ve them up on their own hardware (Amiran and Unsworth, 1994). This of course requires hardware and computer expertise. But again, as the Internet matures, these commodities are more and more becoming commonplace. An alternative solution to the problem of permanence, and one that the EJS is pursuing because of certain ancillary benefits, [16] is to secure "mirror" sites were complete copies of the journals are kept and updated automatically on a nightly basis. In this way, the EJS is not dependent on one institution and subscribers and contributors can be assured that even if the University of Alberta could no longer provide space for the journal, other sites would still exist. Canada's McMaster university is one of the first institutions to offer space for such a mirror cite. At this point we are interested in mirror cites in other countries.Accessibility(35)Earlier we cited accessibility as one of the key benefits of on-line publication. However there are still unresolved problems - though like permanence, accessibility was more of a problem two years ago than it is today. At the time the EJS was founded, the WWW was new and untried and few academics even knew that it existed. In addition, and partly because the academic content of the WWW was minimal, institutions were slow to provide the needed software to access the WWW and, even when access was available, few took the time to develop the required skills. However with the explosion of academic publications on the internet and the growing recognition of the benefits of electronic publication, more and more institutions are providing full internet access for the student and academic populations and academics are now more motivated to developed the skills needed to surf the web. In addition, technology continues to mature rapidly and more user friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and sophisticated interfaces are constantly being developed (or existing ones enhanced). As a result of this c...
