Thanks to Dr. Ramsdell for his comments. I agree that a "top- down" approach is unrealistic. I agree that scholars themselves must make the move for reasons they find cogent. I agree that it will likely have to be done area/subject by area/subject. All this is why I have suggested that scholars *through their professional associations and scholarly societies* have a key possible role in this. Pioneers such as Harnad have demonstrated the usefulness of on-line refereed publication. I am confident that eventually on-line publication will become fully as part of our scholarly processes as faxing and the telephone. But I am worried that (a) it will take inordinately longer than it need to, (b) that it will be controlled by traditional publishers and for commercial purposes too much (so we'll have some of the present paper-publishing problems carried over into the net), and that (c) younger scholars will avoid on-line publishing (because insufficient numbers of senior colleagues recognize its worth) and established scholars will also (because the lack of perceived worth means that one's work won't get noticed in the right circles. How to cope with these things? Harnad has a cogent, fiercely argued proposal, and he is very confident that it would work. He may well be right. But that provokes the prior question: How to make his proposal operative? The answer may be simply to allow for a rather lengthy straggling of individual bold souls into his "subversive proposal" as co-conspirators. I've simply wondered if by putting our heads together we could help make the academic embracing of on-line publishing happen a bit less disorderly and a bit more efficiently. But that's enough on the subject from me. Larry Hurtado
L. W. Hurtado University of Edinburgh, New College Mound Place Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX Phone: 0131-650-8920 Fax: 0131-650-6579 E-mail: [email protected]
