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LAUNCH HISTORY

DOCUMENT TYPES

FREQUENCY

Was it only a decade ago that CD-ROMs seemed destined to take over the world (or at least the information industry)? In our Internet-obsessed era, it all seems very quaint. While CDs are still a respectable method of distributing large amounts of data (there are just over 5,000 active serial publications produced on CD-ROM), the Web is the future. Of course, electronic journals are still in an embryonic state, with issues of functionality, archiving, cataloging, and pricing still under development — and debate..

With nearly 20,430 active online serials in the Ulrich's database, online is the leading single format alternative to print, with microform/fiche/film placing a distant second at 13,580. That's a rather striking change from the stats back in 1988, when we documented 12,000 active Ulrich's citations on microform/fiche/film and only 1,950 online periodicals. Online's ascendance is old news. We are interested in a newer trend: those serials produced exclusively online rather than as electronic counterparts to established print products. As of October, 2000, Ulrich's has recorded the launch of 2,401 e-serials. Approximately 84% or 2,024 of those efforts remain active. Illustrated by the graph below, new launches seem to have peaked in 1996 (at least within this decade).

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				"Armed with a cup of coffee and an Internet connection, anyone can become a modern-day publisher," comments one e-zine editor. The attraction — economic and otherwise — of publishing on the Web to individuals and small organizations is evidenced by the large proportion of newsletters among this segment: they constitute about 1/4 of all document types. Given the faster acceptance of papers and promotion of exchanges between scholars made possible by the Web, there is also a very strong core of academic/scholarly publications — 364 to be precise. Among this group, 215 are refereed, promising solid content as well as easy access.


				Contrary to one's expectations of a casually produced e-zine, the majority of online only journals are published on a regular and ongoing basis. Interestingly enough, a substantial faction of the irregular serials are among the most well produced and well established online offerings, including many of the publications listed in the Pioneering Efforts sidebar


				Note: The majority of research for this article was conducted in October, 2000. Since we are updating Ulrich's on a weekly basis, search query results may change from week to week