Current and future models for nursing e-journals: making the most of the web's potential

We are presently witnessing an increasing number of nursing, medical and he alth-related electronic journals (e-journals) being made available on the W orld Wide Web, a minority of which are specifically devoted to informatics. We would expect, given the potential of interacting multimedia and compute r-mediated communications (i.e. telematics), to also see an increasing dive rsity of models, but this is not currently the case. Following a brief disc ussion of some of the issues relevant to electronic publications, the autho rs present a taxonomy of current nursing e-journal models, including discus sion of some examples from around the world that fall into categories withi n this taxonomy. We describe the model and levels of usage of one particula r e-journal, Nursing Standard Online. Some of the issues presented may acco unt for the current relative paucity of high quality content and innovative models in the development of Web-based e-journals for nurses and other hea lth professionals. We believe it likely that nursing e-journals using curre nt models will need to be specialist rather than generalist if they are to attract a larger audience. In concluding our paper, we advocate the develop ment of innovative and increasingly interactive nursing e-journals as the w ay forward, discussing one particular model which holds promise. (C) 1999 E lsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.