PAM Division Award 1998 Details

We are very happy to announce that Dr. Paul Ginsparg is the winner of this years 1998 PAM Award. Dr. Ginsparg is the original creator of the Los Alamos National Laboratories electronic preprint server. It is officially called the "e-Print Archive." (http://xxx.lanl.gov) We were intrigued by several of his novel and innovative approaches to scholarly publishing.

Dr. Ginsparg had written an article back in 1996 which clarified several of his beliefs for the future of scholarly publishing in the electronic environment. His main ideas can be read in full at: http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/pg96unesco.html - and I will quote some of his main points here.

"In scholarly publication (a.k.a. "Esoteric Scholarly Publication"), we [researchers] are writing to communicate research information and to establish our research reputations. We are not writing in order to make money in the form of royalties based on the size of a paying readership."

And further, he states that:

"If we the researchers are not writing with the expectation of making money directly from our efforts, then there is no earthly reason why anyone else should make money in the process (except for a fair return on any non-trivial "value-added" [service] they may provide...)"

Some of Dr. Ginsparg's thoughts may be controversial in the realm of traditional commercial and society publishing, but we felt that he deserved recognition for pushing scholarly electronic publications in a new direction. In short, The e-print server shows us some of the possibilities for the future of scholarly publication.

PAM Practices Manual Editor: Kristine Fowler, fowler@math.umn.edu

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Page last updated: July 26, 2004