The purpose of Internet presentation may be to provide simple information about the journal, to promote sales of the journal, to offer online abstracts, and in some cases, full text of journal articles. Journals representing associations may simply be listed or briefly described on the associations' Web site, particularly those that are purchased only through membership. Online editions may provide full text articles only to subscribers. Many online editions provide nonsubscribers with abstracts of all articles, archived for the past several years, and may provide feature articles within current and archived issues. Web sites that offer online editions are more likely to be stand-alone journal sites, such as the New England Journal of Medicine , or associations which feature the journal as a major activity, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association .
Publishers typically present an information page and author guidelines page for each journal.
Medical or biomedical journals are more likely to have online editions than journals concerned with education or social services. Foreign journals, primarily British and European, are more likely to have online editions available to subscribers. This may be due to printing and postage costs, and the time necessary for print mailings. Several journals now have some form of rapid online submission, review, and publication process. Following the online review, the author can quickly make revisions and submit the revised manuscript online, allowing journal staff to quickly publish the article both online and in the next available print edition.