I would like to encourage you to discuss with me. I am interested in your opinion about the journal, electronic publishing and its benefit for the (soil) science. Please contribute to this discussion list. Let us discuss whith each other - interactive !

Thomas Hintze

This is wonderfull!

Your Journal looks great. Thank you for taking this step for soil science. I appreciate the clean style and the fast download. I too am quite interested in the issue of electronic publishing, as I am considering publishing my phD thesis on cdrom. Unfortunately, the strict linear logic of current science thinking seems best suited to text, rather than the more global descriptive approach of graphics. I could easily put an all text format on cd, but people do not seem to like reading large amounts of text off a computer screen, and so would want a printed copy anyway. I guess the shorter journal format here gives people the option to print, but what about longer works.? I am most interested to hear other peoples views on this problem. Personal email is fine too.

REPLY TO S.J. Officer on Friday, 11 October 1996:

Dear S.J. Officer,

thank you very much for your contribution to my discussions list. Please excuse me for the late answer on your feedback, I was quite busy the last week.

I like your idea of publishing PhD thesis on CD. Of course this is the future. Naturally you should not just put the text on CD the same way as you would do it on paper. This is not suitable for electronic publishing. No one likes to read a "papyrus" on his monitor. But you can simply take over the structure of Web publishing: Create your thesis as if it is a Web project: Subdivide the text into reasonable chapters and sub- chapters as if they would be single articles and connect them by hyperlinks. Then your thesis will be both, easy to read and to **print**. Build a searchable index of chapters-, figures-, tables- and references-hyperlinks, and the entire text is more transparent than a paper publication.

I am very interested in your project. For further details you can contact me anytime. I am looking forward to your PhD thesis on CD-ROM :-)

With regards
Thomas

Not being an avid WWW user (as yet?) I became aware of the existence of SOS through an email message from the editor, Herr Professor Hintze. I have just spent an hour or so browsing the journal, so far as it exists today. I must say that I am favorabley impressed. The main drawback, to me, would be having to forego my habit of reading and reviewing articles over lunch, under a tree, on the metro rail, etc. The idea of having one broad journal of soil science...or more precisely, of the sciences of soils (good title) is very appealing to the integrated generalist in me. As coauthor, with Nyle Brady, of the widely-used general soil science text book, THE NATURE AND PROPERTIES OF SOILS (11TH EDITION), I hope to find useful material to keep the book up to date withthe latest concepts and examples from a wide variety of soils related disciplines. I have several papers currently in preparation and will consider submitting one or more of them to SOS, though I may need some hand-holding to get me through the WWW protocols.
Good luck on the new venture. I suppose this is a leader in soils, soon to be joined by others. Yours in soils, Ray Weil

RAy Weil

REPLY to Raymond Weil - 10/28/96

Dear Raymond,
thank you very much for your feedback on my list. I am glad you like the journal. Let me state some words about what you mentioned above:
**Drawbacks ?**
SoS offers all opportunities of reading the journal you like. You may read articles online or offline and you can make an offprint using your Web browser to carry on reading the relevant text/article under a tree, at lunch, in an arm-chair or wherever you like. This is one of the advantages over paper journals. SCIENCES of SOILS offers both, reading online and offline, just the way you prefer reading it.

**Handholding ?**
Basically manuscript preperation for SoS does not differ very much from other (paper-) journals. There are only slight differences concerning storing the documents to files instead of printing them and sending them by e-mail. But nevertheless there may occur problems. That is what we are here for. Every author will be assisted as best as we can to preparing his manuscript for publication. We have tried to make everything as simple as possible. And we are still working on improvements. Should there be any queries everybody may contact me anytime. And we will work on a solution.

And I strongly hope our journal will develop to be the broad platform for all soil scientific disciplines, as you expect it to be. Mainly this depends on the acceptance of electronic publishing by the scientific community in general.

I am looking forward to your first publication in SCIENCES of SOILS
With my best wishes

Thomas

I am working on soil properties after the use of mulches or neem cakes. It is private research and only a beginining after leaving the fertiliser line. Now turning to organic agriculture in tropics

This looks like a good idea. Thank you for your hard work in putting this together. I am looking forward to submitting an article as well as reading what comes down the wire.

Dear Prof. Hintze,
Congratulations for your( can I say our? ) new journal. It seems to be a great idea and I hope the new concept of electronic scientific journals is well accepted by the community.
Actually, I am not a Soil Scientist but have been working together with a group of experts in this field: we have just started a Research Project (with a Graduate Student) to develop an Expert System (Knowledge-based system) to determine the soil capability. I am an Agricultural Engineer and have been working with Information Technology applied to Agricultural Planning (Operations Research and Experts Sytems)
Best wishes
Luiz

It is a wonderful idea! I am not a soil scientist "stricto sensu", but I have some works in the migration of radioective element in the soil. In radioecology it is a very important the knowledge of the migration in soil, soil-to-plant transfer, etc. Special attention is given to the infiltration to the watertable and upward migration from the watertable. I am iterested to discuss with everybody in these fields. You can see some of these problems on the URL: http://www.sorostm.ro/radioecology/ in the proceedings of an international workshop. I think the future in scientific publications is the electronic media. Yours Laszlo (Laszlo Toro)

Dear Sir ,Prof. Hintze
Thank you for your good idea about the online journal in soil sciences. This idea is well accepted now for many personsbecause of it is easy , and applicable for all> The subject of electronic journal is easy to read ,widespreed and helpfull for many persons> Thank you for your good work.But special attention must be given to the field of soil physics and water management , its my interest and I will be very pleasure if you can start a new discussion group in soil physics and water management.
accept my personal regards.
Gamal Abdel-Nasser

This is the place to enter into a discussion with the author on the contents of his editorial notes. Please, fill out the form below to submit your contribution. The message will be appended to this discussion list immediately. (Please keep your contribution within reasonable limits: do not to exceed 15 lines within the comment field below.)

If you want to contact me for private reasons you can use e-mail.

http://www.hintze-online.com/sos/1996/Discussions/disc-note196.html
ISSN 1432 9492

© Copyright 1996-1997 by HintzeOnline

webmaster@hintze-online.com