How Dynamic E-journals can Interconnect Open Access Archives

Influential scientists are urging journal publishers to free their published works so they can be accessed in comprehensive digital archives. That would create the opportunity for new services that dynamically interconnect material in the archives. To achieve this, two issues endemic to scholarly journal publishing need to be tackled: decoupling journal content from publishing process; defragmentation of the control of access to works at the article level. It is not necessary to wait for publishers to act. It was predicted that, enabled by links, e-journal publishing will become more distributed. (Hitchcock et al. 1998) An editorially controlled new model e-journal that links material from over 100 distributed, open access sources realises that prediction. Perspectives in Electronic Publishing (PeP) combines the functions of a review journal with original materials and access to full-text papers on a focussed topic, in this case on electronic publishing, in a single coherent package that indexes and links selected works. The paper describes the main features of PeP and how it can be used, and considers whether PeP contributes to the scientists' objective of a dynamic and integrated scientific literature.