Integrated Information Management in Physics
Eberhard R.
Hilf
University of Oldenburg,
Germany
hilf@merlin.physik.uni-oldenburg.de
talk given at the EP-ARCHIVE Los Alamos LANL, USA Oktober 1994
(please feel free to set links to this text
or copy it to your own server or cache, or even print and distribute it,
the proper citation is E. R. Hilf, Integrated Information
Management in Physics; Conf. EP-ARCHIVE, ed.: R. A. Kelly; Los Alamos LANL,
October 1994)
Abstract:
a report of activities in Germany is given and some arguments
how the future development could be.
In Germany the Physics, Information Science and Mathematics Societies
are picking the thread jointly and hopefully in close collaboration with
their international partners.
It is argued, that since we do not know where the future will go,
intensive discussions and innovative experiments of trying different ways have to be done.
The past system has had some advantages: truely international, interdisciplinarystandards for publication and refereeing.
This should not get lost, thus the experiments we propose should be the same
way: international and with differnt fields.
The industrial revolution from Printed Matters
to the world wide web of
electronic hypertexts is a phase transition
to a new-age-of-information, remoulding almost all aspects of life.
We here dwell mainly on the impact on the Physics Community.
Many aspects, however, are not specific to Physics but apply
basically to many other fields of human activities especially in
science of course.
Physics means searching for the laws of Nature by experiments
and by developing
theoretical models casted in mathematical structures to predict
the experimental results.
The question here is, what can information technology help and how
will this process be affected by the new age of information.
In the first part I give scenarios of some aspects of physicists work.
We then will present the action that the German Physical Society
DPG,
with its
Arbeitsgruppe elektronische Fachinformation und Kommunikation
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft DPG, is planning in close
cooperation with the
APS, the American Physical
Society.
Only specific action, world-wide coordinated
and interlinked with other fields activities will be able to
actively participate in the casting the future.
Should the present professional organizations take care of
the new tasks or should there be new organizational strucuters?
In history the introduction of railways has led to the new
organizational structures of the present railway companies
and railway government structures, which once established
have done their task in a sophisticated, professional and
dedicated way. Thus even if nowadays one wouldcomeup with the
opinion, that another way of organization might be better,
due to the huge inertia of the present large system, the
high dependance of the public on the continuous availability
and the enormous political and economical power, - the barrier for
a transition is unsurmountable high and can not be overcome.
The habits of travelling have adjusted over time, often
unrealized.
Similarly for another industrial transition: the letter printing.
Over the time a highly sophisticated intricate, professional system
of libraries, distributors, book-shops, publishers, referees,
has developed which serves the public.
The reader's habits have adjusted accordingly, and so have the
authors. Scientists think in terms of papers to be published
as part of their career and scientific progress.
The organizational structures have grown from small individual
enterprises, having had the right ideas andmeans at the right time,
such as Mr. Elsevier for the international scientific journal.
The organizational structures from the times before the
transition, -cloisters with monks copying by hand, horse-riding
messengers, although they still exist, do not play an important
role.
History tells that lobbying to get the money is certainly important.
But in contrast to the task of introducing a similar product into
an existing market, acting in the time of an industrial phase
transition has advantages: The earlier an initiative the less
competition. Although the public, thinking in the traditional
way has often infinitively high objections against a change to the
unknown for a solution to their known needs,
their are two options: trying in vain to convince the future customer
or just proceed with the experience that those who use the new tools
see immediately the superiority and prospectives. Thus I propose
to proceed.
(The German Government, in spring 1994, - in the middle of
the heated phase of the transition, had an at first sight brilliant
idea: a full- flegded set of hearings was organized to get the
opinions and views of all institutions and bodies, who would
in the future be part of the new system.
Since almost none of the attending persons had any extended experience in
electronic printing or archiving the result was a bunch of
precautions, hesitations, and warnings, which effected into a one-year
stall.)
The following ideas are for discussion, not meant as an imperative.
The Ginsparg-initiative has given a fruitful answer to the
preprint service and its archiving. It is at present run at a
National Research Center.
The Physics Societies should take means to guarantee that this service
is available on a long term basis, -even if the LANL were closed,-
and extend it to other fields of physics.
Thus the physicists worldwide should be urged to join using the server.
The Physics Societies should either take over the service,
or mirror it, or delegate it to companies with the respective
boundary conditions.
Hoever we do have to analyze why the server is not accepted and used in
specific fields of physics yet.
It should be accompanied by setting up servers at all physics
laboratories and give access to all physicists to the web.
This is more an educational task.
In addition, the Physics Societies should set up dedicated electronic
services in specific fields, including the exchange of data,
the coupling of computers and programmes.
In some fields where in the past huge data bases (chemical physics, material science)
have been set up and are widely used, it may have to be reexamined, which part
could be replaced and what could be added by using distributed data bases ,
via world wide web called programs, or even distribute programs.
The reason is, that in the past, for industrial data bases, when
experimental numbers where missing yet, this has to be filled by numerical
data, produced by numerical programs or simulations.
With the new age of distributed powerful computer power and storage
this has to be revisited.
Furthermore a huge task is the set-up and offering of information
providers, filters, dedicated work-surfaces, retrieval assistance,
etc.
This is a whole new market and needs all kinds of professions,
software writing, distributors, librarians, editors, etc.
The properties of such services being developed by the prospective
users, the service and installation is best in the hands of the
Societies or their cooperating industrial partners.
Whether some of the present industrial bodies such as
publishers, libraries, distributors, are taking the pole or
whether new structures will form, should peacefully be left to the
indsutrial competition. The present large international publishers
and the University Libraries do have the advantage of a large
staff of professionals and an established set of referees.
So, if they enter they will be transformed but survive.
But probably other, even new companies with less inertia,
may have a perfect chance.
(A perfect example is the young Elsevier, who, with seeking and
taking the advice of the then top physicists started the first
international scientific journal,-- with ELSEVIER Publ. Comp. now
having some 15.000.)
Since one cannot forsee the future
development, and has no means to steer it , we here should not
point a direction but offer to all willing to participate
our collaboration.
Personally I think, we all should try hard to cooperate with all parties,
Physics societies, publishers, librarians, willing to search for the best way
to cast the future, to have enough expertise, strength and audacity on board.
Forming task forces addressing specific topics small enough to be
flexible and fast enough, but containing enough breadth could be best:
joint work-groups of the APS, EPS or some of their societies, a publisher,
a software house, and a few University departments, groups or libraries.
The results of these experiments should be presented and discussed
internationally. Setting and organizing the scene for a full fledged
sensibilization and discussion of the world-wide physics community
is at present the main task of the Physics societies instead of fixing
new standards too early.
In the past the refereeing had two aims:
The reader of a scientific published article wanted a guarantee,
that the article has been screened by some referees.
By picking the journal and knowing its past reputation, he had a feeling
by his or other's experience what level of srcutiny to expect from the
Publisher.
The author wanted to reach out to his readers and by getting his article
into the suitable journal got this label, his aimed at readers use as a
filter.
In addition the author needs the thus gained reputation for his applications
for positions, etc. The hiring committees as well used the reputation of
puthor's picked journals to help judging.
Thus the peer refereeing system was basically attached to the long standing
and developed history and reputation of the scientific international journals.
Without having a better and worldwide established system to cope with these
job-related tasks as well, one has here to keep in parallel to new
expermental ways the traditional way, added by a smooth extension of the
journals being offered in parallel electronically and archived that way.
However, experimentally, and in parallel, the Physics Societies could think of setting up a Peer system
by themselves, -as APS has anyway due to its journals-, which could
be quite differently organized:
Hiring commitees of a department, say, could ask the Society for a scientific
referee report for the applicants. It would delegate this to its respective division (at present for APS its PR, PRL journal refereeing division), picking
the actual referees by the well established patterns, who would
then greatly ease their work by having full access to the work of the candidate by the internet accessed archive.
The innovative part is more subtle: authors could decide to live with
their papers as ep-preprints, with no delay in distribution by refereeing.
But they could ask the referee system for screening specific articles,
in order to eventually address a reader having turned on his filters
to get only refereed articles.
The screening and the distribution of science would thus be decoupled,
and not more refereeing been done as necessary.
For a smooth transition to a future with a yet unknown system
of ep-archive it is absolutely necessary to keep the present system
of journals running as is, but transferring it to use the electronic advantages.
The tasks here are:
-
The publisher would have to put all journal's articles on its server,
-
tools for the online retrieval of a desired subset of papers, their
easy transmission, levels of access rights, screening of the use of the
services, user's surfaces and local storing and handling means
have to be developed, this needs testing, adapting and
developing the respective software,
-
financial agreements have to be set with the Universities individually
or even with departments of Physics of the Publishers to open the
access of its readers to all manuscripts of all journals of the Publisher,
howver only electronically.
-
This has to be paralelled by an encouraging
of user's orders for printing on demand of an article or a bunch or articles
of specific use for that reader or a certain subset of readers
(say 'Theory of atomic and molecular clusters', to name a field.
These printed services are of course more expensive than the
present journal volumes, but because of their high specificity
the reader will pay a higher price.
Apparently, a task force of a publisher with some departments of Physics
in different countries as embedded in the discussion boosted by the
Societies, and in conjunction with a software house or group could
do a very valuable experiment. For interested parties the author would like
to act catalytically.
The physicsist's dream as a daily user and producer of information can
now with the new electronic possibilities be addressed:
Information to be accessed and distributed
-
(almost) free of charge for him (not for the Government, University,..)
-
instantaneous,
-
fully world-wide from and to all physicists, interested,
-
easy to use tools, even for the almost ep-archive illiterate,
-
get and distribute full SGML manuscripts if necessary,
-
serving and distributing is guaranteed even over 'historic' time-scales,
-
a sensitive set of layers of authorization, access rights,
-
a refereeing on demand and on different levels,
-
tools, organization, standards, surfaces,- all worldwide
the same so that the international and mobile web of physicists is not
hampered by national or local, or for adjacent fields different
working means in ep-archiving.
Especially the primary aim that the future system of ep-archiving has to be
stable, worldwide, interdisciplinary sets a high level to the
responsibility of organizing the experiments.
The phase transition from printed matter to electronic typing,
storing, transmitting of text and the information network
will equally revolutionize all fields fo life,
including not only the commerce but also the way, administrations internally
operate.
We have
proposed
to the German Science Ministery by means of a
study in July 1994 how to approach this.
The german Physical Society has set up a committee for
Electronische Fachinformation und Kommunikation ELFIKOM to advice the
DPG in these matters.
ELFIKOM
had had its first meeting in July.
Members are delegates from Physics Departments, of Industry, of the
commercial server FIZ Karlsruhe, the TIB Hannover (a large state Library),
of publishers (Elsevier, Springer, CH), of computer centres.
Permanent guests are the Societies of Chemistry, Information Science,
Mathematics.
For the APS R. A. Kelly was invited presenting the lines of the APS.
It was decided that the tasks should be worked out and persued in close
cooperation with the APS and hopefully in the future other national Societies.
In the past, the German Science Ministery had had a national programme
with about 45 Physics departments to implant and distribute the use
of using commercial data servers such as STN and the FIZ-Karlsruhe.
Since then, each of the departments has a highly educated
expert and a local system of education and training.
on the 27th of September 1994 the Societies of Physics (DPG), of
Information Science (GI-Informatik) and of Mathematics (DMV) in Germany
have merged their efforts in striving for the future of information and communication electronically.
First actions are a joint e-mail server,
a icooperative applying to the German Science Ministery
for funding, a joint international workshop in spring 95,
and a lot of future activities, such as harmonizing the
University servers, a mutual representation in international
bodies and conferences, a sharing of the professionalities,
..
We are aware, that although doing experiments in all directions,
nthese have to be done with the international partners their
interdisciplinary counterparts in neighbouring fields.
-
Prof. Dr. Dr. Eberhard R. Hilf
Tel.: (+49)-441-798-2543
FAX : (+49)-441-798-3201
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Department of Physics
Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg
D 26111 Oldenburg
Germany
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