The number and type of electronic-only publications is growing rapidly - most academic libraries provide a running list. The sites below illustrate key directions in which online scientific, technical and medical communication are evolving.
TropiKA.net, launched in October 2007, is an important global initiative where I helped WHO/TDR to clarify their publishing strategy and then to define the key elements of this innovative online service using a number of research tools. As you can see from the site, TropIKA is designed to enhance access and to share essential knowledge with health researchers and policy makers dedicated to improving the control of the main infectious diseases of poverty.
Engineering Digital Repositories Landscape Analysis by Macleod and Moffat which reviews the landscape in the area of digital repositories in engineering to help inform the development of a Pilot Engineering Repository search service which does not require authentication because it cross-searches only freely available data or metadata.
With the upsurge in use of social networking sites, SciVee provides a site for scientists wishing to share (and thus promote) their research through multimedia presentations which can be linked into the content of a published article.
An interesting case study about the publication of an Open Access journal in Medical Education. The article states “Establishing an electronic journal is a difficult task and I suspect this is why so many of these journals languish and never really get off the ground.” Data on manuscript submissions to the online journals are included as shown below:
Portico - the latest initiative from the Mellon Foundation. The mission of Portico is “To preserve scholarly literature published in electronic form and to ensure that these materials remain available to future generations of scholars, researchers, and students”. The scale and complexity of the infrastructure and operation necessary to preserve core electronic scholarly literature exceeds that which can be supported by any individual library or institutional budget. Portico is an innovative solution to the challenges of long term preservation of the scholarly literature which is taking a systemwide view of preservation activity.
Open Access online only Chemistry publishing has come to BioMedCentral.
http://www.intumed.com/best_resident.htm# - For BeST resident – the first online general surgical training program which covers the training needs of surgery residents and is designed to help surgeons in training find information faster. Developed jointly by Harvard, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Intuition – an electronic learning company.
http://www.physionet.org for a new form of publication not possible in print which is a resource for medical education and research across a range of physiological events. The site has a number of excellent features and functions and is included in the new ISI service "Current Web Contents".
http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=index-html for Bio One a not-for-profit venture supported by libraries, scientific societies and academia. Content is focused on biological, environmental and ecological sciences. Bio One is providing a broad range of services including hosting of online content and sales and marketing worldwide.
“In light of the excellent editorial in the 
With the upsurge in use of social networking sites, 
An interesting case study about the publication of an Open Access journal in Medical Education. The article states “Establishing an electronic journal is a difficult task and I suspect this is why so many of these journals languish and never really get off the ground.” Data on manuscript submissions to the online journals are included as shown below:
