The operational release of the Eprints archive-creating software is now down-loadable from http://www.eprints.org The eprints.org software will create Eprints Archives that are interoperable and compliant with the current Open Archives protocol. The software is free, uses only free software, and can be installed and maintained easily. It is modular, and written to be easily upgraded with each upgrade of the Open Archives protocol: http://www.openarchives.org All Eprint Archives created with the eprints.org software are fully interoperable, and can be registered as Open Archive Data Providers: http://www.openarchives.org/sfc/sfc_archives.htm This means that their contents can then in turn all be harvested, jointly indexed, and jointly searched with all the other Eprint Archives through Open Archive Service Providers <http://www.openarchives.org/sfc/sfc_archives.htm> such as http://arc.cs.odu.edu All Eprints can also be citation-interlinked: http://opcit.eprints.org so that the research literature can be navigated by citation. It will also be possible to monitor research impact in powerful new ways, once the eprints are up there: http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.citation.htm The Eprints software was expressly designed so that universities and research institutions worldwide can now immediately create their own Open Archives, in which their researchers in all disciplines can (immediately) self-archive their research -- both pre-refereeing preprints and refereed postprints. http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/1-Anomalous-Picture/sld001.htm http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/2-Resolving-the-Anomaly/sld001.htm As soon as universities create their own Eprint Archives and their researchers self-archive their papers in them, the world's refereed research literature will be freed from all its current needless access-barriers and impact-barriers. Footnote: HISTORY IS WATCHING. The means of freeing the entire refereed research literature (within a matter of days, in principle!) is now within the reach of the world research community. If you have a published paper of your own that has not reached its full potential readership, if there is a published paper by someone else that you or your university cannot afford to access, or cannot access immediately, or if your university has a "serials crisis" preventing its researchers from accessing the entire refereed research corpus -- AND you have NOT self-archived your own papers -- then, as of now, you have only yourself to blame (and history will be the judge, in hindsight)! -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad harnad(a)cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Science harnad(a)princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum(a)amsci-forum.amsci.org