MPH The World Wide Web, which greatly facilitates the distribution of information, poses a challenge to traditional forms of publishing, including printed biomedical journals. Although in the near future medical journals are unlikely to be replaced by author-posted papers on the Web, journals will need to adapt to significant changes brought on by widespread access to the Internet.
Medical journals are complex entities with multiple functions.
Each of these roles is subject to different influences from the emerging information super-highway. Journals as distributors of medical news Most medical developments reach the profession, the media and the public after appearing in one of the major journals. Developed by a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Ingelfinger rule stipulates that a journal will only print material not previously published elsewhere. The Internet now threatens the journals' control over the release of medical news, a threat amplified by several concurrent factors. On the Internet, information is a fluid commodity, passing between source and consumer with ease and speed.