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\title{
  {\it The Chicago Journal of\\ Theoretical Computer Science}\\
  A scholarly journal published on the Internet\\
  in \LaTeX\ format by The MIT Press
}

\author{
  Michael J.\ O'Donnell\\
  The University of Chicago\\
  {\tt odonnell@cs.uchicago.edu}
}

\date{Revised 1 January 1997}

\maketitle

The \emph{Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science} is a
peer-reviewed scholarly journal in theoretical computer
science. Articles are submitted and published in \LaTeX\ source form,
and distributed internationally over the InterNet. Articles are
augmented by refereed forward references to improvements and
subsequent related work. Readers may obtain articles through \emph{FTP}
and \emph{HTTP} (\emph{World Wide Web}).
Other widely used network tools
will be supported as they arise in the future. The \emph{Journal} is
committed to minimizing publication delays, and to promoting maximum
flexibility in the ways that readers use the journal for teaching,
research, and scholarship. Readers' license is limited only as
required to insure fair attribution to authors and the journal, and to
prohibit use in a competing commercial product.

\section{What is a Published Article?}
The definitive version of an article published in the \emph{Chicago
Journal of Theoretical Computer Science} is a \LaTeX\ source file
containing the text of the article, an accompanying \BIBTeX\ source
file containing the bibliography, and optional encapsulated PostScript
files containing drawings included in the article. The journal's copy
editors prepare the source files for each article to present the
logical structure of the article as clearly as possible, so as to
maximize portability of the text, and to facilitate future development
of browsing interfaces and information retrieval applications.
Precompiled PostScript translations are provided for readers who
cannot format \LaTeX, or do not wish to, but the \LaTeX\ source is the
definitive copy.

\subsection*{Reader-Powered Publication}
Electronically published journals have used a variety of different
publication formats, including bitmapped page images, PostScript page
layouts, typographical formats such as \LaTeX, plain ASCII, and
special proprietary formats closely integrated with browsing and
information-retrieval software. Each of these choices favors different
qualities of publication---for example, bitmaps, PostScript, and some
proprietary formats give authors and publishers maximum control over
the beauty of the final display, while plain ASCII requires the
minimum equipment and skill on the part of the reader, etc. The
publication format of the \emph{Chicago Journal} is intended to
maximize \emph{readers' power} to use articles in whatever ways they
find most productive. The problem is that we cannot anticipate
precisely what readers will do, but we should assume at least that
they display articles in a wide variety of typographical formats
suited to their equipment, their paper or screen size, and their
eyesight, and that they apply browsing and information-retrieval
software acquired from other suppliers than MIT Press. To stretch our
imaginations a bit, there is already experimental software providing
audio browsing of
\LaTeX\ documents.

The way to maximize the power of readers in the long run, without
precise knowledge of reader behavior, is to represent the logical
structure of articles in the most transparent and easily parsable way
that we can manage. SGML was designed precisely for this task, but it
can also be done satisfactorily with a disciplined use of
\LaTeX. Furthermore, \LaTeX\ supports the representation of
mathematical formulae fairly well, and most of our reader and author
community already has the software to typeset and display \LaTeX. But,
maximum power and flexibility for readers demands a certain amount of
standardization in the \emph{source} format of articles. Readers, and
particularly readers' software packages, must be able to parse
important components, such as sectional units, paragraphs, sentences,
displayed subtexts such as theorems, easily and unambiguously. To
provide this uniform clarity in the \LaTeX\ source, copy editors
polish authors' manuscripts into a disciplined subset of \LaTeX.

\section{Subscribing to the \emph{Journal}}
If you would like to subscribe to the \emph{Chicago Journal of
Theoretical Computer Science,} please contact the MIT Press, using the
form provided through World Wide Web at URL
\begin{quote}
  {\tt http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/jrnls-catalog/order.html}
\end{quote}
or by sending email to {\tt journals-orders@mit.edu}.

The object of publishing articles in the \emph{Chicago Journal of
Theoretical Computer Science} is to serve the community of scholarly
readers by disseminating useful research results as effectively as
possible. The format of the \emph{Journal} is designed to maximize
its value to individual readers, and the subscription policy is
designed to maximize the number of readers.

MIT Press solicits subscriptions to the \emph{Journal} from libraries
and from individual readers at a modest cost calculated to provide
sufficient financing for journal operations. The \emph{Journal} does
not control the way in which subscribers view articles. Each
subscriber may choose to fetch articles idividually as needed, to copy
the entire journal to a local database, to display articles on video
terminals, to print articles, excerpts, groups of articles---to use
the journal in whatever way is most effective for each individual
reader's teaching, research and scholarship. Subscribers' license is
limited only as required to insure fair attribution to authors and the
journal, and prohibit use in a competing commercial product.
Subscribers have immediate access to newly published articles, and
archival access to old articles. In the distant future, if it is
infeasible to keep the oldest articles online, there may be a charge
for the cost of retrieving them. In the foreseeable future, all
articles will be available online for direct access by readers.

While MIT Press expects readers to pay for use of the journal, the
\emph{Journal} is determined \emph{not} to impose access
restrictions that exclude nonpayers at the cost of making legitimate
paid access more difficult. For more detail on the legitimate rights
of readers, please see the copyright statement. We believe that the
community of scholars will act in good faith to pay for a useful
publication service, without annoying mechanisms to enforce
payment. So, there are no passwords, no limits on the number of
simultaneous readers in a library, no key servers. We will gather data
about the way in which the \emph{Journal} is used in order to make
this operation a useful test case for planning future projects.

\section{Selection and Publication of \emph{Journal}\\ Articles}
The reviewing procedure for the \emph{Chicago Journal of Theoretical
Computer Science} is quite conventional. The editors take the advice
of anonymous expert referees in order to decide whether a submitted
article should be accepted, declined, or whether the author should
revise the article in order to make it acceptable for publication. As
much as possible, communication with referees is carried out
electronically to speed the process.

The act of publication, on the other hand, is unconventional. Each
article, as it is accepted and copy editing completed, is placed
directly in a file server at MIT Press, and in alternate servers at
the University of Chicago and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University. Articles are available through \emph{HTTP} (\emph{World Wide Web})
and anonymous \emph{FTP}. Subscribing libraries and individuals may decide
to create their own local servers. By taking advantage of this
unconventional form of publication, which eliminates the queue of
articles articles wating for the next issue as well as delays due to
printing and mailing, and by careful attention to promptness in the
conventional reviewing process, we hope to minimize the time from
submission to appearance.

\subsection*{Archiving and Preserving the \emph{Journal}}
The value of journal publication depends critically on the
preservation of articles for readers in the distant future, as well as
the immediate dissemination to current readers. With conventional
printed journals, the tasks of archiving and preservation are passed
off from publishers to libraries. It is not clear yet what
institutions will be the most effective archivers and preservers of
electronically published materials, but it seems likely that
publishers will play a larger role than they have with printed
materials. MIT Press is committed to ensuring that articles published
in the \emph{Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science} are
preserved permanently and archived for access by scholars of the
indefinite future.

It is not obvious what precise activities are required to ensure the
preservation of electronically published articles. It is certainly not
sufficient to preserve a specific physical medium, such as CD-ROM,
since every such physical storage medium in existence today is sure to
become obsolete in some decades. Even preservation of the bit patterns
of articles may not be enough, since the standard formats and the
software that supports them change over time (right now, \LaTeX\ is
changing into \LaTeX2e\ as a standard for describing documents). The
commitment to preserving the \emph{Journal} includes a commitment to
performing appropriate format conversions as necessary. For example,
it is likely that \LaTeX\ will eventually merge with some set of
Document Types expressed in SGML, and that the form of presentation of
source files will move from grammatically restricted ASCII to
something like abstract data types or an object-oriented standard.
Whatever standard formats for document presentation replace \LaTeX in
the future, articles in the \emph{Chicago Journal of Theoretical
Computer Science} will be converted to that format.

For the immediate future, \emph{Journal} articles will be preserved
by storing them online, and in offline backups, at at least three
different sites: MIT, U.~Chicago, and VPISU. Subscribing libraries
and individuals are encouraged to maintain their own archives as well,
providing additional security. In the distant future, if it becomes
infeasible to maintain all articles online, the oldest ones may be
relegated to offline archives, using whatever media are most
attractive at the time. We cannot foresee the precise challenges to
preservation that will arise, but neither did anyone foresee that
printed materials would be subject to early disintegration due to
acidic paper. The real source of security for all archived information
is the intelligent commitment of the individuals and institutions that
preserve it, not the static durability of the physical media on which
it is represented.

Another unusual component of preserving electronically published
materials is maintaining the authenticity of information against
accidental or malicious attacks. We are following developments in the
use of crptographic techniques and hashing to test authenticity, and
will adopt such techniques as they appear to be effective. The
difficult part of ensuring authenticity may prove to be, not the
testing of authenticity when it is questioned, but rather the
mechanism that questions authenticity in the first place. Eventually,
some such mechanisms will probably be embedded at a low level in the
computing and commmunication systems that we use to manipulate journal
articles. For the foreseeable future, the three offline backups will
provide a reliable way of testing authenticity. The only effective way
to avoid proliferation of inauthentic versions of texts (which would
be passed around completely outside of the control of the publisher),
is to encourage readers to use reliable sources, such as the three
official servers, and library-maintained servers that mirror them
conscientiously, by making those reliable sources as accessible as
possible.

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