The Electronic Archive: Scientific Publishing for the 1990s

I offer a description and rationale for an electronic journal publishing program for psychologists, called the electonic archive. Three principles are critical. First, electronic publishing must retain the readability of a traditional printed journal. Second, it must be both accessible and attractive to all members of the discipline, whether they use computers or not. Most importantly, it must provide improved facilities for retrieving information, while continuing to serve as a permanent archive of the Society. I argue that the primary advantage of electronic publishing is not the inexpensive delivery of text, but the use of a centralized archive to concentrate resources for discovering and utilizing information. The archive would provide a platform for programs embodying knowledge about the field and the intellectual goals of individual users to facilitate the intelligent retrieval of text. By using the dynamic branching and graphical display capacities of the computer, the archive can present texts in ways that cannot be rendered in print. These facilities can give scholars personalized access to information with increased scope and depth.