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We would like to inform you that a category "Optimization and Control" now exists in the arXiv Scientific Archive. Below, we provide an explanation of some of the features of this valuable technical resource.

Introduction:

In 1991 Paul Ginsparg created an internet database for physicists interested in making their preprints available to all. Since then, this database has significantly grown to the point of representing the primary means of communication for physicists and mathematicians today. Recently, a new section on "Optimization and Control" has been included in the math archive.

Description:

The archive is called arXiv and can be found at http://xxx.lanl.gov/. Anyone interested in circulating his/her own research posts preprints of submitted/published work by following the easy instructions found on this site. On the other hand, you can retrieve any paper written by other researchers in various formats (postscript, pdf, and latex source among others). In order, for example, to find a paper in the Optimization and Control section, first form an "interface" to the math archive:

Click on the clickbox on top of the page and select "math" from the menu.
Click on "Form Interface", another page is displayed, here you can specify any parameter you wish to search on
Click on the subject class button
Select OC (Optimization and Control), then you have four display options (enumerated on the screen you are looking at).
1. you can view the new or recent abstracts, or view a help screen.
2. you can view the complete title/author listings in the selected subject class, corresponding to a particular month and year
3. you can view the abstract of a paper with a given archive number
4. Within the given subject class you can perform a search by author, year, title, subject, etc.

After choosing the option which is more appropriate for your search, the results of the search will be displayed in another page. From there you can easily view the entire abstract of the paper or download it in the format you prefer. Additionally, in that page you find links to the general archive page, to the math archive page, to the search engine, and the abstracts search.

Another way to access the archive is to connect to http://www.theorem.net/control.html (this is a web site containing many useful resources in control) and click on "Los Alamos" in the Resources section. This link provides a direct connection to the Optimization and Control section of the archive and an easy to use graphical interface. Among several other resources, theorem.net also contains the complete E-letter archive (click on Electronic Newsletter under Resources). For those who are not familiar with this newsletter, it suffices to say that it contains the latest news regarding the control community (conferences announcements, open positions, new books, and so on).

Comments on arXiv:

The power of the search engine and the possibility of cross-referencing your paper with other groups (such as physics, computer science, and nonlinear sciences) is particularly interesting for the control community. Because of the large number of researchers and the increasing number of monthly submissions to many journals in the control area, the submission-to-publication time may be quite long. On one hand, having a tool for making your preprints available on-line is useful if you are interested in sharing your work with the scientific community before it has been accepted for publication: this is a way to "close the loop" between submission and diffusion of your work much faster. On the other hand, the availability of a large database where you can find preprints as well as published papers by other researchers would provide an invaluable source of information, whose potential cannot be overstated. Ideally, at a given time, each researcher may use this tool to know what all the other people in the field are working on. Of course, in order to reach this ideal condition everyone should, at the same time, submit his/her own works to the database. This is what is already happening today in the physics community.