Ejournals are becoming an accepted and necessary means of meeting the demands for the dissemination of knowledge. This introductory article discusses the recent "explosion" of ejournals and provides an explanation of what is meant by an "ejournal." Ejournals are explored within the traditional context of scholarship and a discussion of the "serials crisis" that promoted the inception of ejournals is presented. After laying the groundwork for discussing scholarship in this new age of dissemination of scholarly information, the article discusses whether this digital form of publication can be called a "paradigm shift" in Kuhn's (1970) traditional sense of the word.

electronic journal --- paradigm --- ejournal --- publishing

High print journal subscription costs, access to desktop publishing software, and awareness of Internet capability are among several reasons that interest in the electronic publishing of scholarly journals is increasing rapidly. The economic considerations of electronic publishing are not as familiar, however, although the fingertip accessibility of electronic journals, and in some cases, the lack of subscription charges gives the impression that electronic journal publishing is a much less costly means of publishing. Such an impression receives qualified confirmation in this article as an overview of the costs of scholarly publishing is provided, and the costs of print and electronic journals are compared. Also addressed are ways to recover costs of publishing electronic journals, and predictions for the future of such journals.

cost-comparison --- first-copy costs --- cost-recovery --- free access