Online Distribution

Most e-journals are written and edited precisely like print journals, but distributed electronically, bypassing the need for printing presses, paper, binding, and postage. These journals are instead read on screen, or in many cases, these journals merely distribute the location of printing from an industrial print shop to a laser printer close to the researcher.

To bypass printing normally means reduced cost of production and transport, and it may also shorten the time between editing and distribution. All manuscript are digital these days, and as soon a text is proofed, it can be coded or typeset to the desired format within a day.

Online journals are generally archived online, so unlike a paper journal, back issues are just as available as the latest edition. Some journals have even left the concept of editions, and publish papers as soon as they are satisfactorily edited.

Precise search of databases of abstracts and full-text articles have been implemented since the 1960ies, with its corresponding computer science discipline information retrieval. Information retrieval is about speed: its goal is to provide users with the most relevant information in the shortest possible time.

Article databases have become important tools in modern libraries, both offline and online. In recent years, more and more online databases have been given a web interface. Google Scholar is a recent large-scale attempt of creating a global, open scholarly full-text archive

Google has accustomed most Web readers to expect full-text search, but searching an index may still be just as effective. Creating and searching indices were the norm before computers were powerful enough to allow full-text search of abstracts or whole papers. This approach is still alive in modern Web experiments.

Two current activities deserve mention here; one is the effort to make authors index their papers using Semantic Web markup. In this approach, the text is indexed according to strict ontologies. Much effort is put into developing automatic tagging systems, but still, Semantic Web requires author effort.

The other approach is much less structured, and calls upon readers to tag. Services like CiteUlike encourage readers to assign their own keywords to papers, and aggregate keyword tags from all the users, building so-called "folksonomies".

Online distribution and the web searches that is its consequence is a revolution for research. Before lunch, a researcher may gather a collection of earlier work that only years before would take weeks to collect. But these changes do not necessarily influence on the way we write. In the next section, we will look at new writing styles made possible by the move to web publishing.