Some people reading research published on the Internet may be thinking about doing something similar. After considering the dilemma between publishing on the net and in paper form myself, I've decided to write a few notes on what I have been thinking, partly to get the issue clear in my own mind. Some of this page will apply to historical research in particular.

Most of us are used to the traditional means of publishing research, in book form. With the growth of the Internet, a new medium has arisen which has its own benefits and drawbacks. By far the biggest advantage of the Internet is the extent to which the information is freely available. You can look up a reference to an obscure text and temporarily come to a dead end as that is all you have, the reference. To get at this, you will have to spend time going to a library, maybe even a specialist library, which may or may not have the title you are looking for. Once found, you can either take out the volume on loan, or make notes if it reference only. Either way, you will not have a permanent copy of the full text unless you make a set of photocopies which can be expensive, time consuming and when photographs or complex diagrams are involved, inadequate. If however, the reference you have is for a web page, you can (assuming you have a computer) access the information cheaply, quickly and permanently. This benefit extends to references you put in your own web pages if you decide to create some. The reader can find the text being refered to with a simple click of the mouse. The use of internal reference is also made easier with 'See page x' being replaced with a simple link.

Availability becomes a problem for the Internet due to its fluid nature. Servers go down, people move their pages to alternative providers or just stop supporting them all together, leaving you with a reference that can never be found. Short of contacting the person who originally produced the page and attempting to get a copy, which they may or may not have, the best way to avoid this problem, at least for your own benefit, is to make a copy of all pages you reference on your own computer. Getting this information to the reader when the page disappears may cause problems with copyright, but at least a copy can be emailed to an interested enquirer.

Another benefit of Internet publishing is the ability to change what you have already published. Unlike a book where it gets printed and you can't change your mind or update it, unless you bring out a new edition, you can fix mistakes or modify for new ideas with a web page. The downside of this comes with references. If you reference someones text and then they change their mind and change it to mean something completely different from what you read originally, you are left looking very silly as the references no longer backs up what you are saying.

The solution to the problems of reference fluidity and permanent availability can be solved with one solution. We need some kind of permanent web publishing whereby a stable third party, such as a university, would take on a web site, ensuring its permanence. Once it has been 'published' in this way, it should not be allowed to be changed by the original author, to ensure that any references to that document are correct. This unfortunately doesn't allow change and the fixing of errors by the author, though this can be tackled either by having a link to a live site, or by having multiple editions of the same site posted to the publishing institution.

Another benefit for the budding researcher is speed of publication. You don't have to wait for the book to be prepared, printed and distributed, you don't even have to finish the 'book'. You can put the beginnings of your work on the net and get that sense of achievement and valuable feedback from other people, without several years slog with nothing to show for it until it is done. The internet by its very nature supports this by providing the medium to create communities based on ideas rather than geographical location. More accessable than joining some form of society, webrings, links pages, mailing lists and chat forums provide the means for people with similar interests to join and get to know people with similar interests and enables an informal and open method of peer review, if the community is so inclined.

Portability is a problem for web pages, most people access the internet on a desktop computer, which unlike a book, can hardly be taken on a walk round the contryside. As the technology used in palmsized computers improves, taking documents into the field will actually become easier, as mighty tomes will be squeezed into ever smaller electronic packages. For some though, this will never replace the romantic notion of reading a book in plesent country surroundings.

Certainly in historical research, the year 2000 causes a problem for research as well as computer programs. It is no longer valid to say 'this century', 'last century', or even 'this millenium' and 'last millenium' as this will soon be changing. This isn't so much of a problem in books as you can look at the date of publication, which is fixed. On the internet, though you can put a date of creation on the document, the document may be updated and the date changed. If you are using Javascript to display the date of the document, you also have to think of people who are sitting behind a proxy server, which will create its own local copy, thereby putting the creation date of the document as today. Most people will be able to work out exactly what you mean, but it is best to use absolute rather than relative references to dates.

Though it is changing, many peoples lack of technical knowledge is still a problem. Some people don't even know how to use a computer, yet alone use the internet and create web pages. Even those who do know how to use the medium may not have access to the internet all the time. Regarding the creation of web pages, modern software is making it easier to create web documents without getting into the nuts and bolts, and there will be a time when technical knowledge will not be a restriction as the use of computers becomes more widely taught in schools. When that day comes, the internet will really come to life. For some though, there will always be books and certainly the two mediums are not mutually exclusive.

For some, writing books is a living, it is how they get money to be able to eat and have a roof over their heads. To them the idea of publishing on the internet may seem self-defeating. There are actually several ways that the internet can be used to earn money for your research. A web page with a small amount of published research can be used to publicise a book or books containing more detailed research and a reference to your own web page in your book can highlight to the reader other books you have written. You can even sell your book online, either handling the distribution yourself, or giving that responsibility to an internet book distribution company such as amazon. You can also make money for your website through such companies by recommending several books and providing a special link to their pages which are logged when accessed, so you can get paid for providing the link. The other side of the coin is complete publishing on the net but only allowing access to the information to people who have paid for a password to access it. All these methods have been successful and as more people use the internet, its use can only become more profitable.

I am not going to give a conclusion either way, preference for the level of use, or use at all of the internet is a matter of personal taste, though the reader may detect a certain bias towards the internet in the text above.