The G3 Experience with Electronic Publishing: An Editor's Perspective

G³ (Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems) is an all-electronic journal published jointly by the AGU, the Geochemical Society, and the European Association of Geochemistry. G³ publishes original scientific contributions pertaining to understanding the Earth as a system, including relevant observational, experimental, and theoretical investigations of the solid Earth, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. The journal was initiated as a result of a grass roots effort with the following goals in mind: a copyright policy designed to enhance, rather than inhibit, the dissemination of scientific information (for example, allowing authors to post electronic reprints on their web sites), provide a means of publishing, in immediately useable formats, large data sets, provide a means for ready dissemination of computer modeling and analysis tools, and provide a forum where authors could use novel ways of illustrating both data and models (e.g., formats such as movies, virtual reality images, sound, mathematical models, etc.), and finally to reduce costs and speed publication. In most respects, G³ has been enormously successful and has met most of its goals. G³ began publishing in December of 1999; in the subsequent 3 1/2 years 625 papers have been submitted to it and 325 have been published. It currently has over 600 institutional and personal subscribers. Papers are submitted through the web (a variety of formats are accepted, however, Microsoft Word is most common) and are converted to Adobe pdf format for peer review. Except that it is fully electronic using the web and e-mail, the peer review process is traditional, which insures the quality of the papers published. Accepted papers are copyedited and converted to SGML for archival purposes. HTML and Acrobat pdf versions are then generated from the SGML and published as they are ready on the G³ web site (www.g-cubed.org). Large data sets are routinely published in digital formats that can be readily downloaded by readers and immediately imported into programs such as Excel. Numerous animations and movies have been published in animated GIF, Apple Quicktime, Macromedia Flash, and Wolfram Research Mathreader formats. Computer models and tools have been published as Excel Macros and MATLAB Scripts. Full color, high resolution images allow superior publication of detailed maps and photographs. While G³ is a success by most measures, the process of pioneering electronic publication has at times been painful and frustrating. Early on, there were problems and delays in converting files, particularly graphics, to pdf format for both review and final publication. Costs have been higher than anticipated - primarily due to the cost of file conversion and formatting. The time from acceptance to publication (currently 10 weeks), although improving, it still longer than the goal, again because of the time required for copy-editing and formatting. Automation of this process in the future is the primary opportunity to both reduce cost and further speed publication. Authors have been slow to take advantage of the new illustration formats, with most relying on tradition figures instead. This will likely change slowly in the future, as these new formats, and the software tools to create them, become more familiar.