  The shift towards the use of electronic media in scholarly communication
appears to be an inescapable imperative. However, these shifts are uneven, both
with respect to field and with respect to the form of communication. Different
scientific fields have developed and use distinctly different communicative
forums, both in the paper and electronic arenas, and these forums play
different communicative roles within the field. One common claim is that we are
in the early stages of an electronic revolution, that it is only a matter of
time before other fields catch up with the early adopters, and that all fields
converge on a stable set of electronic forums. A social shaping of technology
(SST) perspective helps us to identify important social forces centered around
disciplinary constructions of trust and of legitimate communication that pull
against convergence. This analysis concludes that communicative plurality and
communicative heterogeneity are durable features of the scholarly landscape,
and that we are likely to see field differences in the use of and meaning
ascribed to communications forums persist, even as overall use of electronic
communications technologies both in science and in society as a whole
increases.
