Diane M. Fortner
Dfortner@library.berkeley.edu

For 2001, AIP/American Institute of Physics has created six additional years of digital archives for its core journals, extending online backfiles to 1991. Subscribers can access these backfiles for $50 additional dollars for most AIP journals. AIP plans to add backfiles for 1985 to 1990 by January 2002, with no further price increase. Long-term plans are to increase the backfile coverage back to 1975, the period covered by AIP's database, SPINWeb.

AIP and APS/American Physical Society will launch the Online Journal Statistics Service the first of May, which will allow librarians to view usage statistics on the Web for the AIP and APS online journals to which they subscribe. Also in May, AIP and APS will launch the Virtual Journal of Quantum Information. This free site will provide quick, convenient access to cutting-edge research in quantum computing, cryptography, and communication from a broad range of physical science journals. It will be updated monthly and is edited by David P. DiVincenzo of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. This new "VJ" joins two launched in 2000, Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology and Virtual Journal of Biological Physics. The virtual journals are intended as an alternative to "journal inflation", in which new journal are launched to serve new niches of research. A fourth VJ is planned for later this year, the Virtual Journal of Applications of Magnetism and Superconductivity. (For more information on virtual journals, see http://www.virtualjournals.org/.)

The American Physical Society announces the establishment of a live mirror site for PROLA at Cornell, a full copy of their archive and current content in addition to the Library of Congress site. PROLA/Physical Review Online Archive is now available back to 1970 (3/01). Expect PROLA back to 1960 late this spring and shortly thereafter back to 1958. Reviews of Modern Physics is available back to its absolute beginning, Volume 1, 1929. There is an improved interface, and articles in PROLA can be incorporated into the AIP's OJPS Article Collection service. For subscribers, PROLA references are now displayed with abstracts. The future -- Soon reference linking will be extended to all of PROLA. Outside resources linked to presently include INSPEC, SPINWeb (AIP), SPIRES (SLAC), Medline, and other publishers via CrossRef. Known problems -- There is still some clean up for reference sections converted from legacy material. Problems with extending the search-engine to PROLA are being resolved.

INSPEC has announced it is expanding the number of journals for which the DOI/Digital Object Identifier is included (1/01). It reports adding DOIs for AIP/American Institute of Physics journals. The total is over 100 journals, from about 15 publishers. The database producers plan to expand this to include all journals published by members of the CrossRef initiative by the end of the year.

Axiom from IOPP/Institute of Physics Publishing now offers the Derwent World Patents Index as the third database, along with INSPEC and COMPENDEX. More databases will be added in the future. SFX links are currently being built into Axiom and the IOPP journals. SFX is a framework that permits context-sensitive linking between Web resources, which was built and introduced in late 1999 by LANL and the University of Ghent Library. SFX is also the name of server software derived from the LANL/Ghent research project and recently acquired by Ex Libris (USA), Inc (http://www.aleph.co.il/sfx/). CrossRef links are now in many cases active in Axiom, depending upon the publisher, with most links likely live by the end of the year.

IOPP is now publishing two new journals, Journal of Turbulence and Quantitative Finance. The Journal of Turbulence is their first electronic-only journal available on a subscription basis. IOPP has also discontinued the hardcopy of JHEP/Journal of High Energy Physics for 2001. Instead they hope to work cooperatively with the Italians in making it an even better electronic journal. And IOPP has taken over the publication and marketing of Chinese Physics and Chinese Physics Letters on behalf of the Chinese Physical Society. They will offer them on a similar model as their other titles, paper subscription plus free electronic access.

Believing philosophers, like physicists, seek the deep realities that lie hidden behind everyday matters, I was reading the spring 2001 issue of The Philosophers' Magazine. One article announced the debut of a refereed e-journal, Philosophers' Imprint http://www.philosophersimprint.org/. It will have a "distinguished board of academic philosophers" (seemingly no pun) and will be published on the Web by the University of Michigan Library, the giver of JSTOR. Philosophers' Imprint will be underwritten by the library and provided without subscription or licensing fee. Readers can receive periodic notices of recent "publications" by subscribing to an e-mail list.