Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 154: 999
Today each issue of CMAJ Online includes the full text of many of the print articles, with "hypertext" links to previously published online material. So, for example, if you read online a letter commenting on an earlier article, you can point, click and immediately read the article rather than hunt for the print issue of the journal, which may no longer be on your shelf.
The Jan. 15, 1996, issue demonstrates another advantage of an online journal: cost-effective publication of supplementary material. Dr. Fred Bass's article on the BC Doctors' Stop-Smoking Program (154: 159-164) is accompanied online by components of the program kit, which may be downloaded for use in your own practice.
Even more important to most users of an online journal is earlier access to fresh information. Although articles in CMAJ are embargoed until the issue date, you can now exchange critical comment and opinion rapidly through our online letters section. In addition, the conferences listing is updated online long before new items appear in print (and the online listing is much larger). Classified advertising will soon follow suit.
Join us online at /infobase/cmaj/index.htm for year 2 of our new "medium for the expression of all that is best in Canadian medicine" -- a medium that Sir Andrew Macphail could not have imagined when writing CMAJ's inaugural editorial (1911; 1: 57-58).