ABSTRACT
The area of academic or scholarly publishing is another sector where the digital product is well established and has, in some areas, entirely supplanted the print product. Indeed, the area of academic and scientific research was the arena in which the internet and, subsequently, the World Wide Web first developed. The application of digital technologies to research was therefore an obvious step to take to improve and add value to content that was previously only available in print. Research needs to reach across boundaries in order to be useful; dissemination is
critical to the purpose and continued dynamic of research, and the World Wide Web in particular enabled that to happen much more quickly and effectively than ever before. Easy access to material for researchers, whether raw data or fully validated research papers, is critical, and print had obvious restrictions to the efficiency of access, limited as it was by shelf space and physical access to a library. So the digital environment was an obvious way to ensure these key precepts of research such as access and dissemination could be realised and research taken into new realms.
