00100	        STATUS OF THE PLAN FOR A JOURNAL IN THE ARPA NETWORK
00200	
00300	
00400		At the last ARPA IPT principal investigators' meeting, it was
00500	proposed that there should be a scientific journal  existing  in  the
00600	ARPA  net.   It was claimed that such a journal would offer immediate
00700	publication because the  articles  could  be  read  through  consoles
00800	attached to the network computers, articles could be commented on and
00900	the comments read, and the authors  could  revise  their  stuff.    A
01000	committee  with me as chairman was appointed to look into the matter,
01100	and the committee held  one  meeting  in  the  form  of  a  telephone
01200	conference.    At  the  meeting, it was agreed that there ought to be
01300	such a journal, the editorial policy was discussed, and the technical
01400	problems were discussed.  Lacking was a need for a new journal in the
01500	computer field, a subject on which to focus the journal, an a  person
01600	with  a  desire  to  be editor or publisher or whatever.  The meeting
01700	closed on the idea that another meeting  would  be  held  when  these
01800	lacks were met. Two months elapsed without further communication.
01900	
02000		I  began  to fear that the journal project was premature, but
02100	then it occurred to me to see about getting an existing journal  into
02200	the  network.   Steve  Coles  of  the SRI AI group is going to be the
02300	editor of the SIGART newsletter starting in August, and he has agreed
02400	to prepare the copy on the computer and make it available through the
02500	net.   The  Stanford  AI  lab  offers  co-operation  in  programming,
02600	printing,  and  file  space  as may be needed.  A SIG newsletter is a
02700	good choice for a start, because there are no  typographic  problems,
02800	since the copy is only typed and not typeset.
02900	
03000		Well,  that's  a  start,  and  we  can  see  how  we like it.
03100	Needless to say, the usual form of publication will also continue.
03200	
03300		After that, it occurred to me that the ACM ought to take  the
03400	lead   in   this   form  of  publication,  and  so  I  had  telephone
03500	conversations with Walter Carlson who was for it in  principal,  with
03600	Eric  Weiss  who  was for it, but considered that the ACM's financial
03700	problems were dominant, with Peter Denning who wrote a letter a  copy
03800	of  which  is  attached  to  this,  and with Jean Sammet who was also
03900	worried about money.  The facts are that no computers are used in ACM
04000	publication and that none of the ACM publications ever goes through a
04100	machine readable form.  However, Boston firm has made a proposal  for
04200	computer  aided typesetting to ACM with the claim that this will save
04300	money in the ordinary publication.  It is alleged that a committee is
04400	looking into this and allied matters, but I don't know who it is.