The first response to Harnad's proposal was swift, practical: an offer by a systems administrator to house a comprehensive scientific electronic publishing system. A brief exchange about level of support took place. For the reader, the discussion here emphasizes that the problems with enacting such a large-scale vision are not technical but social.
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 17:42:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Southworth pauls@locust.cic.net
On Mon, 27 Jun 1994, Stevan Harnad wrote:
We have heard many predictions about the demise of paper publishing,
but life is short and the inevitable day still seems a long way off.
This is a subversive proposal that could radically hasten that day.
OK, let's do it. I'll provide archive space, network connectivity, and accounts for the maintainers/referees (I think I'm qualified to provide some technical advice, but it sounds like you should form a committee of delegates from various fields to actually handle the processing).
Let me know when you're ready. If you decide to launch a pilot, just let me know who I should give the accounts to and I will give them disk space on a server.
I see several avenues to pursue with regard to this proposal. First, these are resources that I can immediately bring to bear on the project (i.e., starting tomorrow or as soon as you would like to roll out...). I'm assuming that I will not personally be doing the archive maintenance, only the system maintenance.
An archive server dedicated to public-access to electronic text files.
Space on that server to be maintained by the various referees /archivists associated with this project. I can offer about one gigabyte of space to start, on an as-needed basis.
Accounts for the referees/archivists, unlimited usage, no fees. Accounts to be used for archive maintenance (and related email /Usenet /Internet exploration).
Mailing lists to support communication both with the public and between archivists.
Access via anonymous ftp, gopher, and world wide web.
Some support for the archivists -- I don't have vast quantities of time for this, but I can certainly resolve system problems and keep everything backed up to tape.
Some support for archive users (problems unrelated to content, which should be handled by the individuals to whom maintenance is delegated). I see myself as a participant in the support process, not taking sole responsibility for it.
In the longer term:
I know archivists who already maintain mirror image archives of my electronic text files in the UK and Australia -- we can approach them to discuss overseas propagation to provide fast access to users in Europe and the South Pacific.
We may be able to work this project in with CICNet's existing efforts to obtain NSF funding for our Wide Area Information System Resource Management project (WAIRM). This would include funding for development of technical solutions, and working with the LOC and major research libraries (and research library associations) to fold quality electronic publications into established library catalog systems (and ultimately full-text access in all libraries).
Domain registration (are you thinking of incorporating a not-for-profit entity to manage this?). I can handle the Internic paperwork and the domain name service.
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 94 20:42:16 -0600
From: Paul Ginsparg 505-667-7353 ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov
stevan forwarded to me your message:
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 17:42:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Southworth pauls@locust.cic.netok, let's do it. I'll provide archive space, network connectivity, and
accounts for the maintainers/referees (I think I'm qualified to provide
some technical advice, but it sounds like you should form a committee of
delegates from various fields to actually handle the processing).
it might be useful for you first to have a look at what is already running in physics (see http://xxx.lanl.gov/ and related archives), starting three years ago (and currently with over 20,000 users; processing over 35,000 transactions per day via ftp, www, gopher, and e-mail servers, with daily e-mail notification to "subscribers" of new submissions received, typically over 200 per month for more active archives) -- for a general overview that i wrote, see the blurb link http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/ near middle of frontpage.
I can offer about one gigabyte of space to start, on an as-needed basis.
1. I know archivists who already maintain mirror image archives of my
archive on xxx is already somewhat larger, and mirrored in europe and japan. has recently expanded to areas such as economics and computation and language, and a number of math archives are about to start in conjunction with msri in berkeley.
libraries (and research library associations) to fold quality electronic
publications into established library catalog systems (and ultimately
full-text access in all libraries).
this is what we have done as a model together with the slac library and its spires-hep index (see http://slacvm.slac.stanford.edu/FIND/hep )
electronic text files in the UK and Australia --
which files are these?
let me know if i can provide further info.
Paul Ginsparg
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 12:15:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Southworth pauls@locust.cic.net
On Mon, 27 Jun 1994, Paul Ginsparg 505-667-7353 wrote:
it might be useful for you first to have a look at what is already running
in physics (see http://xxx.lanl.gov/ and related archives), starting three
years ago (and currently with over 20,000 users; processing over 35,000
transactions per day via ftp, www, gopher, and e-mail servers,
with daily e-mail notification to "subscribers" of new submissions
received, typically over 200 per month for more active archives)
That sounds about like CICNet, with a bit more traffic. We don't do e-mail (which is clearly important to the success of Stevan's proposal) and we have not developed WWW at all (mostly since this is just raw ASCII text, compressed). Most of our traffic is via gopher.
I can offer about one gigabyte of space to start, on an as-needed basis.
- I know archivists who already maintain mirror image archives of my
archive on xxx is already somewhat larger, and mirrored in europe and japan.
has recently expanded to areas such as economics and computation and
language, and a number of math archives are about to start in conjunction with
msri in berkeley.
The 1Gb is what I have in free space currently mounted on the server and immediately available, not my preexisting archives, which are about 2Gb of GNU zipped text. But anyway, my purpose is not to get into a bidding war over hosting this project -- it sounds very much like your site is more appropriate for it, since you are already dead-on with regard to content. CICNet's archives are content-random with a large amount of low-quality material grabbed fairly haphazardly. My purpose with regard to Stevan's proposal was not to fold that into what I have running already, since I think it would be completely inappropriate, but rather to provide a separate facility on a server that is already a substantial magnet for people looking for text files on the net -- naturally the same function could be performed by a well-placed link on our server pointing at the LANL site. If you're prepared to put the resources on line to make it happen, that sounds great and I will try to provide other assistance.
I think that quality and reputation for high standards will be critical to attracting authors to the electronic medium, and it looks like the LANL web server is already much farther along that track than we are.
Perhaps we should think of other uses for free user-accounts at a well connected site that can be used for a variety of maintenance purposes, and we can just keep CICNet's server-side participation down to a link.
ps
electronic text files in the UK and Australia --which files are these?
Mirrors are on info.anu.edu.au and src.doc.ic.ac.uk. I also have a chunk of political-only files mirrored on ftp.uu.net. Perhaps we can use some of these prior arrangements to build a strong distribution network with a sensible level of redundancy.
Paul Southworth
CICNet Archivist
pauls@cic.net