Electronic journal

An electronic magazine (also e-journal or e-journal ) is a magazine that unlike a printed magazine is available to the reader in digital form. Electronic journals were initially distributed on disks (about the data stored on floppy diskmags ), today as online publications on the Internet. The network published electronic journals available on the websites of their commercial or non - commercial providers either free or paid.

Some magazines are published both in print and electronically, others exclusively electronically ( " e-only "). Play an important role in electronic journals, especially in the area of ​​scientific journals.

An essential characteristic of an electronic journal is that their products are durable and available in full text. By this definition, neither websites of printed magazines that do not have full text is offered but only refer to the printed output, electronic journals, more magazines, of which the table of contents, abstracts or preview are only available digitally.

As in conventional journals belong to an electronic magazine an editorial ( as an online editor), editor (usually a publisher, such as an online publisher) and authors.

History

As the first electronic version of a journal, the Harvard Business Review published since 1982 in a parallel electronic edition for the service Bibliographic Information Services.

Among the German media claims of appearing since 1994 shadow look to have been the first electronic newspaper.

Molding

As most readers still prefer printed article, it is in the majority of electronic journals to online versions of printed output. Pure Online magazines are much less likely, in the field of scientific journals and account for about 10-15 % off. However (eg reviews ), a significant increase was detected recently in specialized areas. Due to the removed printing and distribution costs, electronic journals can be made theoretically accessible free of charge, if the people involved for their creation to be paid from other sources, or work without pay.

In contrast to printed journals can commercial electronic journals do not usually bought, but it can only be through a licensing agreement a right of use be purchased. Due to the rising journal prices, many libraries have merged into consortia that negotiate with publishers consortium agreements. Well-known scientific journal publishers who are active in this area include the Springer -Verlag and Elsevier.

New publishing models

Due to the new possibilities of the online medium and the pricing policy of the publishers ( the so-called serials crisis ) new forms of publication have emerged in recent years. Is a request for a release of all published articles for a certain period of time up to a complete abolition of the publishers as intermediaries between author and reader. The Open Access movement ( see, eg, Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Berlin Declaration ) requires that the journal literature by means of self-archiving ( self-archiving ) and founding new free e -journals will be accessible. Self-archiving is to say: On Eprint servers provide scientists their products before ( " preprint " ) or after ( " post-print "), a magazine publication available online. Various business models test answers to the open question of how the administrative cost of creating a magazine to be distributed. Currently there are several marketing concepts for electronic journals. A digital kiosk, for example www.zinio.com. Here electronic journals for consideration are offered for download.