Dear Friends,

At a recent IEEE meeting, I learned that some IEEE Societies, Technical Committees, and other units keep a “virtual journal”: an open easy-to-access database that keep titles, bibliographic data, abstracts, and DOI indices of publications on the corresponding topic. (DOI enables the reader to easily find the paper.)  

Of course, creating such a database is not easy for a general  topic such as imprecise probabilities, where numerous papers appear every year, but it is doable for narrower subareas.

Usually, it is done via a specially organized website where anyone who published a paper (or a book) can enter the corresponding information – and it automatically goes into the database. Some units just allow everyone to post, some make it a moderated list, so that volunteers check that the publication is relevant before allowing it to appear on the database (similarly to moderated mailing lists).

Many journals now first publish the paper online, and then after some time, they publish it in hardcopy; then, the author enters the publication twice: first, when it appears online, then to correct the record when it appears in hardcopy.

The presenter did not go into technical details, but my impression was that most units use some free software tools to do it. I asked around a little bit, the colleagues whom I ask do not know which software is the easiest to use, our University uses a commercial software to collect our publications, it is far from being user-friendly and convenient: for example, when one author enters the joint paper, a co-author does not have a permission to make any corrections or changes to this record; what is worse, our system administrators do not know of an easy way to provide such permissions.

Some IEEE units also have a board of specialists who select two lists from the general database:

· A list aimed at beginners, that can help them get into the corresponding problems; this list usually contains popular articles, references to introductory books, etc.

· The second list is aimed at professionals, it contains the most seminal papers which contain the bulk of main technical ideas: papers by founders, papers describing new interesting ideas etc. The goal of this list is to allow a professional who is interested in starting working in this area to get a general knowledge of the technical details; this selection is definitely more subjective.

Maybe some formal or informal interest groups can launch such a system?

And if someone figures out how to set up such a database, others can copy the arrangement? This will be very helpful to our community.