ABSTRACT
The publication of serials online is of considerable current interest. Numerous experiments are being conducted and some systems have been deployed, but widespread use of such publication systems still seems to be a few years away. Ultimately, the shape online serials take in the world will be the result of compromises between many communities. By virtue of its (near) ubiquity and popularity, the Internet is the de facto standard network for use by online publications with an eye to global accessibility. To date, the application software infrastructure of the Internet and the World Wide Web have not been sufficient to meet the needs of serious online serial publications. This chapter outlines the work that is being done to address some of those issues, in particular in the area of providing general infrastruc-
ture for robust Internet identifiers for online resources. This is a revision of a chapter that was published in the first edition of this book in 1998. The standards development that was described as "in progress" then has played out as expected; this revision includes some additional material describing initiatives that apply the standards described herein, as well as some initiatives that approach the problem from the traditional publishing community's point of view.
