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Long Term Availability
Although the discussion has recently focussed on the short term problems of ensuring that material is available for the duration of an annual license, the even greater problem is with the long term availability of electronic material. Basically, the long term availability (and here I am talking decades, or even centuries for scholarly material) will require both a Web-based set of material plus active management to keep refreshing the material. Electronic material has to be updated (technically, not the content) to make it accessible by the current technology. From time to time the electronic archival material will have to be migrated to new format standards as required. Of course, none of this is possible if the original electronic material is not prepared with an eye toward this capability. Our experience at the American Astronomical Society and the University of Chicago Press has shown that an electronic journal can be updated frequently at very low cost, either in money or reseorces, provided that it exists in SGML or some logically marked up format. As more and more electronic-only features appear in the journals, this will become more and more important. And inherent in my comment is the assumption that publishers are in a better position than anyone else to manage their electronic archives. It will certainly be easier for them to do it. The question is whether they will step up to the responsibility. The problem is how to ensure that the publishers will, in fact, continue to make their material accessible into the indefinite future. I suspect the most effective approach for the library community is to discuss this during license negotiations. Right now, we make such a promise, but it is, admittedly not in our license. However, we have started an archive maintenance fund by using a small percentage of our current income. The idea is to ensure that we accumulate enough in this fund to make whatever translatioin is needed every five years. Since we derive both the print and electronic products from our SGML archive, we have been able to add technological updates to our entire corpus of electronic journal issues a couple of times during the last five years. That has proven to be so inexpensive, that we can do it out of current operating funds. The question for librarians to ask publishers is whether journals will be updated, whether they will be accessible a long time in the future, and what publishers will deliver if they should ever stop supporting their older electronic products. I think the situation is different for the learned society, non-profit publishers and the commercial publishers, but we are in the process of showing that it need not be a financial burden, provided (and that is a big IF) the publishing process is designed around that goal. I posted some comments on the SLA-PAM list about long term availability of material. If there is interest, I can post it here, too. It deals in more detail with the drawbacks of using page image formats, such as PDF, for electronic journals. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For those unfamiliar with us, we publish, in cooperation with the University of Chicago Press, the Astrophysical Journal and the Astronomical Journal, a combined total of 30,000 pages per year. Both journals are over 100 years old, and we plan that the electronic editions should be available for at least that long. The Astrophysical Journal is available at: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/ One item of note, the Letters section is now on a fast track, and appears on the Web article by article about two weeks after the paper is accepted by the scientific editor, and some six to eight weeks before the issue date. --Peter-- ____________________________________________________________________ Dr. Peter B. Boyce Senior Associate and past Executive Officer pboyce@aas.org American Astronomical Society Fax: 202-234-2560 http://www.aas.org/~pboyce Ph: 202-328-2010 ____________________________________________________________________ Peter B. Boyce ________________________________________________________________________ Senior Associate and past Executive Officer pboyce@aas.org American Astronomical Society Phone: 202 328-2010 2000 Florida Ave. #400, Washington, DC 20009 FAX: 202-234-2560 http://www.aas.org/~pboyce
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