As far as the eye can see

When I was about eleven years old, a science teacher assigned us the task of charting the phases of the moon. The task involved locating the moon, and sketching its shape and location relative to the horizon from the same spot at the same time each evening for a month. The teacher also encouraged us to look for constellations she felt would be easily identifiable, and to include the position of those in our sketches as well. I didn’t have much interest in science and I was concerned that I would not be able to locate the moon, let alone any constellations. However, walking out onto our front porch that first evening, I saw that the moon was a snap to locate, and also to my great surprise, I found that the constellation of Orion, the Hunter, was immediately recognizable. For the rest of that month, I ran out onto that porch every night, completed my drawings, and spent hours trying to find and identify other constellations. When the assignment was long past and my nightly stargazing continued, my parents encouraged this activity by buying me a small, rudimentary telescope. The world changed for me . . . that familiar patch of sky was transformed as I looked through the telescope and saw farther than I ever imagined possible. For months I continued my routine, delighting in exploring this incredible new landscape. Then one day I happened to mention this to the science teacher whose assignment had piqued this interest. She was pleased, but I vividly remember her response to me. ‘Don’t you live in the middle of Hilltop?’ she asked, referring to the dense suburban neighbourhood where I grew up. When I confirmed this, she said, ‘You need to take that telescope out of there . . . try going to Schrieber’s Farm, and take a look from there.’ That night, my father drove me to the nature centre, several miles outside of town. In the comparative darkness of that field I pointed that telescope in the direction of my nightly observations – and nearly dropped it. Without the competing light of the streetlights and neighbouring houses, that same patch of sky was transformed – new stars appeared in that same space, even a splatter of white that I could recognize as part of the Milky Way. I’d had an amazing tool all along, I just wasn’t using it to its fullest potential. Years later, I was lucky enough to get my first job in scholarly publishing with the American Astronomical Society (AAS). The premier society in the United States devoted to the advancement of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the AAS publishes two of the highest-ranked journals in the field. As a neophyte in the arena of scholarly publishing, I learned the importance of rigorous peer review, high editorial standards and efficient turnaround of manuscripts. I relished working for a community that was extremely technically accomplished, and was vocal about expressing their needs to the Society’s staff members. In the very early 1990s, our members noted to us that their data was largely collected, reduced, analysed digitally and shared with peers digitally. Why, they asked us, couldn’t they submit it to our journals digitally? Furthermore, why couldn’t the journals be distributed electronically as well? Many of these scientists had had access to email via DARPAnet long before it hit the mainstream in its incarnation as the Internet, and understood the vast potential of this delivery mechanism. Their ultimate vision for us was barrier free, end-to-end electronic communication of research results. We at the Society struggled to find ways to meet this request. All the while, we worried over the potential costs of this new technology, and the potential impact on our jobs – would this technology replace the need for our publishing staff? Just the same, we were extremely proud of our early efforts to collect conference abstracts electronically, as well as to provide templates to tag material to facilitate electronic submission of manuscripts. We had the pieces of the puzzle (structured markup languages, a delivery pipeline, an Guest Editorial 83