STELAR: An Experiment in the Electronic Distribution of
Astronomical Literature
By M. E. Van Steenberg (NASA/GSFC), J. Gass, L. Brotzman, A.
Warnock, D. Kovalsky (Hughes STX), and F. Giovane (NASA/HQ)

Astronomical research is being transformed by improvements in
wide-area networking and the availability of low-cost computing
power.  These developments have resulted in remote observing,
distributed access to large quantities of scientific data, and the
first steps to the electronic submission of articles for
publishing.  However, the cornerstone of scientific research, 
refereed literature, has not yet benefitted from these advances. 
The result has been tremendous growth in what is being published,
without improvements in the researchers' ability to locate and
retrieve articles of interest. 
     It is now technically feasible to place much of the
astronomical literature and documentation on-line, providing
researchers with direct access to this information.  More
importantly, with the addition of modern text searching methods,
astronomers have the ability to quickly find articles about a
particular topic and examine them as they wish.
     Not only do many technical details have to be addressed before
the journal publishers can move in this direction, the impact on
the scientific community, the financial health of the journals, and
the impact on libraries must also be carefully considered.  In
fact, there are two components to the problem of establishing
on-line documents and literature: (1) the conversion of existing
materials from printed pages to electronic files, and (2) the
production of new literature in a form which can be placed on-line
as published. 

The STELAR Project

In March 1991, NASA and the AAS began hosting a series of workshops
to  explore the methods and potential impact of placing most of the
astronomical documentation and literature on-line.  These meetings
identified a need for an experiment to study the technical and
practical issues. In response STELAR, the STudy of Electronic
Literature for  Astronomical Research, was launched.  This project
is a joint effort of AAS, ASP, NASA, publishers, editors, research
libraries, and astronomers. Support is also being provided by AIP,
Library of Congress, NSF, and UNC Chapel Hill.
     STELAR is a pilot project managed at NASA's 
Astrophysics Data Facility (ADF).  Its formal goal is to explore
the use of electronic means for improving access to scientific
literature; using astronomical publications to evaluate
distribution, search, and retrieval techniques for full text and
graphics display.  The project is conducting a multi-phased study.
The initial phases focus on the problem of converting existing
literature for on-line access.  STELAR will incorporate
machine-readable abstracts provided by NASA's Scientific and
Technical Information (STI) program and page images of several
years' worth of the ApJ, ApJ Supplement, AJ and the PASP. 
Recently, the publishers of Astronomy & Astrophysics have agreed to
include their journal in this study. 
     In the current phase of the study, a prototype system is under
development to allow a limited number of test subjects to search
these materials and view the articles of interest.  The libraries
at the Space Telescope Science Institute, NOAO/KPNO, 
NRAO/Charlottesville, and Goddard  will work with selected
astronomers to evaluate the initial prototype expected to be
available this Fall. 

Current Status

The STELAR prototype system uses a highly portable and fully open,
multi-disciplinary document query and delivery system known as WAIS
(Wide Area Information Server), (see article on WAIS on page 10). 
 STELAR currently provides access to machine-readable abstracts for
eight leading academic journals of interest to the astronomical
community (ApJ, ApJS, AJ, PASP, A&A, A&AS, MNRAS and JGR).  These
abstracts have been supplied by NASA/STI from a database prepared
for NASA's RECON system by an independent abstraction service.  The
RECON  database contains abstracts from as early as the mid-1960's. 
The ADF will update the set of available abstracts on a regular
basis.  
     The completed prototype will link the abstracts to scanned
bitmaps of the individual article pages.  Access to the bitmaps
will be limited to test groups at the libraries to protect the
copyright concerns of the societies and the journal publishers.
     In addition to this controlled study, the ADF and STI are
making the abstracts and several other text databases available to
the astronomical community as part of NASA's commitment to its
science community.  (See Electronic Services article on page 4). 
The STELAR project is seeking feedback from researchers on the
usability of the system. This feedback will guide the refinement of
successive prototypes. 

Future Plans

Subject to the approval of the copyright holders of the various
journals, the STELAR Project plans to gradually make the scanned
bitmaps of the article pages available to the astronomical
community. Additional enhancements being investigated include
indexing of the full text of the articles,  making articles
available in a mark-up language or device-independent form, and the
addition of errata and other forward references to the basic
structure.  
     For additional information about the STELAR Project, please
contact the authors at stelar-info@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov.