Re: What is needed for an online journal

[John Baez <baez@math.ucr.edu>]

On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 09:16:57AM -0800, Bill Rowan wrote:

> What about having an editorial board, which would look at papers on the
> arxiv, say, have them reviewed and revised, and then put them back on the
> arxiv in final form, and listed elsewhere as having been through that
> process and "blessed" so to speak by the editorial board?

This is what many journals do, after someone submits the paper.

For example, with Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics,
you submit a paper merely by sending them its arXiv number; when
it's accepted you prepare a version in their preferred format and this
gets put on the arXiv.

Other electronic journals, like Geometry and Topology or Algebraic and
Geometric Topology, require that you send them LaTeX in their preferred
format when you submit a paper.  If and when it's accepted, the final
version gets put on the arXiv.

It's a small extra expense for a journal to keep its papers on its
own server as well as the arXiv, so that practice will probably continue.

It would be a huge amount of work for someone to edit ALL papers
on the journal, so that won't happen - unless some billionaire decides
it's worth setting up a foundation to do this.

Best,
jb