🚀 go-pugleaf

> From Bill Venable:
> We must surely be getting close to the time when new journals -and
> especially this one- could appear in a purely electronic edition as well as
> the old, profligate, paper style.  Just how difficult would it be to offer
> a journal in some electronic to readers, by email, at least as a quick,
> cheap alternative to paper?

Bill --

You are right, it can be done.  And is being done.  Steven Harnad has
been publishing BBS and PSYCHOLOQUY for some time, and is active in
the community of librarians (and such) that is trying to make
e-journals common.  There's also a medical journal that is going
to publish in online form, complete with graphics.  Newsletters
have been available for some time, including my own for AI researchers
and several hundred for the business community.  (Mine is on the net,
with permission from NSF to use the backbone.  Most of the others are
available through commercial providers like CompuServe.)

I'm a believer in using whatever resources are currently available.
Most of the publishing industry, however, is waiting until there's
a significant market with multimedia-capable computers hooked into
the commercial networks.  The medical journal I mentioned is providing
the front-end software for viewing its graphics, and paying for the
development of that software greatly increases the start-up cost.

					-- Ken
--

Dr. Kenneth I. Laws, (415) 493-7390, laws@ai.sri.com.
Moderator of the Computists International AI/IS/CS mutual-aid association.
Ask about my weekly online career newsletter, The Computists' Communique.