Abstract
This article examines the actual situation and the effect of electronic media in scholarly communication. Especially it focuses on the characteristics of scientific communication. Japanese researchers in medicine, physics, psychology, history, economics use electronic media (e-mail, mailing list, WWW sites, online journal), but the extent to which they are used varies among scientists, depending on the field of science, type of media, research style and other factors. Uses of electronic media in 'informal communication' (e.g. e-mail) have spread rapidly, but the situation in 'formal communication' is complex. Almost current electronic journals are primarily based on the system of traditional scholarly journal in print.
Commercial publishers or societies edit electronic journals, and they are disseminated through academic libraries. They are electronic media, but may not a substantial new system of academic information flow. E-print archive at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is a preprint archive system by electronic means, appears to be successful. This system, however, is considered to be a supplement of traditional scholarly journal by scientists using it. Quite a new dissemination system of academic information, such as Pub Med Central in NIH has also been proposed. It does not work actually, but could be a new perspective in scientific communication.
