Tropical medicine, the Internet and current trends in biomedical communication

Largely unknown only a decade ago, the Internet has now become totally indispensable to biomedical practice and research, as a means of disseminating and retrieving information. Electronic mail, list servers and newsgroups make rapid, personal, targeted and broadcast communication around the globe possible. Hundreds of millions of World Wide Web pages, organized by hierarchically structured web directories, and dissected by general web indexes, give access to an unprecedented amount of information. More and more scientists find their way to factual and bibliographical databases using the Internet. In addition to outlining some of the more relevant resources for the tropical-medicine and international-health communities, this review pays special attention to recent and future changes in the transfer of formal biomedical information. An interesting issue is the future role and position of the published article--either in electronic editions of traditional, peer-reviewed journals, or in even more revolutionary formats, such as electronic preprint servers--and the implications for authors, reviewers, editors, publishers and, ultimately, the readers.