Scholarly Communication and the Use of Networked Information Sources

Abstract

The history of the use of electronic mail by the academic community goes back to the early 1970s. Parallel publication of both the electronic and print versions of the same journals started with the ACS (American Chemical Society) in 1983 when it offered the full-text of its journals through BRS, a commercial online information services company. Yet, publishing via Internet and related academic networks &dquo;took off&dquo; in 1990 after the &dquo;cold fusion&dquo; controversy of 1989.’ The use of networks as a medium of publication has proliferated since then. The fifth edition of the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists, compiled by a team headed by Diane Kovacs and published by the Association of Research Libraries, contains entries for &dquo;nearly 2500 scholarly lists and 675 electronic journals, newsletters, and related titles such as newsletter-digests - an increase in size of over 40% since the 4th edition of April 1994 and 4.5 times since the 1st edition ofJuly 199