One of the co-authors affirmed the need for careful online searching as well as offline searching while constructing his dissertation proposal. Although only tangential references had been made to his topic in the existing printed communication literature, a careful online search revealed a paper on the very topic published on a Web site by a scholar in the United Kingdom. Traditional print indices (which are Eurocentric) would not have turned up this valuable resource. Moreover, given that the full text of the article was available online meant that the reader could review the material immediately, rather than writing to the author and waiting weeks or months for the paper to arrive.
We think the point here punctuates the need to recognize online publication as scholarly activity. Unlike discipline-specific journals whose circulation reaches only a few thousand subscribers and libraries, Web based publications, with their ease of indexicality and potential audience of millions, can be of service to many, many more people than their print counterparts. Moreover, these journals not only have the potential to enrich the work of fellow scholars in disparate geographical locations, they also have the potential to reach, and thus to introduce, people unaffiliated with the discipline to the field.