refereed
publication
Rate of re-use of preprint source materials for final
publication
