Electronic biomedical journals: how they appear and what they offer

This study, prompted by a number of articles presaging the imminent demise of biomedical journals due to the rise of their electronic spread, analysed 54 Web sites of the journals included in the Oncology section of the Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports (1994) and the sites of 10 other leading digitised biomedical journals. The aim was to determine quantitative and qualitative differences in terms of information content existing between the two media. The analysis confirmed that there are limits to the information contained in the scientific journals currently on the Internet and upholds the authors' conclusion that, in the oncology field, the printed journal will continue to have an important role for most individual users for some time.