[AIB]

AIB. Commissione nazionale università e ricerca

AIB-WEB | Le Commissioni | Commissione università ricerca


The Digital Library
Challenges and solutions for the new millenium
Bologna, June 17-18, 1999

Electronic Publishing


Scientists for scientists: JHEP or the renewal of scientific communication / Simonetta Pasqualis [*]

Abstract

We all know that it is difficult to make accurate forecasts in the field of technology. Nevertheless, the belief that the crisis of traditional journals would lead to new forms of scientific and academic publishing has been in the air since the early '90s.

In 1991 the American physicist Paul Ginsparg decided to create an electronic archive of preprints of high energy physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory and make it freely accessible on the Internet. Since then the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati di Trieste, S.I.S.S.A, has been involved in this project of electronic publishing, mirroring the Los Alamos archives.

In subsequent years, the subscription costs of scientific journals increased astronomically, with negative effects on library budgets, leading to a policy of increasing cuts.

Our colleague Corrado Pettenati of CERN, in his paper presented at the Brescia AIB Conference in 1995, outlined a possible solution to the disaster that libraries were facing: journals should be published on the Internet.

In 1996 high energy physicists at S.I.S.S.A. thought that is was time to turn to self publishing, both to meet rising costs and to play an active role by communicating directly without the mediation of commercial publishers. A new totally electronic journal was born: the Journal of High Energy Physics or JHEP.

The head of S.I.S.S.A., Daniele Amati, and his staff presented the initiative in 1997 at the workshop on electronic publishing held at CERN: it was met with scepticism by participating publishers.

However, since its creation in 1997, JHEP has been shown to have chosen the correct strategy:

The most important innovation is to be found in the software robot that allows the automation of all publishing procedures, from the presentation of the paper to communication among authors, publishers, editors and referees, to acceptance, formatting and publishing. Once the process is complete, taking less than two months, the paper is simoultaneously available on the eight sites of JHEP thanks to the synchronization of 'Harold l'Araldo', the programme developed by JHEP's system manager to this end, ensuring fast, reliable connections. To solve the problems of filing, legal deposit and copyright, the paper version of JHEP is published by the Società Italiana di Fisica (SIF) at minimal cost.



* Simonetta Pasqualis - Università di Trieste


N.B. An Italian abstract is also available.

Copyright AIB 1999-05-31, a cura di Serafina Spinelli
URL: https://www.aib.it/aib/commiss/cnur/dlepasqu.htm

AIB-WEB | Le Commissioni | Commissione università ricerca