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The American Physical Society's Task Force's Report on Electronic Information Systems (this volume) has sounded all the chords: The idea is to develop a world scientific information system that will include all the formal scientific literature has been, is being, and will be published, as well as the informal unpublished scientific communications that surround, all in an electronic form that is searchable and accessible by any scientist anywhere in the world.
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Stevan Harnad (1992) studied this question.
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