The high-quality rendering of HTML in WWW browsers such as Mosaic raises the aesthetic appeal of information and makes it more useful by virtue of enhanced readability. But the simplicity that makes WWW technology so appealing also makes it difficult to represent the complex markup and typography necessary for scholarly publishing. The need for extensive character sets and more effective interface facilities for inter- and intra-document navigation stretch the limits of the current standards that underlie the Web and its clients. In addition, the stateless nature of WWW client-server interactions presents certain challenges to the effective implementation of search and retrieval functionality so important to effective document retrieval systems.

OCLC distributes several scholarly journals under its Electronic Journals Online program, acting, in effect, as an “electronic printer” for scholarly publishers. As part of this effort, OCLC is prototyping a WWW-accessible version of these journals.

This presentation will describe the problems encountered, detail some of the short-term solutions, and highlight changes to existing standards that will enhance the use of the Web for scholarly electronic publishing.