Editorial.

Abstract

It is neither original nor profound to suggest that electronic publishing offers healthcare professionals a fast and sophisticated medium for disseminating scientific research, not to mention the crucial healthcare advice, innovative practices and policy decisions which derive from research. Most scientific journals now exist in an electronic version, which in many cases is rather more than a simple copy of the printed version. Electronic publishing does more than allow access to research at the desktop: crucial advantages include the ease and speed with which the actions and responses of authors, referees and editors can be coordinated. Limitation of space need no longer be an excuse for delaying publication, nor for abridging research papers. There are also extravagant multimedia possibilities, e.g. see Vernon and Peckham’s paper on pp. 142–148. Nevertheless, it is far from clear that electronic publishing should simply make printed publication redundant. For example, absence of peer-reviewing is the reason most frequently cited by researchers for mistrusting electronic publishing. There is no requirement that any research, in whatever medium, be subject to peer review, but selfpublication via an Internet server is fundamentally cheaper and easier than in print. New and reliable protocols for publishing and researching via the Internet are being developed, but in the United Kingdom we remain more book-wise than Net-wise (albeit perhaps for the time being). The construction and maintenance of archives is also a significant issue. Printed publications may be problematic to store, but, from a researcher’s point-of-view, they can readily be obtained from libraries and related services such as inter-library loan. By contrast, publications on the Internet can be ephemeral. Cancelling a subscription to an electronic journals risks losing access to back-copies. Self-published documents may be susceptible to updating and even manipulation, but few Internet sites maintain archives, and indeed to do so may defeat their raison d’être. However, the most telling consideration is simply access. According to the UN, less than 1% of people in South Asia are online, even though they constitute one-fifth of the world’s population. Although the Internet has facilitated new and powerful ways of disseminating research, it has also generated a vast disparity between those it empowers and those it excludes. It is a sobering thought that less than 20% of the people of the world have ever used a telephone, let alone downloaded information from the web. Electronic publishing may be able to disseminate scientific research more quickly and more widely than ever before, but it cannot do so where access does not exist. Certainly we must not insist that electronic publishing should simply supersede printed publications – not unless we can be sure we are not eliminating an important alternative source of healthcare information.