edit electronic publication and then following this with an examination of their response to the increased efficiency of electronic publication. Here there are interesting questions about the effect of electronic publication on the publish or perish syndrome, and of the possibility for increased pressure to publish as a result of increased submission turnaround time.Once sociologists have developed an adequate information infrastructure, we might also want to examine whether or not the "interactive" potential of the Internet is as useful as some have suggested. It is simply not a given that providing space for scholars to give immediate feedback on article submissions is a worthwhile exercise much less one that transforms our cognitive structures. While I admit that the process may be useful in other disciplines, its appropriateness to sociologists remains to be demonstrated.(70)There is also a notion floating around that electronic scholarly communication is going to democratize the whole academic effort. Presumably, making information more easily accessible is going to eliminate financial barriers and reduce the formation of geographically or intellectually isolated in-groups. Much more than anything else I have come across, this is a hard pill to swallow. Academe is an intrinsically hierarchical and institutionalized endeavor and it is seems highly unlikely that information technology (even if we assume that it carries with it some sort of valence towards egalitarian and democratic activity) is going to overcome centuries of inertia. Indeed, Harnad (1995) has argued cogently for the implementation of standard peer review practices on the internet and has even suggested extensions to cover the wider variety of scholarly activity possible on the Internet.Now I don't want to argue against the need for forms of quality control on the Internet and as we all know, establishing elaborate and global scholarly hierarchies is of course nothing...
