Astronomical publishing is changing, too. But how? What will astronomers be doing in 10 years, or even five, to communicate their research results to their colleagues? It's an important question for several reasons, starting with the sheer size of our publishing enterprise. The Astrophysical Journal is expected to run to nearly 25,000 pages this year, or 120 typeset pages produced every working day. Add to that the 10,000 pages of the Astronomical Journal and the Publications of the ASP, plus the more specialized journals such as Icarus, and it's clear that publishing is a large component of astronomy in North America.
For 16 years it has been my job to anticipate the future and to prepare the American Astronomical Society to serve the changing needs of the astronomical community. The AAS, like the ASP, was founded to facilitate communication among its members. Publishing is three-quarters of the AAS budget; a major mistake would have a huge impact upon the finances of the society, not to mention the vigor of astronomical research. Over the past three years, I have been gazing into that cloudy crystal ball a lot.
Three years ago the AAS set out to plan the future (or see the October 1992 AAS Newsletter) and, since then, our electronic publishing plan has evolved just as we expected, with one exception: The pace has been faster. In 1992, when we developed the plan, the Mosaic graphical browser for the World Wide Web had just been introduced, and the crystal ball was as clear as it had ever been. Mosaic's ability to transmit a document that mixed graphics and text was what we had been waiting for. Mosaic made it possible to transmit scientific papers complete with complex mathematics, line drawings, and pictures. And it was free. Developed by high-energy physicists as a tool for aiding collaboration over the computer networks, Mosaic adhered to an open standard that anyone could use. This availability has propelled the Internet far beyond the computer cognoscenti.
As we progressed with our project, it was hard to reconcile the narrow views with the exciting possibilities. We had assembled a team with diverse backgrounds and views, gathered information from many sources, and kept an open mind about the communities involved. In the end, however, nothing could beat reality. Taking small, experimental steps and incorporating feedback from people actually using the system was critical in developing radical technology. Last fall, the Electronic Astrophysical Journal Letters became a reality.
The world now has one astronomical journal on-line and, by all reports, it works well. Within a year, the electronic version of the full Ap.J., all 2,000 pages per month, will be on-line. By January 1997, the transition will be complete: Readers will have to pay for access. [Features] Subscribers not only will have access to the journal; they will also be able to develop personalized, intelligent search profiles to alert them of articles on specific subjects. Bibliographic references from the articles will link automatically to the Astrophysics Data System so that the abstracts and, for AAS journals, the full text will come up on readers' screens. Forward-reference links will bring up, at the click of the mouse, articles that cite the one being read; these links will be added to the original article as relevant articles are published. To see how this works, move to the botom of this page and click on "References to this article."
There will be additional developments over the next two years: the inclusion of motion-picture clips in electronic journals, making it possible to display computer simulations; 3-D presentations under the control of the reader; and active mathematical formulas whose underlying algorithms can be run by the reader.
Some scientists profess to see a future in which authors can write as much as they want and post their work to electronic preprint databases, such as the Los Alamos preprint server (http://xxx.lanl.gov). On the server, their papers receive public comments and their worth can be judged [see "Peering into Peer Review," November/December 1995, p. 32]. While this system is useful for informal, rapid communication of new results, I do not believe it will supplant the peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Consider the myriad ways in which journals are used. A student goes to the library to look for the definitive paper on a certain subject, finding it among the many that chronicle the history of modern astronomy. A historian uses the library to find, say, a paper from the 1920s describing observations that launched a whole area of astronomy. Journals, in other words, are the record of a body of knowledge. This is one of their functions that hasn't changed significantly over the last 70 years. Or consider how deans and granting agencies weigh candidates. Often they look at the articles published in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals, neglecting the conference proceedings and other unrefereed publications. You can say nearly anything at a conference I've done it myself but the referees and editors will hold you to a higher standard when you publish in the Ap.J., the A.J., or PASP. Papers in refereed journals are one measure of the quality and productivity of a research scientist.
These are among the roles filled now by the paper journals and by preprints, and those roles won't change or disappear just because the medium changes. It's a sure bet that whatever form publishing takes at the turn of the millennium, it will have to fulfill the need for rapid, accurate communication; for archiving the body of scientific knowledge; and for providing some means of evaluating an author's standing in the community.
Two specially useful navigational features are :
1. The ability to link from the figues directly into the text where the figure is discussed. Some users say that you can
start with the pictures and jump into the discussion from there more easily than
you can scan the pages of the paper version.
2. Links from references to the
abstracts (and sometimes the full text) of the referenced articles.
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