Dear Mark:

Thank you for your very useful analysis. This is the sort of
information that needs to be widely disseminated to journal publishers.
If they can be convinced that self archiving will not destroy their
journals, they are likely to become more receptive to the idea of
following LANL's lead.

In your comments you noted that Phy. Rev. journals vary in the
percentage of their articles that appear in the LANL archive.  Why is
that so?

We at the journal _Conservation Ecology_ have been working hard to
eliminate the first hurdle you list as a prerequisite for doing away
with the use of subscriptions to support the peer-review process: "1)
reducing the cost of handling electronic manuscripts." We have
developed software that automates all parts of the peer review process
that do not require a human decision. Authors submit their manuscripts
via the web interface, and editors and reviewers view the manuscripts
on the web. This avoids the cost of distributing manuscripts by mail.
We also eliminate almost all of the costs of clerical help. Authors and
reviewers like this system, which we have been using for about three
years.

see: <<<underline>http://www.consecol.org/Journal/submit/</underline>>

We are now forming a consortium of publishers to share the cost of
generalizing this software system, in order to make it available to
other publishers of peer-reviewed journals.


see:
<<<underline>http://www.consecol.org/Journal/consortium.html</underline>>



Lee Miller

Editor Emeritus, _Ecology_

Chairman, Peer Review & Publishing Software Consortium

Peer Review and Publishing Software Consortium

118 Prospect Street, Suite 212

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tel: (607) 255-3221     email: Cons_Ecol@cornell.edu

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