preprint archives

[thk (Tom H. Koornwinder)]

Electronic Preprint Archives: Haubold's archive and the xxx archives

Some six years ago the late Waleed Al-Salam in Edmonton founded an
electronic preprint archive on Orthogonal Polynomials and Special
Functions. This was continued by Hans Haubold in Vienna. Initially, the
archive could only be approached by anonymous ftp. Later, downloading by
ftp became integrated in web browsers. Approaching the archive via the
web was further facilitated when Hans Haubold built a web front end for
his archive. Formally, this archive is not an activity of the SIAM
Activity Group on Orthogonal Polynomials and Special Functions (SIAG
OP-SF), and the manager of the archive is completely autonomous. In
practice, the Activity Group has always supported the archive by
announcing new submissions in OP-SF NET, and by giving advice to the
manager of the archive.

Originally, many preprints were submitted to the archive. Between 1
August 1995 and 23 May 1998, 55 entries were submitted to the
opsf-ftpsite. At present the archive has 153 listings of full papers.
However, the number of entries per year is declining, and comprises
only a small part of all preprints being produced in the field of
Orthogonal Polynomials and Special Functions. One possible reason for
this decline is that many researchers now have the possibility to make
their preprints available on the web via their home page. Because of
this, the possiblity has been created to post just an abstract of a
preprint at Haubold's archive, while giving a link to where the actual
paper resides on the Internet. This facility has been used for only 7
abstracts until now.

P. Ginsparg, a phycisist in Los Alamos, started an electronic preprint
archive on high energy physics in 1991. This has been an enormous
success, and it branched into many subdivisions. All important papers in
the field are posted in these so-called xxx archives. There is a
standard interface, and handling is completely automatic. Some branches
of mathematics have imitated this model successfully, notably Algebraic
Geometry (abbreviated AG, 1379 listings) and Quantum Algebra
(abbreviated QA, 1315 listings). Recently, many new archives for
subfields of mathematics have been started as part of these xxx
archives. Together they should cover all of mathematics. All archives
share the uniform interface, the automatic handling and, very important,
the possibility of cross-linking.

Our field of Orthogonal Polynomials and Special Functions is primarily
covered by the archive Classical Analysis (CA). Its keywords are:
  Harmonic analysis, approximations, series, expansions, asymptotics,
  classical transforms, special functions, integro-differential equations,
  differential relations, analysis of ODE's, calculus of variations.
Several other archives also receive some submissions in the area of
OP&SF (which may be cross-linked to CA). In particular Quantum Algebra
(QA) and Combinatorics (CO) get some submissions related to our area. At
present, CO has 59 listings and CA has 10 listings.

The SIAG OP-SF has always supported Al-Salam's and Haubold's preprint
archive for mainly two reasons:
- it is a useful facility for researchers in our field to make their
  preprints more widely available.
- recent contributions to our field become easily and quickly visible and
  accessible by the archive.
As already written above, the first argument is becoming less
important because of technical developments (but still plays a role
for some working outside the western world). The second argument is
still important, but it depends on the willingness of the majority of
researchers in the field to submit their papers or abstracts to the
archive.

How things will develop in future, can be influenced only very little by
the SIAG OP-SF. The success of a preprint archive is primarily
determined by whether a critical number of leading researchers in the
field decides to post their preprints to the archive (which has been the
case for Algebraic Geometry and for Quantum Algebra).

Our Activity Group is negotiating with the managers of the xxx
archives about the incorporation of Haubold's archive in the CA
category of xxx. The idea is that the identity of Haubold's present
archive should be preserved as much as possible within xxx, for
instance by sharpening the profile of CA and by copying the files in
Haubold's archive to xxx.  Serial numbers will be assigned to
incorporate the month and year of the original submission.  We suggest
authors in the field of OP & SF to submit their preprints to the
category Classical Analysis (CA) of the xxx archives (with possible
cross-linking to one or more other categories) but, in addition, to
announce their preprint in Haubold's archive by sending him an
abstract together with a link.

Here are some of the relevant addresses and URL's:

Haubold's archive:
ftp://unvie6.un.or.at/siam/opsf_new/00index.html

the ftp address for submissions to Haubold's archive:
unvie6.un.or.at, directory siam/submissions

the xxx mathematics archive, maintained at Los Alamos:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/math

the UC Davis front end for the xxx mathematics archive:
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/

a detailed list of categories within the xxx mathematics archive:
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/categories.html


                              Tom H. Koornwinder