Subject: e-prints

From: categories <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 09:48:59 -0400 (AST)

Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 10:45:08 -0500 (EST)
From: James Stasheff <[email-masked]>

Dear colleagues,
I'm writing to you about a proposed e-print archive in category theory,
on behalf of a committee of mathematicians which is advocating
the unification of various electronic preprint servers and archives into a single 
system with a common format.  We want to invite Category Theorists to join this
group. 

This invitation is being issued to 15 preprint servers (listed below) which
together cover about half of the subject areas in mathematics.  We are 
also trying to organize active groups in the remaining subject areas, so
that the unified preprint server will soon cover all of mathematics.  This
organizational effort has already produced interested groups in
combinatorics and geometric topology.

Managing a preprint server can be a time-consuming task, but fortunately
there is a similar preprint server in operation in physics, running at Los
Alamos National Lab and funded by the National Science Foundation, whose
staff is willing to take on the operation of a unified mathematics server.
This will enable all of us to take advantage of their years of software
development, as well as their efficient staff who monitor the (fully
automated) operation.  When scientific questions arise (such as the
suitability of a particular paper for a particular archive), these staff
members would consult with a designated "moderator" for each subject
area.  (The moderator also receives abstracts of papers as they are 
submitted, and can have the staff intervene in the rare instances of 
inappropriate papers or other difficulties.)  Someone you designate 
collectively would serve in this capacity under the new system.

The great advantage of a unified server is that all mathematicians will be
able to participate in electronic preprint exchanges in a single, flexible
system (which can distribute preprints in a variety of formats, including
dvi, ps and pdf).  The computer systems staff in a mathematics department
can be asked to familiarize themselves with this system, which will be easy
to support for users.  Moreover, a central location for preprints (with
dozens of mirror sites worldwide) together with a soon-to-be-familiar
scheme for citing these preprints will mean that mathematicians in one
field who see a citation to a preprint in another field will easily be able
to locate it.  We will also all gain the ability to simultaneously search 
through related archives, including full text searches. There is a common 
keyword index for the mathematical holdings, permitting simultaneous searching 
of all or designated related archives. A given paper could easily be relevant 
to users of more than one archive, so this would make information much easier 
to track.

In order to take advantage of the system in place at Los Alamos Lab, we
have agreed to follow the technical decisions they have made: authors
are asked to submit tex source files, for example.  Although this may be a
change for users of your current system, we believe that the long-term
advantages of unification outweigh the temporary disadvantages to users of
an established archive.

We propose to copy the contents of your archive (in its current form) into
the unified archive, and suggest that you encourage all future submissions
be made directly to the unified archive.  Category theory is one of the 
subject areas in the unified archive  and is intended as a continuation of your 
archive.  It should be fairly easy to
construct a kind of front-end on a web page at your site which will provide
access to both old and new papers in your portion of the unified archive,
giving your users a certain degree of continuity and allowing them to
retain the feeling of belonging to a smaller community of users of a
particular preprint archive.  We will be happy to assist in the
construction of such front-ends.  A primitive prototype for such a front-end
(in the area of combinatorics) can be viewed at http://eprints.math.duke.edu/archive/CO/
All but one of the links on that page take you directly into the archive at
Los Alamos.

A front-end for the entire unified archive is under construction at
U.C. Davis by Greg Kuperberg:  you can view it at
   http://front.math.ucdavis.edu
You might also like to look at the Los Alamos Math Archive itself (partially
functioning already), at
   http://xxx.lanl.gov/form/math
You will see that the combinatorics and geometric topology sections are
getting a good start this week.  At the time of unification (probably
Jan. 1) the four current math archives alg-geom, dg-ga, funct-an and q-alg
at the Los Alamos site will be merged into the unified archive, becoming
subject areas AG, DG, part of FA, and QA, respectively.

Our committee has had Joe Christie, Greg Kuperberg, Dave Morrison, Dick
Palais, Jim Stasheff and Mark Steinberger as its active participants, with
occasional participation by a few others.  If you are interested in having
a representative of category theory joining
this committee, we would love to have one.  Our tasks after this
unification will be developing the remaining subject areas, and publicizing
this archive among mathematicians.

	Short of that, as individuals, all you need to do right now
is write back and say you think the category theory category is a good idea,
or better yet, to pledge some number of e-prints to be submitted soon
after the category starts. Those already archived other than on your
own server should be offered with a copy of the offer going to the
archive administrator.  Of course we are most eager to have your present
and future e-prints added to the unified server.  (For e-print versions
of papers for which you no longer have the copyright, permission from the 
copyright holder will be needed.)

	I am very optimistic that this effort will eventually lead to a complete
transition to efficient electronic distribution of new results in
category theory.  The xxx archives has 3,000 math e-prints in the four
existing mathematics categories and 50,000 physics e-prints.  As you
might guess from these numbers, xxx has already effected the electronic
transition in several areas of physics.  The category theory category will
be of great benefit to us all.  Please help get it started; the more who join, 
the better.

  Best regards,

  	Jim Stasheff

P.S. Here is the list of 15 preprint servers which we propose to merge.  If
you have other suggestions for inclusion on this list, please let us know.

1. Algebraic Geometry (http://eprints.math.duke.edu/archive/alg-geom/)

2. Algebraic Number Theory Archives (http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Algebraic-Number-Theory/) 

3A. Banach Spaces & Functional Analysis (ftp://ftp.math.okstate.edu/pub/banach/)

3B. Functional Analysis (http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/funct-an/)

4. Combinatorial and Geometric Group Theory (MAGNUS) (http://zebra.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/web/html/magnus.html)

5. Conservation Laws Preprint Server (http://www.math.ntnu.no/conservation/)

6. Differential Geometry (http://www.msri.org/preprints/dg-ga.html)

7. Dynamical Systems Electronic Preprint Server (http://www.math.sunysb.edu/dynamics/preprints/preprints.html)

8. Hopf Topology Archive (http://hopf.math.purdue.edu/pub/hopf.html)

9. K-theory Preprint Archives (http://www.math.uiuc.edu/K-theory/)

10. Logic Eprints (http://www.math.ufl.edu/~logic/)

11. Mathematical Physics Preprint Archive at the University of Texas, Austin
(http://www.ma.utexas.edu/mp_arc/mp_arc-home.html)

12. Quantum Algebra and Topology
(http://eprints.math.duke.edu/archive/q-alg/)

13. Representations and Cohomology of Groups (http://www.math.uga.edu/~djb/archive.html)

14. Several Complex Variables (ftp://iu-math.math.indiana.edu/pub/scv/)

************************************************************
	Until August 10, 1998, I am on leave from UNC 
		and am at the University of Pennsylvania

	 Jim Stasheff		[email-masked]

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