I edit and "publish" JoCI an on-line fully open access journal (Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net) and tend to agree with most of what has been said about the opportunities (and risks) of on-line journals. Just a few points to add: We are a "global" journal which means that most of our editorial board (I think highly distinguished within the context of Community Informatics) is from outside of the US, and I'm based in Canada but with strong links to South Africa and Australia as well as the US. What that means is that the specific nature of the relationship to the P&T & other academic incentive processes are somewhat different from most of those discussed here. The fact that RESEARCH funding as well at P&T in South Africa (and parts of Asia as well as Australia and the UK) is directly tied to publications with ranking in the Thomson ISI index is a problem -- and dare I say a problem not just for us, or for our potential authors. The fact is that the "A" ranked journals in the ISI index are overwhelmingly skewed to the issue areas and recognition structures of developed countries even in those research topic areas of direct and immediate significance to the developing countries themselves such as for example enablng communities with Information and Communications technologies. (Dare I say that these issues are of broader significance than simply academic.) The on-line journal structure and including open access is of course, ideal for an emerging discipline such as Community Informatics where it gives CI and its exponents an opportunity to get wide exposure both academically and among those non-academics with an interest in the area, where other and more traditional routes (and media) would be much slower and more problematic. The issue of academic acknowledgement is of course, an issue but that would be an issue for those identifying with CI in any case, and a journal gives CI a means for legitimation and exposure in the short run which would can only accelerate the broader processes of academic acceptance. Cash funding for the journal is much less of a problem given that we are using very workflow smart software (OJS v.2) but some regular cash is still required for exceptional or highly specialized activities. As well of course, a continuing stream of volunteer labour is required and it helps a lot if one has access to some kind of "incentives" (graduate stipends, control over internal staff resources etc.etc.) to ensure a continuing stream and particularly the timely execution of the various activities otherwise committed to by volunteers. It very much helps if the journal is not simply another P&T publishing venue otherwise whatever the initial spurt of energy (or money) that created it will very quickly fade (or some other opportunity will beckon) and there will be little energy or will to replace this. The reason, I suspect, for the short lifespan of many on-line journals. The opportunity for reach and thus readership and potential influence is vastly greater than the relatively small one of traditional journals. This is both an advantage and a risk in that it rather puts some additional pressure on the core academic mission of the enterprise and forces a contininuing reflection on the precise nature of the research publishing (and thus peer reviewed journal) enterprise. This isn't a bad thing, and re-thinking the rather stale and unwieldy model of traditional academic journal publishing is a very good thing but figuring out how to locate oneself in the almost infinite space of e-publishing opportunity is a continuing challenge. To sum up I guess, the shift to on-line (and dare I say open access) journals is probably unstoppable for a variety of reasons including cost and the pressure for open knowledge which is coming from a variety of directions and not incidentally increasingly from research funders. The new model at the moment is very much an entrepreneurial as opposed to an institutional one i.e. it depends on the energy and creative enterprise of an individual or individuals rather than the continuity of academic or commercial or other institutional structures. My sense though is, as several have suggested in a somewhat tentative way, (and was suggested explicitly in the context of JoCI by Tony Salvador of Intel), that the future is in translating the emerging power and modalities of knowledge networks into e-publishing form. This is one where the "journal" is the publishing expression not of a commercial/institutionally structured discipline/sub-discipline/sub-sub-discipline, nor that of a knowledge community as articulated by its leadership, but is in fact the way that an extended network of knowledge collaborators give a public voice (and public access) to the considered products of their collaborative knowledge creations. Collaborative blogs and wikis are I think, something of a precursor to this but figuring out how exactly this could fit into the broader framework of academic and research structuring and funding is still in the somewhat distant future. And this will have to wait I think, until the current generation of grad students and junior academics i.e. digital/electronic community natives, are in positions of authority. The reality, as several here have already alluded to, is that the academic structures haven't really caught up to web 1.0, let alone adapting themselves to the opportunities and risks of shifting their intellectual product into a web 2.0 (;-)) environment. Best, MG Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. Editor in Chief: Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training, Vancouver, BC CANADA http://www.communityinformatics.net