Rosalind Reid <r...@amsci.org>: In this week's snail mail I found a letter from someone at the Institute of Physics (in the UK) wanting to let us know about a major new e-journal starting up within the next few weeks, to be funded entirely by "article charges" and posted on the Web without charge. This is an experiment that may test many of the hypotheses offered here.
It's called the New Journal of Physics and will cover all of physics. The list of editors begins with Nobelist J. G. Bednorz. The two sponsoring societies, the IOP and Deutzche Physikalische Gesellschaft, have committed to maintaining the journal's permanent archive "free for all time." They appear to have dealt with a large number of the issues mentioned here, except that I see no mention of support for authors who cannot afford the "article charge" of US$500. Submission and manuscript handling will be all-electronic; IOP is able to handle files from various word processors in addition to TeX, and also accepts e-prints from xxx. Anne Dixon, IOP's assistant director, proposes that this is "a way for learned societies to chart a way forward at a time of upheaval in scientific publishing." Perhaps I've missed comments from the APS participants about this initiative, or perhaps no one knows how the economics of the NJP are going to work out--or for that matter whether it will attract good articles and citations. Looks like an interesting test, anyway. Details at http://www.njp.org. (No articles yet, but they promise immediate publication upon acceptance.) Rosalind Reid Editor, American Scientist [Moderator's note: The AJP project has been mentioned in several postings, most recently by Arthur Smith in the prior one on this thread. It may surprise some to hear that I think page-charges for that commendable project might be premature! A tide-over subsidy for the next few unstable years might be a safer way to ensure its survival through the transition period into the online-only era supported by author-end page charges n place of reader-end S/SL/PPV. As other contributors have noted, an attitude change toward page-charges will be needed first, and that will in turn have to be preceded by (1) a realisation of the optimality of free online access, (2) a substantial migration by authors and readers to that mode of access, leading to (3) library serial cancellations and hence (4) substantive savings on which to draw to provide support for (5) author page charges. But perhaps physicists, already in the forefront of revolutiuonary developments with xxx, will be forward-looking enough to leap directly from the premises to the optimal and inevitable conclusions without need of further cultural evolution or subversion! -- Stevan Harnad]