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Scholars on the net: Electronic journals, newsletters, and discussion lists via the Internet

By Stephen Lehmann and Robert Walther

Imagine a journal with no subscription fee that has a turnaround time of a few days between submission and publication, is issued in small increments as articles are received by the editor, and may be stored in your computer, or on paper, or, by the tap of a finger, consigned to some electronic shredder. Imagine further a journal that invites immediate responses and publishes them within a few hours. These, in turn, prompt ongoing debate, published "live," among colleagues world-wide.

Such journals exist, and they are available with a few keystrokes through PennNet. In July, 1991, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists, a guide to 110 online journals and newsletters and 517 discussion lists of interest to scholars. The directory gives subscription and submission information and instructions for ordering back issues of each title.

Electronic journals are online equivalents of that standard academic medium, although most exist only in electronic format. The contents are generally refereed and may include articles, reviews, letters, etc. Some representative titles: Art Com ("dedicated to the interface of contemporary art and new communication technologies"), Bryn Mawr Classical Review (co-edited by James O'Donnell of Penn's Classical Studies department), The Electronic Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic, Offline (written by Penn's Robert Kraft and covering "the actual and potential use of computers in religious studies"), Postmodern Culture (whose editors hope to "experiment with departures from the traditional idea of published texts as immutable and monologic"), and Psycholoquy ("intended to implement peer review on the networks in psychology and its related fields").

Electronic newsletters may be more or less stringently "moderated" (under editorial control), but they all encourage reader participation in the form of comments, queries, and responses, and are a kind of mixed genre that falls between journals on the one hand and electronic bulletin boards, discussion groups, or "chat-lines" on the other. Erofile, for example, reviews books in French and Italian studies and "also provides a forum for comments on previously published reviews in an effort to create an on-going dialogue on issues relevant to the field." Ethnomusicology Research Digest offers news, discussion, queries, bibliographies, and archives for people "with a professional interest in ethnomusicology."

Academic discussion lists (sometimes referred to as "listservs") are even more informal than newsletters. (See "List Servers and News Groups" in the May, 1991 Penn Printout.) They function as electronic interest groups, and generally feature impromptu discussions on topics of current interest, professional queries (both serious and not-so- serious), job postings, and conference announcements. These discussions are relatively easy to set up and maintain, and the ARL directory lists almost 500 of them. They sometimes focus on very specific interests, for example, "Emedch-L," devoted to Early Medieval China (Han and Tang dynasties); or "Class-L," on genetic classification, clustering, and phylogeny.

A word of caution: Some subscribers find themselves overwhelmed by the quality and/or by the quantity of the contributions in some discussions. With this in mind, it is advisable to save the instructions on how to "unsubscribe," which generally come with the initial subscription.

Sidebar: How to get the list

The Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists is available at the Van Pelt Library Reference Desk or may be ordered (on paper or diskette, in DOS WordPerfect or Mac Word format) from the ARL Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing, 1527 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036, with a $20 check payable to ARL. The Directory may also be retrieved online by sending an e-mail message to comserve@vm.ecs.rpi.edu with the following commands:

send ejournl1 sources
send ejournl2 sources