To those of you for whom www.jnnp.com suggests something from the world of cryptology I hope I can persuade you to read on. However, for those who have typed in these characters whilst browsing at their computer and only discovered a table of contents and journal information for JNNP I have good news. As befits a Journal which aims to bring you the best papers in the clinical neurosciences as speedily as possible, from 15 March 1999 the full text of theJournal has been made available in its entirety (including figures and tables) in electronic form on the world wide web. The explosion in communications which has given us the web, the internet, and email is able to provide unimaginable access to a wealth of information on any conceivable topic. Yet in the area of medical publishing we are only entering the first phase, and still the facilities which it provides are truly remarkable. To provide our readers access to these facilities JNNP has joined the BMJ and many other important medical journals at HighWire Press, a division of Stanford University’s Green Library, whose mission is to “foster research and instruction by providing a more direct linkage between writers and readers of scholarly materials”.1

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This will provide you with access to eJNNP, which will still be at the old address (www.jnnp.com). Not only will you be able to view the current issue but also search for articles published previously in the Journal, in full, back to July 1997, as well as abstracts and tables of contents for earlier issues. There will be free access to Medline to expand your search and through “customised @lerts” you can highlight the rapidly developing areas in the clinical neurosciences in which you are personally interested, as well as arrange to be emailed when articles in these particular areas become available. The “collected resources” feature allows you to search quickly for material in subspecialty areas in any journal in the HighWire stable, which includes Brain and theJournal of Neuroscience. Finally, the Institute of Scientific Management (ISI) is collaborating with HighWire to build hypertext links between the electronic resources of both. This will allow users to navigate from the ISI Web of Science to the full text of journals with HighWire.

Surely the features providing such unparalleled access to the scientific literature must herald the eventual demise of the printed journal in the next century. As someone who still gains satisfaction from receiving a neatly bound pristine journal or book this is sad to contemplate. Yet over the past couple of years having such access to certain journals, somewhat in advance of theJNNP, even I have come to appreciate the arrival of tables of contents on the day of publication, allowing the rapid perusal for articles of interest, and the click that rapidly brings up the abstracts followed by the full text on the screen.

Access to eJNNP is free until July 1999. Various pricing models for subscriptions to the print and electronic version of JNNP are under discussion, so please watch our web site for more information as it becomes available.

I hope I have persuaded even the most entrenched backwoodsman that the electronic version of JNNP will be worth accessing. Clearly, as we enter the next millennium, developments in the methodology of information retrieval are moving extremely swiftly, and who knows where they might lead us. At theJNNP we intend to be up with the leaders in the publishing pack, and hope you will benefit from these new developments. As always, the editorial office would welcome your views via electronic or more traditional methods.