Only when we knew what we wanted did we ask how best to incorporate what we needed into the publishing process. In the case of the ApJ, the AAS worked with our publisher, the University of Chicago Press, to develop a whole new process which produced the electronic, archival database of manuscripts first, and then derived both the electronic screen version and the paper version from this archival electronic database. In order to get started rapidly, Highwire Press, in essence, grafted the electronic products onto the end of the traditional paper process. And both organizations are continuing to experiment and adapt to the electronic environment. It has been, for the University of Chicago Press and the AAS, a difficult job to revamp the process while still publishing 25,000 pages per year.
Larger publishers face an even more difficult task.
But maybe money is the factor driving larger publishers to produce PDF journals. It is just a matter of capturing the page images which are already prepared and putting them as a series of files. Ironically, we find that once you make the effort to re-engineer the complete publishing process, you can actually produce both paper and electronic versions for less than the cost of paper alone using the more traditional procedures. It leaves them with less than they deserve. By embracing the PDF journals and not demanding better, the libraries and their user communities are setting the stage, both for slow progress now, and for later disaster when they discover that PDF is not a satisfactory archival format.