Treffer: Chemical Publishing on the Internet: Electronic Journals--Who Needs Them?

The rapid growth in the use of the Internet in recent years has in large part been due to the interest in and use of the World Wide Web. A reader can, in principle, locate and access information related to a specific query from servers located anywhere in the world. The ability to embed multimedia files into Web documents (in either HTML or HTF) also offers authors techniques with which they can extend what can be said in words alone. This paper examines the possibilities offered by the World Wide Web and related technologies in the area of scientific publication. Work within the Electronic Libraries Program (eLib) project to establish an electronic version of the Royal Society of Chemistry's journal, "Chemical Communications," is described. The particular focus is on issues related to document preparation from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) master documents, and the development of multimedia methods for the presentation of complex scientific data, such as three-dimensional molecular structural information, using MIME and Java. The value of the Web for scientific and technical publication is clear, but the structure of the Web and current modes of use also raise difficult issues, and in the conclusion of this paper, the impact of electronics on the publishing process itself is addressed. (Contains 19 references.) (Author/AEF)