SEPM--Electronic Publishing--Useful or Shocking?

Abstract

Spotlights mostly deal with pithy research discussions on specific areas of our science. This one deals more with something that can facilitate research—the fast-changing world of electronic publishing. One of SEPM's early involvements with electronic publishing (here meaning putting journal contents into electronic files on CDs and/or online) began as far back as 1997, when the Journal of Sedimentary Research (JSR) was licensed to Datapages™ to produce a CD archive of all past issues going back to 1931. Although perhaps a bit ahead of its time and using rapidly changing technology, this effort got SEPM research papers into electronic media. Today, PALAIOS is in the BioOne™ aggregate, JSR remains in the Datapages™ aggregate (now owned by AAPG), the recent issues of both journals are available online through the SEPM website, reprints are distributed to authors as PDF files, and many of our out-of-print special publications and short-course notes have been re-printed on CD media. A lot has happened over the last seven years. So what about tomorrow? Well, depending on your viewpoint (paper or plastic?—print or digital), bigger, faster, better things are happening in 2005. PALAIOS archives (back to the first issue in 1986) have just been digitized and …