Editorial

Abstract

The first free-access electronic scientific journals appeared with the creation of the Internet, before the invention of the world wide web. In 1991, Surfaces and Psycoloquy were pioneering journals featuring free internet content and ensuring the copyright of the authors (as would later be said in the Budapest declaration or in the Berlin declaration) [1]. Another example was The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, an electronic journal established in 1991, also committed to spreading Open Access (OA). One of the articles published in the first issues of this journal entitled "Online journals: disciplinary designs for electronic scholarship" described what would happen a few years later: the Internet or other networks would be the vehicle for scientific communication; the digital world would allow an acceleration in the dissemination of science compared to the printed era and that the cost of electronic publication would be lower than the printed version, therefore it could reach a greater number of users [2].