electronic-only publication at Astronomy and Astrophysics

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

For a while back in the 1990s, A&A published some things (such as
appendices to papers) ONLY electronically. However,
ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr doesn't seem to exist anymore, and
http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/Abstract.html doesn't work (many links return
"not found" etc).

For example, take http://aa.springer.de/papers/7318003/2300680/small.htm
where one can read:

* All three appendices are only available in electronic form at the
CDS via anonymous ftp to ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/A+A/
(130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/Abstract.html

However, a reader cannot access the appendices via these links.

How can one access them?

In this case, I am author of the paper, so have the appendices, and they
are also at arXiv. However, I think that a reader should be able to
access the content of a paper published by A&A at the official site.

[Steve Willner]

Post by Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)
For example, take http://aa.springer.de/papers/7318003/2300680/small.htm
* All three appendices are only available in electronic form at the
CDS via anonymous ftp to ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/A+A/
(130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/Abstract.html

...

Post by Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)
How can one access them?

Are they at
http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/318/680 ?

I found that link through ADS, but there was no link to the paper at
the A&A web site. And as you say, at the A&A web site, the
appendices aren't included in either the HTML or PDF versions of the
paper. That's just bizarre. I thought the point of online
publication is that lengthy extra material is easy to include.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

Post by Steve Willner

Post by Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)
For example, take http://aa.springer.de/papers/7318003/2300680/small.htm
* All three appendices are only available in electronic form at the
CDS via anonymous ftp to ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/A+A/
(130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/Abstract.html

....

Post by Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)
How can one access them?

Are they at
http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/318/680 ?

Yes. One can get their eventually from the "online data" link at ADS,
though this is not really online data.

Post by Steve Willner
I found that link through ADS, but there was no link to the paper at
the A&A web site. And as you say, at the A&A web site, the
appendices aren't included in either the HTML or PDF versions of the
paper.

Right.

Post by Steve Willner
That's just bizarre. I thought the point of online
publication is that lengthy extra material is easy to include.

In this particular case, one can debate whether a few more pages is
"lengthy extra material". This was back when A&A decided to publish
some stuff "only electronically", with only the "core version" in the
paper journal. Back then, I don't think that there was an online
version of the journal.

After much protest from the community, A&A had to backtrack.
Unfortunately, this paper is one which was accepted while this policy
was in place. (The arXiv version is the full paper, though.) Today,
many journals are online only (maybe A&A as well?). Back then, they
decided to publish some stuff as online only back when many people
didn't even have a graphics-capable screen at work, so any money saved
by avoiding an increase in subscription cost would be lost paying for
paper and ink when people print the stuff out. Also, libraries which
wanted a complete set would have to print the electronic-only stuff out
and bind it.

So, what the online version of this paper has is essentially (probably
automatically) converted from the PAPER version, including the "All
three appendices...".