An electronic submission service for Astronomy and Astrophysics

Abstract

This paper outlines an Electronic Submission Service (ess) for Astron- omy and Astrophysics, suitable for all parts of the journal: Letters, Main Journal, andSupplements. The proposed service should be run by a pro- fessional entity: one of the publishers, eso, thecds, orsome other, yetto be decided, party. The ess is a fully automated service, requiring minimal technical skills from authors, and editorial staff. After its initial development, testing, and implementation, the ess should run largely unattended, and require minimal maintenance. The ess is designed to support the editorial process, by allowing sub- mission of manuscripts and graphical material through email, ftp, and Web uploads. Theess subsequently processes the (L A T E X) manuscript, producing PostScript and pdf versions of the paper. These are made ac- cessible to authors, editors, and referees, by placing them in a password protected area of the Web site, associated with the ess. Oncompletion of these steps, the ess automatically informs the editorial office, by email, of the newly arrived submission. Finding and consulting an appropriate referee require the intervention of the editors, who will do most of their correspondence via email. Once a referee is found, (s)he may access the paper at the ess Web site, using the password provided by the editor. The service, as proposed here, is inspired by the electronic submis- sion schemes employed by the American Astronomical Society for The Astrophysical Journal, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory for their E-Print archive.