Editorial: the Challenges of Online Publication.

When we started on 13 years ago as an electronic journal, there were only few such journals worldwide which were pub-lished in electronic only version. none of them were from middle east. today the electronic publishing has become more popular and the number of electronic only journals is escalating. the ease of this type of publication as compared to the hard copies, the lower costs, the much higher visibility and the speed of dissemination of the information have all made this type of publication attractive. as was said by kassier 20 years ago, the purpose of medical journalism should be revealing not suppressing the informa-tion.1 this is more plausible with elec-tronic publication. the electronic publica-tion makes the data more revealing and more accessible. this is of utmost impor-tance for busy physicians who need in-formation in timely manner during medi-cal care or for health professionals work-ing in the developing countries with lim-ited access to standard libraries.however electronic publication has its own challenges. still many authors prefer to publish in hard copy journals, because they think it is more prestigious with higher chance of reputation. this results in more paucity of the high quality origi-nal articles in the electronic journals. in shiraz electronic medical journal (semj) this was the case at beginning in the first 5-6 years. it took time to get the trust of the researchers to publish in this elec-tronic journal. as the journal became in-dexed in well known international in-dexes like scopus and many others (now indeed the journal is indexed in more than 50 databases and sites) the flow of the article increased dramatically. as the quality of original article papers are in-creasing, our early rejection rate has de-creased dramatically. currently we dis-card near 50% of received papers mostly due to our fixed number of articles per issue based on the policy of the supervi-sory committee of the research journalsat iranian ministry of health and medicaleducation.the late and tardy response of reviewersis another challenge. though this is notonly for the electronic journals but itseems to be more prominent here. i hadexperience of being editor-in-chief inboth electronic and hard copy journalsand i can say at least some reviewerstake the peer review request form theelectronic journals less seriously than thesame request from the old fashion journals.the electronic publication providesmany more opportunities and capabilitiesto the publisher than the hard copies,including better search options, use ofmultimedia and more colourful and detailedillustrations and presentation of thefull data sets .2 at semj, we are planningto take advantage of the latest technologyto catch up with today’s epublication.we believe these will makeour journal more readable and more informative.one should not forget thatthese capabilities can not replace theoriginality and validity of the scientificarticles.electronic publication also has the challengeof having stable, secure and easilyaccessible internet servers and managementsystem including the essentialspace for archives with a stable address.we faced this problem at beginning butwith strengthened infrastructures in ourinstitution the problem have been lessenedto a great extent. some journalsmay use the commercial servers, but theproblem of stability and cost are of concern.we have been using the commercialservice providers for mirroring and toincrease our visibility but for the sake ofstability our main site is hosted by theserver of our institution, shiraz universityof medical sciences and we foundthis policy of importance to have a continuousuniform presentation in the web.another advantage of online publicationis easier editorial tasks, especially withthe use of an integrated publication program.through this program the editorscan manage and monitor the whole processof peer review and publication withmuch ease, better quality, fast speed andlower costs. monitoring of pattern ofonline use can also give the editors aview of the readers’ choice, for instance,through monitoring the number of visitorsto each article.one of the challenges in the past washow to cite an article form an electronicjournal. this is now standardized but stillthere are some pitfalls. indeed onlinecitation with a direct link to the cited articleshas made the online citation moreeffective. despite of all advantages of electronicpublication, one should remember theimportance of differentiating betweenpeer reviewed and ‘gray articles’. besides,there are some futile electronicjournals which are not using standardprotocols in peer review and editing. thishas produced a mass of large informationin the net without scientific basis whichcould be misleading to some readers,especially nonprofessionals. these siteshave polluted the environment of electronicpublication. one of the reasons ofless desire to publish in electronic journalsmight be related to this environment.absolute adherence to standardpeer review process is the only way toavoid this hazard. current appearance ofthe standard electronic journals in the well monitored indexes is a good criterion for distinction of those unscientific jour-nals from standard ones.in conclusion, electronic publication has expanded in past decade with an enor-mous rate. there would be much more electronic publications in coming years. the lessons learned in establishment of journals like ours, might help others to have a better organization of electronic publication. the organizations devoted to medical and scientific publication should have more pivotal role in this regards.