Views for a future with fast publications online in full text, and with atomic coordinates, searchable, for free, instantly, etc : http://slashdot.org/features/99/07/28/0219237.shtml "No Scientific Society or Journal Publisher should be allowed to hold a copyright on scientific knowledge. The researcher is the only one who has the right to claim, "I discovered it and I reported it." Just a dream, because there are so many contrary interests. Note that the (5 months old, with only slightly more than 100 deposited e-papers, Elsevier-related) Chemistry preprint server at : http://www.chemweb.com/ seems to rank the manuscripts from * to *****, but I guess that the rank is given according to the highest number of stars attributed by any anonymous guys (no average). I don't know the real value of that evaluation method. Also, discussion is possible but not yet in the habits, clearly, because almost nobody gives opinion about the preprints. There is a long way to a "GeneralPubFree" site. Armel Le Bail http://sdpd.univ-lemans.fr/course/
