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Papers are increasingly being distributed electronically. Originally
driven by e-mail preprint servers and now by ``document vault"-like, Web-based
storage systems (and by a few electronic journals),
these ``e-prints" change the traditional way of funding
scientific publication. Formerly, page charges for which professors
were given grant money used to pay for publications. Increasingly now,
computer networking (still often paid by grant money)
is replacing physical publication.
However this distribution is still fragmented and piecemeal. The
preprints distributed in this fashion are mostly unrefereed, and the
archival value is often dubious. The computer system itself that you
have stored your magnum opus on may be gone in a year or less---what
happens to your paper, then? Worse, how do you refer to the wonderful
preprints that you just read? And how reliable were they, anyway,
being unrefereed?
omp@cecm.sfu.ca