From: Borries Demeler <demeler@bioc09.uthscsa.edu>
  To  : Reversible Associations in Structural and Molecular Biology <rasmb@bbri.harvard.edu>
  Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 08:20:38 -0500 (CDT)

who would be interested?

Dear Rasmb'ers:

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently featured an article in which
the point was made that the NIH is considering to use the Internet to
distribute research papers instead of going through traditional paper
journals:

(http://chronicle.com/free/99/04/99043002t.htm)

I believe that we should give this idea some thought for our own
purposes. We could have our own on-line journal, complete with peer review
and free on-line access. I would like to start a discussion on this topic
and find out if there is any interest for this in our RASMB community. I
would be happy to facilitate the technical and organizational aspects
of such a venture.

I personally see some important advantages in publishing 
over the web compared to traditional paper journals:

1. Your research will be published a *lot* faster

2. Costs for publishing electronically are substantially lower, which
   means money saved for you.

2. Publications will have a much better distribution (you don't have to 
   go to the library or pay for an on-line subscription, accepted papers 
   could even be advertised on RASMB with abstract, you will never miss
   an article again!)

3. Full-text searches are easily possible 

4. no limitations on the type of media included (ie. color pictures, sound,
   multimedia/movies are easy to provide over the net and don't cost extra)

5. Imagine having references be immediately cross-referenced in an html
   format!

6. We could have our own editorial board with ad-hoc reviewers, where we
   can decide what we want to see published and cater to our own interests...
   (who wants to serve? :-)

7. One could have several sections: methods, proteins, interacting systems,
   synthetic polymers, etc.

8. Depending on volume, one could press monthly or quarterly CDROM archives,
   available at a small cost for your own library (or you can download it)

9. There is even grant money out there for electronic publishing projects
   in science

According to the article in the _Chronicle_ there is precedent. See:
http://www.medscape.com/ (Medscape), a medical site on the World-Wide Web,
which announced this month that it was starting a peer-reviewed on-line
journal. The physics commpunity at Los Alamos has been publishing on
line for years. (http://lib-www.lanl.gov/infores/physics/physics.htm)
They have taken it to an extreme - no formal review process.  Readers send
in comments on the published articles and the authors modify their papers
accordingly - hmmm, I wonder if that would work for us.

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw this idea out there, if you feel like
discussing the idea for an on-line RASMB analytical ultracentrifugation
journal send your messages back to RASMB. Maybe we get enough momentum
together to get such a journal online. I do have all the technical
capabilities here to serve such a system over the Internet and with your
help we could make this a scientific success story.

Best regards, -Borries

*******************************************************************************
* Borries Demeler                                                             *
* The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio                *
* Dept. of Biochemistry, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78284-7760 *
* Voice: 210-567-6592, Fax: 210-567-4575, Email: demeler@biochem.uthscsa.edu  *
*******************************************************************************