ELECTRONIC ARCHIVE WILL SPEED SCIENTIFIC EXCHANGE

March 15, 1995 -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $1.069
million to Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists to stabilize and
expand a powerful new tool for scientific communication, called the
electronic print archives. The "e-print archives" have already speeded up
the exchange of scientific information in 25 different fields, even
supplanting traditional, printed research preprints in some physics
disciplines.

Pioneered by Los Alamos theoretical physicist Paul Ginsparg, the system is
an interactive repository where researchers can post their latest articles
and preprints as well as search for papers by others. The archive can
convey information faster and more cheaply to more researchers than
traditional journals. The system is rapidly becoming the major means of
scientific communication in the disciplines it serves.

Some 25,000 readers in more than 60 countries are now able to see the
abstracts of new scientific papers. The archive handles more than 45,000
electronic requests each day.

"The e-print archive has become the most interesting destination on the
'infobahn' for a large part of the theoretical physics community," said
Richard Isaacson, NSF program director for gravitational physics, who
oversees the NSF support. "Its impact is spreading rapidly across all the
mathematical and physical sciences and even beyond."

It all began in 1991, when Ginsparg developed an electronic archive for his
own field of high-energy physics theory. The system quickly expanded to
embrace other sub- disciplines of physics and a breadth of other fields
such as astrophysics, algebraic geometry, and economics.

The support provided by the new Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in
NSF's Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences will help
maintain, stabilize, and document the e-print archive, Isaacson explained.
It will also spur the development of new features that are being requested
by scientists, he said, providing links to citations, images, or data, and
introducing a mechanism for commentary by the reader.

At the end of the three-year NSF grant, the researchers expect to have
expanded the database to cover all fields of physics and any other
scientific fields whose researchers express interest. They also plan to
improve the archive's software so it can be used by a wider network of
researchers.

Looking at the future, Ginsparg said, "We can imagine 'interactive
journals' in which equations can be manipulated, solved or graphed, and
where citations can instantly open references to the relevant page. We
hope to support a 'virtual corridor' for communication, which will be like
walking down a hallway and talking to fellow researchers -- rendering
irrelevant where you are located."

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