Nursing e-journals: are current models using the web's potential?

As the number of nursing and health-related electronic journals (e-journals) available on the World Wide Web increases, we are seeing an increasing diversity of models. A taxonomy of current nursing e-journal models is presented, together with brief discussion of some of the issues pertinent to the development of e-journals, and that currently appear to constrain the electronic publication of high quality content. We describe in detail the model and usage of one particular e-journal, Nursing Standard Online. We conclude by advocating the development of innovative and increasingly interactive nursing e-journals as the way forward, discussing one particular model which holds promise. We believe it likely that nursing e-journals using current models will need to be specialist rather than generalist if they are to attract a larger audience.