Re: computer-go: Proposal for an electronic journal of computer go

[Antti Huima <huima@xxxxxx>]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Don Dailey wrote:

> 
> > There could be another model, where an editorial board would get
> > papers by e-mail and be expected to vote for them almost immediately.
> > This would keep the journal from degenerating into a preprint
> > server and a paper could go up as soon as it was accepted.
> > 
> > Dan
> 
> I  like this idea best.  It   seems to me  that  an electronic journal
> doesn't have to be constrained by the same rules that printed journals
> follow.  If  it  is to be  truly  an electronic   journal why not  try
> something different and imaginative?   
> 
> Don

Perhaps the only reason why I suspect "continous publication" is the
following one: in order to achieve some kind of status as a respectable
publication you need to have universities and other insitutions
subscribing for it, which means that because many libraries are quite
"old-fashioned", you need to have the option of paper copies. Basically
this means publishing periodically. 

I mean, even though the main distribution media can be electronic, it must
be *possible* to produce something that looks like a conventional journal
on paper so that it can stand in someone's bookshelf. 

Perhaps the two ideas could be merged by having biannual/triannual
publication schedule, but having the articles as electronic preprints
available as soon as they are accepted for publication. So they are
electronically immediately available, and will appear in some subsequent
paper copy as well. The official reference to such a paper would be of
course to the (theoretical) paper copy version so that you can have a
volume and a page number.

Observe that if no-one subscribes for a paper copy version then printing
them consts nothing :) Of course, the paper copy subscription rate must be
high enough to support the assumedly small distribution (high production
costs). 

-- 
Antti Huima