ion in some parts of the internet, fears about plagiarism, copyright issues, concerns about due credit, and the reluctance of the administration in universities to recognize electronic publication when making tenure and advancement decisions (Harnad, 1990).None of these obstacles cited by Harnad are insurmountable. Most of them just require time for academe to adjust to the new processes. However there is one area were intervention will probably be required, at that is getting scholarly publication on the internet recognized as a real publication effort for tenure and advancement decisions. [18] Until this is accomplished, it is only reasonable to expect that in the highly competitive world of academe, authors will continue to mail hard copy drafts of their work to paper based journals.From the perspective of the EJS, this is unfortunate since it places limits on the rate of submissions to the journal and hamstrings the growth of sociology on the internet. It is a problem noted by others (Hugo and Newell, 1994) and has become particularly salient for the EJS since we have started to gather regular statistics [19] on the number of 'hits' to the journal. It is now clear that while many read the journal, few contribute.Of course we can't blame our readers. Promotion is a serious business. Still, we are confident that like permanence and accessibility, it is only a matter of time before this to becomes a historical footnote in the development of electronic publication. There is no doubt that electronic journals are here to stay and that they will replace or refurbish many of today's paper journals.The Grand Information FutureNone of the benefits (reduced cost, speed of publication, access, increased functionality through public annotation threads) so far outlined are necessarily radical or revolutionary transformations. According to Bill Readings (1994), they account for nothing more than "prosthetic" extensions to existing forms of academi...
