|
|
| About | Affiliations | Contact | FAQ | Science, Service, Society | Search | Volunteer |
| Boards and Committees |
Certification Programs |
Education | Career Center | Exhibits | Meetings | Member Services | News | Policy Program |
Publications | Students |
 |
Recovery from Major File Loss in the AMS Manuscript SystemIn mid-July, the AMS carried out a major upgrade of the hardware and software that supports all AMS programs. Most of that transition went flawlessly and the only inconvenience that most felt was that the AMS Web site was down for a few days during the heart of the switch to new servers. There was, however, a catastrophic failure in one component of the transition whose recovery has been very inconvenient for those involved. A large segment of one of the disk drives containing journal manuscript files was corrupted while being copied to new drives. Normally, the files would be quickly restored using back-up copies, but due to a combination of human and machine errors, the back-up copies were unusable as well. The fragility of the systems and procedures that had been in place is largely why this major upgrade was undertaken, as well as partly why the entire journals system is being migrated to a new platform that will be hosted by a dedicated vendor, so there is some irony that this all happened in the way that it did. The result is that many manuscript files have been lost and must be replaced, often by asking authors to re-upload their files. This failure has resulted in delays in the peer-review process as well as in other aspects of the process toward publication. This has been a major inconvenience for many authors and a tremendous increase in the workload for the staff at Headquarters, the staff who support the volunteer editors, and for the volunteer editors themselves. Everyone has been working very hard to recover from this as quickly and effectively as possible. I offer my apologies on behalf of the AMS to all of those who have been affected by this, and ask for your patience and understanding as the staff works toward a full recovery. There is no excuse for what happened, but we cannot un-ring that bell. I can promise you that we are doing all in our power to ensure that this, or similar failures, cannot happen in the future. Keith L. Seitter, CCM
|
|||
|
||||
