RE: AIP Journals - Version of Record

["Peter Picerno" <ppicerno@choctaw.astate.edu>]

One wonders if referees and editors do not have the software to download and
deal with the multimedia whether libraries and their patrons will.

P Picerno

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 12:17 AM
To: CORR@AIP.ORG; liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu; slapam-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: AIP Journals - Version of Record

Gary, I am going to step in and answer this one directly, since I had
helped Christine to prepare the response to Garrett's comment.

You are correct, authors certainly will begin to submit multimedia
elements with their articles.  In fact, a few have already.  However, so
far these elements have not been treated as "essential," meaning they were
not subject to peer review by the same scientists who reviewed the article
text, references, figures, and tables.  As a result, they have been
included in AIP's Electronic Physics Auxiliary Publishing Service (EPAPS)
repository.  In this repository, they are freely available for download,
and the author pays a submittal fee, similar to article page charges, but
retrieval is free.  (See http://www.aip.org/pubservs/epaps.html for
details regarding EPAPS.)

There are several reasons why multimedia, up to this point, has been
treated separately from other aspects of a research article:

i.  Many physicists who serve as referees lack appropriate equipment
and/or training to download, run, and evaluate multimedia.
ii.  Ditto for most editors of journals.
iii.  Most editorial offices lack the infrastructure and trained support
personnel to receive multimedia submissions and manage them throughout the
editorial review process.

AIP is in the process of fixing (ii) and (iii), and (i) will cure itself
naturally over time.  Fortunately, we have been able to ease our way into
this new era slowly, so we have a little time to incorporate new hardware,
software, and training required to truly support multimedia.  We have been
working with the Acoustical Society of America and its innovative journal,
Acoustics Research Letters Online ( http://ojps.aip.org/ARLO/ ) to pilot
test procedures and equipment.  We have also relied on the advice we
receive from our publishing advisory committees to put things into place.
So, you can expect AIP to make the shift to "online is the version of
record" very soon.

Best regards,


Tim Ingoldsby
Director of Business Development
American Institute of Physics
2 Huntington Quadrangle, Suite 1NO1
Melville, NY 11747-4501
Phone:  +1 516 576-2265
Fax:  +1 516 576-2327
Email:  tingoldsby@aip.org