Toward an electronic G eophysics
Sven Treitel · The Leading Edge · 1996
I have now been your Editor for half a year. Tempus fugit: The first paper I ever submitted to GEOPHYSICS was rejected out of hand, and my feelings about my predecessor were not at all charitable. I have not forgotten how I felt then - today I'm almost tempted to accept every contribution not at variance with accepted laws of physics, an action that would surely lead to my prompt impeachment. So I ask myself: How can I make a really significant change in the way we run our journal? Now both authors and readers will probably agree that our current reviewing procedures are often more ponderous and more frustrating than they need be. While the proverbial technological fix doesn't always help, could an electronic version of GEOPHYSICS speed up an often sluggish publication process? Last year I was intrigued by a TLE piece on the Internet co-authored by Brian Spies and his fellow geo-hackers which highlighted many of the exciting possibilities of this new medium. I think it is now time for us to experiment with electronic publication and to see where this burgeoning technology might take us. With this goal in mind, I asked Brian last fall to join the GEOPHYSICS editorial team as our Associate Editor for Cyberspace. He and his associates have done a yeoman's job to get such a project underway. I have also benefited from the good advice of Jon Claerbout and his students at Stanford, through whose generosity SEG has found a site for its Home Page on the World Wide Web.