Subject: Comments?

From: Bob Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 94 15:53:47 EST

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<TITLE>A Possible Next Step in Electronic Publishing</TITLE>
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<H1>A Possible Next Step in Electronic Publishing</H1>

More and more astronomical information is being disseminated via
preprints by authors, publications by organizations, 
and conference proceedings, as well as by refereed journals.  
However there have been no improvements in the ability to
discover the information you want.
At the same time, subscription prices are rising out of the
range of many libraries and individuals.
The linking of peer review with publication in a journal
means that unpublished but still valuable information is lost
and that all papers published in the same journal get the same
score when used for tenure evaluation or professional review.
I would like to propose an alternative publishing method
which uses Referee_Servers's, Publisher_Server's, Author_Server's, 
and Index_Server's.
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<UL>
<LI> 
A Referee_Server would contain ratings, comments, and links 
to articles located on Author_Server's or Publisher_Server's.  

<LI> 
A Publisher_Server would contain online versions of articles
which are distributed by that publisher via hard media, e.g.,
paper or CD-ROM.  The server would provide a full-text or partial-text
index to all articles published.

<LI> 
An Author_Server would contain all versions of an article,
links to the version on a Publisher_Server, links to the ratings 
and comments on a Referee_Servers, links to other articles citing 
the article, and a USENET News-like tree of comments about the article.
The server would provide a full-text or partial-text index 
of all articles.

<LI> 
An Index_Server would contain a partial-text index of all articles
in a specific field with the additional ability to restrict searches
to articles appearing on specific Publisher_Server's or 
Referee_Servers's.

</UL>

A professional society could run both a Referee_Server and a 
Publisher_Server.  A publishing house could run a Index_Server.
But there is nothing to prevent individuals, groups, or an organization
from running a Referee_Server or Publisher_Server or Index_Server.
 <P>

This approach would provide a more flexible system, in which more
information is available and discoverable, while reducing the costs
of access to information.

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