IUCr 1994 Report - Sub-Committee on Electronic Publishing, Dissemination and Storage of Information

At a Meeting of the Committee in March 1994, the Committee proposed plans for continued development of electronic publishing by the IUCr. The document submission aspects of electronic publishing are improving steadily, with procedures introduced by the IUCr now being adopted by other publishers. In addition to continuing improvement in manuscript submission, the extraction of CIFs from the IUCr archives and the transmission of checked CIFs to database producers are progressing. High priority has been given to providing CIF checking as an automatic service, because that will reduce the incidence of errors in the published literature, and hence reduce costs for the crystallographic databases.

For the time being, the document delivery aspects of electronic publishing are characterized by very high uncertainties about future trends. During the year, what were previously difficult problems regarding the use of networks for semicommercial purposes were unexpectedly resolved. Similar changes associated with the use of the new medium for publishing are expected in the future. Any plan to use electronic publishing for document delivery must allow for unexpected changes. The World Directory of Crystallographers, in addition to serving its main purpose, is being used as a medium for testing some aspects of document delivery that will be helpful as the IUCr moves towards publishing its journals in electronic form. A staged programme, moving towards greater use of electronic media for document delivery, will be submitted to the IUCr Executive Committee for consideration.

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