News
Physics News
H. Sylvia Toombs
The American Physical Society (APS) has set up a preprint server at the following URL http://publish.aps.org/eprint/. Although not yet a rival for the Ginsparg archives, there is now a concerted effort to make, and keep, physics preprints available. Why is APS doing this? According to their introductory screens from the service, APS wants "to provide a service to (the) physics community by supporting the ability of physicists to communicate rapidly. A secondary purpose is to assist in simplifying the process of communication between author, referee, and journal editor." APS is not exerting any editorial control for contributions included in this database and warns users that they are using included materials at their own risk. See Gary Taubes' discussion of this APS undertaking in Science v.273, no. 5273 (19 July 1996) p.304.
WEB FUNDING SOURCES
Donna Cromer sent an email message to PAMnet members requesting Web sources for funding in physics and astronomy. Donna already located two sources and Molly White suggested a third. If anyone knows of useful sites, contact Donna Cromer. If there are enough suggestions, maybe we can ask Donna to post a summary on the net.
AIP WEB SERVER
Tim Ingoldsby of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) just sent out word on PAMnet that class B and class C institutional IP addresses will be supported for subscriptions to the AIP's online journals. This should facilitate the registration process for all of us subscribing to their journals. Subscribers can receive usage data, another nice feature for those wanting to justify these subscriptions to higher powers. As further information becomes available, it will be posted on the AIP homepage (http://www.aip.org).
IOP WEB JOURNALS
Earlier this fall, the Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing released a new version of its electronic journals on the web (http://www.iop.org). This version has some new features that give the user greater flexibility of access. These include:
* the facility for readers to file articles of particular interest in a "virtual filing cabinet", adding their own comments and notes
* the ability for readers to personalise their journals screen for more powerful and flexible browsing, searching, and alerting
* display of colour diagrams appearing in journal papers on the Web.
Fond Adieu
Finally, a fond adieu to Maria Lebron. Maria leaves APS to become the Business Manager for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Maria has been at the APS booth at many of the SLA annual meetings and answered many of our questions and concerns about the direction of electronic publishing. I know we wish Maria much success in her new undertaking and we'll miss seeing her at our annual meetings.