------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Mon, 3 Jan 2000 13:20:28 -0800
Sender:        arl-ejournal@arl.org
From:          "Walt Crawford" <Walt_Crawford@notes.rlg.org>
Subject:       Significance of free peer-reviewed e-journals?

The following was distributed to Web4Lib, as the largest currently-active
list for which it was appropriate. If you've already seen it, please
excuse the duplication. Meanwhile, a couple of clarifications:

1. Yes, of course, ejournals with a price are also "true electronic
journals," but I'm specifically looking at the circle of gifts.
2. I hope (expect?)  to spend some time with JCR as a second source of
information, but I believe that informal comments from the field would be
particularly informative as to how pioneering ejournals are doing.

---------------original message as posted to Web4Lib-----------------------

For my next book (and possibly for an article before that), I'm looking at
the track record of "true electronic journals''--that is, free
Internet-available publications that describe themselves as journals
containing peer-reviewed articles. Specifically, I'm looking at journals
included in the 1995 ARL directory of electronic journals, newsletters,
etc..

If you--or someone at your institution--is in a position to gauge the
significance of journals within their field, you (they) could help out by
responding to a questionnaire, basically rating journals in terms of their
significance within their field (on a scale of 1 to 10). Because it's a
fairly long list (several dozen titles) and probably irrelevant to 90% of
Web4Lib subscribers, I've posted the questionnaire on my own Web site:

http://home.att.net/~walt.crawford/ejsig.htm

So far, this request has only been posted on Web4Lib. If you know of
another list that would be appropriate, please feel free to forward this
message, or send me a note suggesting the list (if it's open for outside
posting).

Thanks!
Walt Crawford, RLG (but doing this research on my own time, as usual)
<Walt_Crawford@notes.rlg.org>