Counselor Education and Supervision: On-Line Peer Review Editing, On-Line Submissions, and Publishing Articles on the World Wide Web

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The authors describe a 5-phase implementation plan in which the staff of Counselor Education and Supervision will use the World Wide Web (the Web) for editing manuscripts for the journal, and potential authors will use the Web for submitting manuscripts for publication consideration. Documentation of the steps taken may provide guidance and help for current and future editors of academic journals. In addition, possible future uses of the Web and the Internet for expanding and enhancing publication options beyond traditional print media are discussed.

There have been phenomenal increases during the last few years in the size and popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web (the Web). Although estimates vary, the Web is currently approaching one billion pages (Murphy, 1998). Because of this growth, the Web is beginning to affect nearly every walk of life. It is no surprise, therefore, that staff of scholarly publications are beginning to use the new electronic media. This trend has been accelerated by the rising costs that are associated with traditional print publishing and by financial crises faced by many university libraries. To respond to these financial problems and to capitalize on the popularity of the Internet and the Web, publishers and editors of scholarly journals have begun to look to these new resources for alternatives to traditional hard-copy publishing.

According to O'Donnell (1995), electronic publishing was competing with traditional publishing as early as 1995. At that time, he made the following prediction:

   Extrapolating from the success of journals that are currently published
   electronically, it is clear that electronic media will capture a large
   share of scholarly publication in the next five years, and that printed
   media will not be competitive in journal publication beyond a few more
   decades. (p. 183)

According to Wood (1998), "the introduction and wide acceptance of the Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web by researchers ... has provided exciting new opportunities for experimenting with the process of scholarly communication" (p. 173). Tomlins (1998) goes even further, suggesting that editors have "an absolute obligation to respond to the development of electronic publication" (p. 136).

Journal editors have adopted a variety of schemes for integrating the Internet …