With the Journal of Vision , it is, and always will be. Journal of Vision ensures this result with two design features. The DOI is a new means for identifying and locating digital content, a feature that we will discuss at greater length on a future occasion. Consequently the assigned URL or DOI will always take you directly to the article, with no annoying and delaying requests for money or information along the way. While this is of enormous benefit to readers, it may be of even greater benefit to authors, whose goal is always to achieve the widest possible distribution of their work.
Scientific reports are never solo performances.
In printed papers, they link to this prior art through bibliographic references. The diligent scientist will, in time, and if geographic and economic conditions permit, seek out some of that prior work to verify and enrich their understanding of the subject. In the Journal of Vision , this linking function is accelerated, enlarged, and extended to the future as well as the past. Each bibliographic reference is accompanied by a link, either to the article itself if it is available freely on the internet, or to a search of a public citation database such as PubMed , where additional information on the reference as well as related publications will be returned. Journal of Vision also currently provides two specialized searches from the entry page for each article.