What are the new electronic publishing initiatives?

• Author self archiving via e-print archives

  • Free access to pre-publication versions of papers to expedite communication
  • Started in 1991 with the Los Alamos physics server
  • Relationship with traditional journals
  • Terminology: e-print and pre-print, and are they “archives”?
  • Copyright

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Terminology - use of the term “archive” is sometimes misunderstood in that the concept is not really concerned with long term access or “permanent” preservation (which we tend to associate with the term archive).

The original driving force was for free and quick communication of research results. Traditional journals are still seen as the “permanent” record..

The archives include both pre-publication versions of papers and final versions as actually published in journals

It is reported that the relationship works well in arXiv - the Physics community uses the Pre-Print server and still publishes in the traditional prestigious journals.

But there is obvious potential tension between the two based on copyright issues. The key issue is copyright - where publishers take copyright on publication they may not permit simultaneous or subsequent publication in an electronic archive.