  Electronic publishing opportunities, manifested today in a variety of
electronic journals and Web-based compendia, have captured the imagination of
many scholars. These opportunities have also destabilized norms about the
character of legitimate scholarly publishing in some fields. Unfortunately,
much of the literature about scholarly e-publishing homogenizes the character
of publishing. This article provides an analytical approach for evaluating
disciplinary conventions and for proposing policies about scholarly
e-publishing. We characterize three dimensions of scholarly publishing as a
communicative practice -- publicity, access, and trustworthiness, and examine
several forms of paper and electronic publications in this framework. This
analysis shows how the common claim that e-publishing "substantially expands
access" is over-simplified. It also indicates how peer-reviewing (whether in
paper or electronically) provides valuable functions for scholarly
communication that are not effectively replaced by self-posting articles in
electronic media.
