The increase in the number of so-called electronic journals is breathtaking. In order to fully exploit the capabilities and advantages of electronic journals, they must be able to interlink sources and therefore need to go beyond print-oriented format as soon as possible. The acceptance of electronic journals among the scientific community currently is not as high as the large number of electronic versions seems to indicate. It is obvious that these criteria are met by electronic versions of established print journals, but print-oriented formats only will be helpful in achieving acceptance during the transition phase from paper to electronic. Currently many scientists rely on paper, at least for reading full text articles.
Reliable links are the backbone of electronic services.
If electronic journals are to be effectively used, the reliability of electronic references must stabilize. Indexing services can help increasing the acceptance of electronic publications but they are just beginning to include e-journals in their databases. Electronic journals must struggle to meet the criteria for inclusion applied by abstract services in order to be eligible. One of the most important problems of electronic publications is archiving. Unless a stable system for future retrieval of publications is in place, authors will continue to be reluctant to publish in electronic journals.