Official Announcement

Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence

The following release was widely circulated on May 27, 1997

The European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI) announces the creation of a new forum for exchange of scientific results, the Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI). It is an Internet-based service which is available at http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/

All ETAI information is available free of charge. The editor in chief of ETAI is Erik Sandewall, Linköping University, Sweden.

ETAI is both more and less than a scientific journal

In a certain sense, ETAI is an electronic journal. However, it is not simply a traditional journal gone electronic. The differences may be summarized by the following table describing the functions performed by a conventional journal and by the ETAI:

Conventional Journal ETAI

Distribution
of the article A major function Not our business

Reviewing and
quality assurance A major function A major function

Debate about
published results Difficult and not much done A major function

Publication of
on-line software Impossible Welcomed and already started

Bibliographic
services Difficult and not much done A major function

	Conventional Journal	ETAI
Distribution of the article	A major function	Not our business
Reviewing and quality assurance	A major function	A major function
Debate about published results	Difficult and not much done	A major function
Publication of on-line software	Impossible	Welcomed and already started
Bibliographic services	Difficult and not much done	A major function

To explain:

The basic service of a conventional (paper) journal is to have the article typeset, printed, and sent to the subscribers. The ETAI stays completely away from that process: it assumes the existence of First Publication Archives (similar to "Preprint Archives", but with a guarantee that the articles remain unchanged for an extended period of time). The ETAI only deals with URL:s pointing to articles that have been published (but without international peer review) in First Publication Archives.

The reviewing and quality control is a major topic for the ETAI, like for conventional journals. However, the ETAI pioneers the principle of posteriori reviewing: the reviewing and acceptance process takes place after the article has been published. This has a number of consequences, but the major advantage from the point of view of the author is that he or she retains the priority right of the article and its results per the original date of publication, and independently of reviewing delays and possible reviewing mistakes.

Reviewing in ETAI also differs from conventional journal reviewing in that it uses a succession of several "filters", rather than one single reviewing pass, and in that it is set up so as to encourage self-control on the side of the authors. The intention is that ETAI's quality control shall be considerably more strict and reliable than what is done in conventional journals.

Besides the reviewing process, the ETAI also organizes News Journals in each of its speciality areas. News Journals are fora for information about current events (workshops, etc), but they will also contain debate about recently published research results. Naturally, the on-line medium is much more appropriate for debate than what a conventional journal is.

Compared to mailgroups, the News Journals offer a more persistent and reputable forum of discussion. Discussion contributions are preserved in such a way that they are accessible and referencable for the future. In other words, they also are to be considered as "published".

One additional type of contributions in News Journals is for links to software that is available and can be run over the net. This is particularly valuable for software which can be run directly from a web page. Already the first issue of an ETAI News Journal publishes two such on-line software contributions.

The creation of bibliographies, finally, is a traditional activity in research, but it is impractical in paper-based media since by their very nature, bibliographies ought to be updated as new articles arrive. The on-line maintenance of specialized bibliographies within each of its topic areas is a natural function in the ETAI.

Generally speaking, it is clear that the electronic medium lends itself to a different grouping of functionalities than what is natural or even possible in the paper-based technology. For example, the bibliographic database underlying ETAI's bibliographic services is well integrated with the reviewing process and with the News Journals where new contributions to the literature are first reported. Similarly, debate items pertaining to a particular article will be accessible from the entry for the article itself.

The ETAI therefore represents a novel approach to electronic publishing. We do not simply inherit the patterns from the older technology, but instead we have rethought the structure of scientific communication in order to make the best possible use of international computer networks as well as electronic document and database technologies.

The ETAI now starts operation, and welcomes contributions in the research areas and by the procedures described in the web pages specified above.

Latest update: 27.5.1997
Maintained by Erik Sandewall, Linköping University, Sweden. E-mail ejs@ida.liu.se.