Newly formed Perth-based junior oil explorer Merlin Petroleum Limited is ready to get stuck into the South Australian portion of the Cooper Basin, hoping activities there will provide cash flow to fund other riskier – but potentially more rewarding – ventures in the Northern Territory and across the border in South Australia.

The Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists (ASEG) has moved closer to full electronic publication and distribution of its technical journal, Exploration Geophysics, with the release of a complete collection of past issues – from Volume 1 (1970) to Volume 34 (2003) – as a two DVD set.

Like many similar professional and learned societies which, in global terms, cater to a relatively small membership base, the ASEG is faced with increasing pressure to move to electronic publication of its technical papers. This pressure is fuelled both by the development of technologies which have seen a tremendous change in how researchers keep up-to-date with and review technical literature, and by financial considerations imposed by rising costs of production and distribution of printed journals.

At the same time, there is still – for many people – a strong attraction to the printed page; the vigorous sales of books and printers confirm that people still find it more convenient to read a printed document than to view it on a computer screen.

As a result, there is an on-going debate in the ASEG about the issue of full electronic publication and online distribution of Exploration Geophysics – and whether or not the printed publication should be maintained. The debate has focussed on four key issues: accessibility and price (from a service provision perspective), methodology, and cost (from a production and distribution perspective).

The project to scan and compile back issues occurred within the context of this discussion, recognising that the debate was largely theoretical unless there were digital papers available to be delivered electronically, and that the majority of technical papers published by ASEG were still in printed paper form.

Electronic versions of papers from the earlier volumes (before December 1999) were produced by scanning hard copy originals to 300 dpi resolution tiff images that were then compressed as Adobe® PDF files. For the more recent volumes, fully digital Adobe® PDF files were made by converting the already existing Quark Xpress™ digital print files. In addition to the 1823 technical papers included in the collection, the cover pages and ancillary (advertising and editorial) pages were also captured as two separate PDF files for each issue.

Individual papers are grouped on the DVDs in a directory structure that follows the volume and issue number, together with an html contents page for each disk and volume directory (Figure 1).

An accompanying database application enables full text searching for papers by title, author, keywords or abstract, providing a facility to find and sort papers of specific interest (Figure 2). The application, used under licence, was adapted from a web-based application developed for the distribution of technical papers on the Internet.

All papers from the current volume (No. 35, 2004) will be available in the same format in early 2005.

The ASEG Exploration Geophysics Digital Volume Set 1970 – 2003 is available for purchase by members and non-members. An information and order form can be downloaded from ASEG Online at www.aseg.org.au. n