Current and future models for nursing e-journals: making the most of the Web's potential.
We are presently witnessing an increasing number of nursing, medical and health-related electronic journals (e-journals) being made available on the World Wide Web, a minority of which are specifically devoted to informatics. We would expect, given the potential of interacting multimedia and computer-mediated communications (i.e. telematics), to also see an increasing diversity of models, but this is not currently the case. Following a brief discussion of some of the issues relevant to electronic publications, the authors present a taxonomy of current nursing e-journal models, including discussion of some examples from around the world that fall into categories within this taxonomy. We describe the model and levels of usage of one particular e-journal, Nursing Standard Online. Some of the issues presented may account for the current relative paucity of high quality content and innovative models in the development of Web-based e-journals for nurses and other health professionals. We believe it likely that nursing e-journals using current models will need to be specialist rather than generalist if they are to attract a larger audience. In concluding our paper, we advocate the development of innovative and increasingly interactive nursing e-journals as the way forward, discussing one particular model which holds promise.
Murray
P J
PJ
School of Health and Social Welfare, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. peter@lemmus.demon.co.uk
Anthony
D M
DM
D002965:Classification; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D004506:Education, Nursing; D020407:Internet; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009729:Nursing; D010380:Peer Review; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000639:trends*; D011643:Publishing / Q000639:trends*