This is the Golden Age

It is rather obvious that electronic publishing is here to stay. It also seems probable that best of the new inventions, however small, we have seen in genre, presentation, distribution and forms of debate and reviewing will be part of regular research publishing in the near future. These inventions, as we have seen, are new answers to very old challenges; new answers enabled by new technology. It seems fair to assume that new inventions in research writing increasingly will rely on the electronic writing and publishin technology, instead of just remediating faithfully forms developed in print media.

Web technology does open some new possibilities for research writing, as I hope to have shown above. I encourage researchers to put these possibilities to use, to help spread research results and new ideas fast and effectively.

Push the boundaries. It is my experience that many journals and conferences are more than happy to include new forms of presentation, as long as it serves the purpose of communicating research.

Invent new genres. Genres are made by imitation. If you write something good, other will imitate, and in time, we will have a new genre. But someone has to begin.

Everyone does not have time or interest to hand-code intricate hypertext. Most of us need templates to speed up writing. But templates are also limiting. Ask for better templates, templates that make it easy to construct the kind of electronic writing you wish to create.

I think it is possible to invent a kind of electronic research publishing that will be better for the research community than print currently is, even if I don't know what this new electronic wonder will look like. But I think that if the community of Internet Researchers will not be open for the necessary experiments in writing and publishing, who will?

I really believe we are entering the golden age of web publishing, we should want to take part in that.