The web: Challenge and opportunity for an independent journal

Abstract

To establish a comprehensive Website is for any journal a major task. Most independent journals face the additional obstacle of not having the financial resources for hiring information technology staff. I am going to describe the kind of decisions we had to make to set up a comprehensive Website for the Houston Journal of Mathematics (HJM). The result is a publishing format which may not have all the characteristics of a primarily electronic journal, but it offers more than a paper journal with free abstracts, and file access to its subscribers. Like some other journals, HJM decided to make electronic editions freely available for registered subscribers of the print edition. Nevertheless, one still needs a “License Agreement Form”. This is a legal document that defines the”Scope of the License” and which includes a “Copyright” clause. In its present form, our license excludes electronic files from Inter Library Loans. I will try to explain our opinion on this controversial topic. All journals, whether commercial or independent, face the problem of “archival quality” of current file formats, primarily of the.pdf format. But there is also the related problem of shared legal responsibilities of possible file maintenance. The paper will present some thoughts on these most pressing issues.