Subject: letter about AGT
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 16:35:37 +0200 (MEST)
From: bob@math.univ-paris13.fr
To: dmd1@lehigh.edu

Dear Don,

Here's the letter I proposed to you to send out through your list.  (It
took a while for me to write it, and then for it to be discussed by other
editors and by the the exec.  committee of GT publications.)  As you'll
see, I did try to take your suggestion into account.

One tactical question:  would it be better to wait until September to
send it out?  I don't know whether or not people stop reading your
messages when on summer vacation.

Bob

====================

To fellow homotopy theorists,

This is a reminder to algebraic topologists about the electronic journal
Algebraic and Geometric Topology (AGT).  This journal was started in the
fall of 2000, and has so far published about 60 papers.  Thus, overall,
the journal is doing very well, but the large majority of the published
papers (and of the submitted papers) represent the "geometric" side of
topology.  Ideally, we would like the journal to be evenly divided
between the two areas.  While that goal is probably not attainable
(if only because there seem to be more geometric topologists than
algebraic topologists around), we do want to encourage algebraic
topologists and homotopy theorists to submit papers.

The advantages of submitting to electronic journals are well known.  In
particular, I would like to note that among the papers accepted by the
journal so far, the average time from submission to publication was
about 4 months.  The papers do appear in print -- volume 1 has just been
published -- but simply the fact of being published one volume (year) at
a time (and from not going through a commercial publisher) help to
keep the price down.  For example, volume 1 (38 papers, 790 pages) is
priced at $90.

All papers published in AGT appear in Math. Reviews and Zentralblatt, and
all are deposited in the arXiv.  Also, AGT has been endorsed by SPARC
(Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), an organization
which (among other things) encourages and sets standards for electronic
publications.

The AGT editors in algebraic topology include Bob Oliver (principal
editor together with Marty Scharlemann), Fred Cohen, Peter Eccles,
John Greenlees, Hans-Werner Henn, Kathryn Hess, Stefan Jackowski, Goro
Nishida, Andrew Ranicki, and Ulrike Tillmann.  Papers can be submitted
to any of these people, or to any of the other editors of the journal.

More information about AGT (including the full list of editors) can be
found on the journal's web page at
                 http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt.

Bob Oliver