The American Physical Society is committed to archiving its entire collection of journals, going back to the beginning of Physical Review in 1893, the Reviews of Modern Physics, beginning in 1929, Physical Review Letters, beginning in 1958, Physical Review Special Topics – Accelerators and Beams (an online-only, peer reviewed journal) beginning in 1998 and other APS journals as they appear. We have created an electronic archive, PROLA, to accomplish this task. In implementing this policy, we have encountered questions and initiated policies on which the library community could usefully comment. We would appreciate such comments, either on the list serve or directly at publisher@aps.org.

1) In assuming the archive responsibility, the APS has adopted a policy that the electronic version of all its publications is “the copy of record”. For Physical Review Special Topics – Accelerators and Beams (PRST-AB) this is obvious since it only exists in an online version. The Physical Review, Physical Review Letters and the Reviews of Modern Physics have only been online for the past three to five years. In order to create the archive we have scanned the print journals. PROLA currently goes back to 1985. By spring, 2001, we expect to have Physical Review back to 1975, and all of Physical Review Letters and the Reviews of Modern Physics, included in PROLA.By summer, 2001, we expect to have all of our publications scanned and included in PROLA. The scanning is being done at 600 dpi and the scans are converted to text with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The OCR text is used for searching, while the scanned material used for is downloading by the reader in PDF or equivalent format. In addition we are re-keying and XML tagging titles, authors, abstracts and references for each article so that full liking will be possible. Because of questions about quality, the material currently on PROLA (back to 1985) will be rescanned as soon as the scanning back to 1893 is completed.

2) The archive, PROLA, is separated from the current subscriptions so that it may be made available at a low price to readers who do not have active subscriptions. PROLA contains all material more than three years old while the current subscriptions contain the more recent material. This is done on a rolling basis. Thus the current year (2000) subscriptions contain all material back to the beginning of 1997. Starting with January 8, 2001, the material for 1997 (and some earlier material now on the current subscription site) will be transferred to PROLA and the current subscriptions will contain material back to the beginning of 1998. Access to PROLA is included with the journal packages PR-All and APS-All and is available at a low cost ($330-$390) for subscribers to individual titles and to non-subscribers ($600). These charges are intended to cover the cost of maintaining the archive in the most current and useful format. There has been discussion of the possibility of including access to PROLA with all subscriptions but no decision has been made on this question.

3) In order to assure the integrity of the archive, the APS has entered into an agreement with the Library of Congress. All of the material from APS journals, including both PROLA and current journals, is being continuously deposited in servers at the Library. The material will only be used for internal purposes. However, in the unlikely event that APS were to be unable to continue publication, the Library of Congress is authorized to make the material available in the Public Domain.

4) We are completing an agreement with a U.S. academic library for both archiving and mirroring of our journals. We expect to announce this agreement in the very near future. The agreement provides for the library to be a mirror site for all APS content. This inherently makes it a backup archive. We are also investigating establishing mirror sites outside the U.S. for the dual purpose of mirroring and providing international archiving.

5) We are creating files, which can be used by any subscriber library to create their own archive of the APS journals. The files will contain all of the articles for the subscriber year in PDF format and will be the functional equivalent of a bound volume. It will contain, in its root directory, a top page with links to the TOC's for each issue. Each issue’s pdf's and toc, will be in a separate directory. The top page will also contain a link to a pdf of the masthead and author index. The idea is that the files can be mounted onto any library server. The files can be read with a conventional Internet Explorer or NetScape browser, providing the library with an electronic archive. The product was initially created to allow distribution of the journals to libraries in countries where internet access is unavailable or prohibitively expensive and where mailing of printed copies is also extremely expensive. For this reason it was designed for distribution using CD-ROM’s. The CD's will be priced at $50 per disc, with PRB, PRE and PRL requiring two discs while each of the other journals will be on one disc. The CD's do not provide the searching capability which is included in PROLA or in the WEB versions of the journals, but many librarians have expressed interest in securing their own archival copy of the information in the annual issues, and this is the most economical way we have found for this purpose. Since designing the CD-ROM, discussion with librarians have seen a repeat of their disinterest in such discs. We are currently investigating distribution of the files through FTP transfer (or other suitable protocols), which would both replace the CD-ROM’s for many libraries, and allow more frequent and timely transfers of files.

6) An essential element of any archive is a guarantee of access. During December, 2000, our vendor has experienced repeated problems with their authentication engine for current content subscriptions. In the first instance this meant that the current journals were unavailable because the vendor could not verify subscription data. However, we have implemented a long planned policy that when authentication becomes a problem we will open up access to all visitors to the journal until the problem is fixed. This assures that readers continue to have access, even though we cannot limit the access to subscribers. In order to address the authentication issue, our vendor will have to shut down access completely for a brief period this month. This highlights the limitations inherent in having a single server for the journals. As soon as the mirroring arrangements with our U.S. library partner are completed we will be able to use that mirror to assure continuing access. The addition of other mirroring partners worldwide will strengthen our ability to guarantee access. It also highlights the importance of having such backup systems.

The description given above is long. However, the issues of archiving and continuing access are fundamental to the development of online journals and the movement towards their use as a replacement for print. As stated above, we would sincerely appreciate a public dialog and private comments to help the APS and the community move towards agreed policies concerning archiving in the electronic age.

Martin Blume Editor in Chief American Physical Society blume@aps.org

Thomas J. McIlrath Treasurer/Publisher American Physical Society publisher@aps.org