The Scholar's Forum Debuts

Abstract

The emergence of network technology and the growing accessibility of the Internet provide the basis for considering new approaches to scholarly publishing. A model for de-coupling peer review from publishing and managing the entire process electronically as described by the Scholar's Forum (1999) was tested by the Caltech Library System with the online publication of the proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Cavitation (CAV2001). In collaboration with Caltech faculty members, library staff developed the platform support tools and assisted in the creation of a fully networked conference program. Authors submitted their work online and accepted papers were posted to members in advance of the conference. The rate of access was measured before and after the meeting and demonstrate the success of the experiment.