The incursions of new technologies into medical publishing have prompted an interesting tussle between optimists who want to embrace the future before it devours them and traditionalists who wish there were some way to hold back a tiger by its tail. CMAJ and BMJ are the first general medical journals to sign on. The full text of original research articles published in CMAJ will be posted on the PubMed Central server as soon as all of the technical hurdles have been cleared. Anyone with Internet access will be able to read the medical literature posted with PubMed Central anywhere, anytime and free of charge.
Electronic publication offers broad dissemination and speed as no other medium can.
Equally important is the democratization of medical communication that e-publishing offers by breaking down economic barriers and making distance irrelevant. The betterment of health is a global concern, and access to medical research should not be dictated by the ability to afford the sometimes astronomical cost of journal subscriptions. The humanitarian goals of scientific publishing must find their way around the economics. In this issue Peter Singer 2 indulges in a futuristic view of the fate of medical journals. By the year 2003, he speculates, the face of medical publishing will have been radically altered, and even the most prestigious journals, if they fail to keep pace with change, will no longer be around.