THE TRADITIONAL SCHOLARLY JOURNAL PUBLISHERS LEGITIMIZE THE WEB

This article examines the entry of the major academic publishing house s into World Wide Web (Web) publishing. The study identified that duri ng 1997, traditional academic publishers made significant commitments to putting tables of content, abstracts, and the full-text of their pr int journals on the Web. At the same time, new services and organizati ons emerged that could ultimately compete with, or eliminate, the need for certain segments of the industry. The authors suggest that these early experiments in Web publishing began unevenly with areas that nee ded improvement. The article concludes with a discussion about the imp lications of the traditional academic publisher's presence on the Web.