Biomedical journals and the World Wide Web

Abstract

Now that the World Wide Web has changed previously arcane electronic publishing into a popular everyday phenomenon, fulfilling the exciting promises of many years, a global electronic resource for the health sciences becomes technically feasible. Though recent evolutions have inspired prophecies on the imminent death of printed biomedical journals, the latter have now themselves joined the electronic platform. Since 1995, a respectable portion of the traditional top journals have started offering new channels of access that do not differ essentially from their paper formats. These electronic versions feature attractive additional value such as extra (multimedia) contents and improved retrieval and (hyper)linking capabilities. While many were originally partial versions, mainly figuring as eye‐catchers, increasingly more full‐text editions are appearing on the Worldwide Web. Compared to exclusively electronic journals or reprint archives, traditional journals migrating to the Internet have certain strategic advantages such as an aura of intellectual trust‐worthiness (based on peer review) and considerable social acclaim (based on citation records, amongst other things). As such, their impact is now increasingly being extended into cyberspace and the rumours of the death of the biomedical journal appear to be greatly exaggerated— or at least premature.