It would seem to me much more practical from an economic and technical
standpoint to simply archive all scientific publications, including the
marginal ones, than to prepare
> content extractions (by the authors
> or experts) written with the aim at being concise, full content,
> understandable in the long run
This is not to denigrate the value of abstracts, reviews, modernized
textbooks, or all the other devices for dealing with the volume of
material, and the progress of a field. But the mechanical preservation of
at least everything worth publishing for the indefinite future is a
enormously simple and inexpensive problem by comparison.
It may help others to know that
http://publish.aps.org/IUPAP/program.html contains
the program for the Nov 2001 conference, but not the proceedings.
The report of the previous July 2001 working group is available at
http://www.iupap.org/finalrep.html
Dr. David Goodman, Princeton University Library
dgoodman_at_princeton.edu 609-258-3235
On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, Eberhard R. Hilf wrote:
> there is no problem.
>
> Future generations will only archive e-documents.
>
> Analog books in their scanned in form.
>
> Archived will be e-documents which are worthwhile by their content.
> These are worthwhile to transfer to archive into archivable formats.
> These are known (SGML and their derivates address this task) or currently
> finalized (MathMl, CML, .. as derivatives of SGML).
> Only these are able to conserve the full context (in contrast to pdf, ps
> ,..)
>
> Programmes to excerpt browsable images from archivable formats will be
> always provided by the respective generations.
>
> Money as said has always had the key role, especially in science.
> But the other way round as assumed in the earlier discussion:
> Whenever science found something worthwhile, society has put in the money.
> And archiving anything worth it of e-docs is a small amount compared to
> moon-landings, elementary-particles-accelerators, supercomputers for
> quantum field theory calculations for questions like 'is the coupling
> constant in QCD 250 MEV or different' and the like.
> So one should not start with costs but with the content necessities.
>
> All active scientists in the meeting 'Long Term Archiving of Documents
> in Physics' (http://www.iupap.org) did emphasize that e.g. not all
> prime scientific papers are worthwile to be archived on the long run,
> (many of them 'marginal content') but content extractions (by the authors
> or experts) written with the aim at being concise, full content,
> understandable on the long run. [Example: noone reads the original papers
> of Einstein, but all of us use the equation, shure enough not in the form,
> Einstein wrote them, but with the present mathematical tools and
> knowledge].
>
> Comments to me for summarizing or directly for the list.
> Eberhard R. Hilf 4.1.2002
>
>
> .................................................
> Eberhard R. Hilf, Dr. Prof.i.R.;
> CEO Institute for Science Networking
> an der Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg
> Ammerlaender Heerstr.121; D-26129 Oldenburg
> ISN: http://www.isn-oldenburg.de/
> my homepage: http://physnet.uni-oldenburg.de/~hilf
> hilf_at_physnet.uni-oldenburg.de tel/Fax: 0049-441-798-2884/5851
> PhysNet for the EPS: http://physnet.uni-oldenburg.de/PhysNet
>
Received on Sun Jan 06 2002 - 10:41:03 GMT