PUBLISHERS, PUBLISHING AND THE INTERNET - HOW JOURNAL PUBLISHING WILLSURVIVE AND PROSPER IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE

The role of the publishing process in adding value to, and disseminati ng, scholarship and research is independent of the means of output. It comprises the preparation and packaging of information in a form easi ly accessible by the user. It includes the technical processes of edit ing, peer review and revision, publication and marketing. The publishi ng process must continue to provide a guarantee of quality that is rec ognised throughout the academic community. The emerging importance of the Internet does not change that role in principle but it does have c onsiderable impact on how publishers function in the future: 1. Publis hers need to supplement existing skills with the acquisition of new sk ills in developing multimedia material and facilitating interaction be tween scholars without detracting from the authority of the definitive publication, 2. Publishers will become custodians of intellectual pro perty rather than producers of printed artefacts. They must add more v alue to the literature by exploiting different media for different pur poses or user requirements; 3. Publishers will have to acquire much mo re hands-on knowledge of, and navigation through, the laws of copyrigh t and contract, especially in respect of the international legal aspec ts of electronic publishing; 4. Publishers will work more closely in p artnership with universities and the research community in order to de liver electronic information effectively and easily to end-users. Prin ted and electronic editions of the journal literature will complement each other; their respective strengths and weaknesses will be analysed in this paper Journals will become interest groups in which papers wi ll be placed. New definitions of 'publication': 'journal' and 'literat ure' will be required.