Typesetting of journals by computer still is more expensive today than typewriter composition. Economics favors the computer only if multiple use can be made of the material after it has been captured in machine-readable form. Such is the case with the material that is keyboarded into the bibliographic database of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). The records in tins database are produced directly from the manuscripts submitted by authors and are then used over and over again: to photocompose a part of the article in the primary journal itself, to photocompose pages for an “advance abstracts” publication, to photocompose selected abstracts needed by The Energy Research and Development Administration's (ERDA's) Nuclear Science Abstracts and to provide ERDA with a corresponding tape which eventually goes to the International Nuclear Information System in Vienna, to produce a monthly tape for information centers offering selective dissemination of information (SDI) and other services, to produce multiple entries in the new quarterly Current Physics Index which covers all the physics journals published by AIP, to produce multiple entries in the annual subject and author indexes in each journal, and to produce cumulative 5 to 20-year journal indexes. The multiple-use concept cannot be used to justify computer typesetting of the full text of journal articles. We will specify the conditions that must be met before full-text computer composition can become competitive with other methods, and discuss some of the advantages of such a system.

Expansion of typewriter composition and the shift from letter press to sheet-fed offset and web-offset printing are two major developments that are lowering costs and improving the efficiency of the overall publishing operation at the American Institute of Physics (AIP). In 1972, out of a total of 104 000 text pages published by AIP and its member societies, about 69 000 pages, or 66 percent, were typewriter composed. Typewriter composition of scientific articles was pioneered by S. A. Goudsmit, Editor-in-Chief of the American Physical Society, for Physical Review Letters. This weekly publication has been typewriter composed since 1958. Today, about 11 000 pages for Physical Review C and Physical Review D are typewriter composed at AIP's new publishing facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Another 8000 pages mainly for Applied Physics Letters and the Journal of Applied Physics are produced by our Publications Division Composition Section in New York City. A small fraction of the total is composed to AIP specifications by the authors themselves. Outside contractors handle the remaining typewriter composition including all of the Russian translation journals. The main justification for the switch from monotype to typewriter composition is the resulting savings of 20 to 30 percent in composition cost Depending upon the journal and the compositor used, these savings amount to as much as $10 per page. In addition, the close coupling of copy editing, composition, proofreading, and page makeup that is possible with an in-house typewriter composition operation has shortened publication time by as much as 2 weeks out of a total of 3 months. We will describe the AIP typewriter composition system from copy editing, through the composition of galleys, to page makeup and the production of final camera-ready copy for offset printing. Specially modified IBM Executive proportional-spacing electric typewriters, equipped with unique attachments, permit the use of a wide range of special characters and signs (italic, Greek, mathematical symbols, superscripts, etc.) needed to compose scientific articles.

The American Institute of Physics (AIP), as an essential aspect of its Current Physics Information (CPI) program, has been implementing a new procedure for the production of both its primary journals and its secondary-information products which relies on a singe processing of the common elements in both. This processing includes copy editing, keyboarding, proofreading, and indexing of such items as article titles, authors, by-lines, abstracts, and references. The single computer tape produced by this processing is used for the photocomposition of the elements involved for the primary journals, as well as for AIP's secondary services including the volume indexes to the primary journals themselves. I will discuss the reasons for this change in procedure, and its technical and economic aspects. I will also sketch out possible future developments in the system, which would rely on much greater use of computer processing, and attempt to assess the economic benefits. Finally, I will discuss the effects of AIP's secondary-information capabilities on the dissemination of primary information in traditional formats, as well as possible alternative formats.