The publishing community may resist electronic publishing in the near future and try to preserve existing methods of copyrights charges, payments and distribution. At the other end of the spectrum the publishing community may be a leading force in electronic publishing. Tenure committees, consisting of established scholars, may delay the acceptance of AEP by rejecting or simply ignoring the phenomenon. At the other end of the spectrum, it is possible that tenure committee members will establish guidelines, procedures and ranking schemes for e-journals and in doing so will speed the acceptance of AEP in the academic community. Electronic articles reside at their origin, connected through hyperlinks.
Intelligent agents support access and search, changing the ways scholars read articles.
A central repository provides copies for future generations and for resolving cases of dispute s and fraud. Published journals are distributed on a CD-ROM like medium. The structure, format, and feel of e-journals does not differ from paper journals. E-journals are backed up by paper journals much as paper money was once backed by gold. No centralized repository is needed for academic electronic articles.