Subject: The Annals of Mathematics is now an arXiv overlay journal [for toplist] Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 18:59:38 -0700 From: Greg Kuperberg To: dmd1@lehigh.edu Subject: The Annals of Mathematics is now an arXiv overlay journal We are pleased to announce that the Annals of Mathematics is now on-line and an arXiv overlay journal. We would like to thank the Annals editorial board, and especially Robert MacPherson, for helping make this possible. That the Annals is an overlay means that all articles in the Annals from November 1998 onward have been contributed or will be contributed to the mathematics arXiv. In addition the Annals web site has hyperlinks to the arXiv copies: http://www.math.princeton.edu/~annals/ The arXiv is a free archive of research articles, currently with 150,000 articles in physics and 15,000 in mathematics. You can browse the mathematics section of the arXiv either directly or at the Front for the Mathematics arXiv: http://arxiv.org/ http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ You can also now search or browse Annals articles within the arXiv, for example by following these links: http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/search/jr:ann-of-math http://arXiv.org/find/math/1/jr:+AND+AND+ann+math+no/0/1/0/all/0/1 As a consequence of the overlay arrangement, the Annals shares the commitment of the arXiv itself to remain permanently and freely available on the Internet. With the addition of the Annals there are now four arXiv overlay journals, the other three being Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics and the sibling journals Geometry and Topology and Algebraic and Geometric Topology. This prestigious collection of journals illustrates a new phase of the mathematics arXiv. The mathematics arXiv is now not only a "preprint server", but also a permanent digital library that can support peer review as a second layer. We believe that scholarly communication in mathematics is at a crossroads. With the advent of the Internet, mathematicians can disseminate their work through proprietary subscription journals which are published electronically. Or mathematicians can distribute it through an ad hoc array of home pages and web sites. We believe that neither of these systems is adequate and that mathematicians should, in addition, contribute their papers to a free, universal archive extended by peer review. Two precendents speak in favor of this approach. One is the wide success of the arXiv in many areas of physics, as reported in the Science Section of the May 1 New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/science/01ARCH.html The other is CTAN, the free universal archive of TeX software and TeX macros. All TeX users, even subscription journals, rely on CTAN directly or indirectly. Today's news about the Annals is only one step on a long road, but we hope that it can lead to discussions about the future. So please circulate this announcement among your colleagues, and feel free to add your own comments. -- Robert Bryant, Bill Casselman, Rob Kirby, Greg Kuperberg, Elliott Lieb, Peter Michor, David Morrison, Andrew Odlyzko, Richard Palais, Jim Stasheff, and Bill Thurston, on behalf of the math arXiv advisory committee -- /\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis) / \ \ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ \/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *