1. The advantages of a peer-refereed free-access full-text journal published online emerge from the observation that with the rapid development of new media technology the humanities must follow suit in capitalizing on the advantages offered by the said new media technology. The use of new technology -- in this case the internet and the world wide web -- is advantageous and must be exploited in all of its aspects for the advancement of scholarship in the humanities. In my opinion, the internet and the world wide web are viable avenues to serve the dissemination and transfer of knowledge to the benefit of scholarship, the individual scholar, as well as the general public. While this may be obvious, at least at this time these advantages do not appear to be accepted in the humanities in general.
2. As the associate director of the University of Alberta's Research Institute for Comparative Literature (RICL), in 1995 I built a home page for the Institute for information and research in comparative literature, including material such as an international directory of comparatists, various bibliographies, links, and a webpage of information about the University of Alberta Department of Comparative Literature. The RICL web site has been online on the server of the University of Alberta Faculty of Arts at (<http://www.ualberta.ca/ARTS/ricl.html>) from July 1995 to September 1998. In September 1998 I began with the organization of a peer-refereed free-access full-text journal in the humanities and social sciences published online and in March 1999 the new journal, CLCWeb Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal went online on the server of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Alberta at <http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/clcwebjournal/>. Material available previously in the RICL website, such as the international directory of comparatists and various bibliographies, have been carried over into the Library of CLCWeb. Of note is that webpage of the University of Alberta Department of Comparative Literature on the RICL website preceded the webpage of the Department and that in February 1999 its material has been carried over into the official website of the Department, now renamed the Department of Comparative Literature, Religion, and Film/Media Studies at <http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/comparative_studies/>.
3. In more detail, the background of CLCWeb is as follows. From 1989 to 1997, first as assistant later as associate director of RICL, my tasks included the publication of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée (CRCL/RCLC) and the publication of a monograph series published by RICL (for its list of books published, see <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/books.html>). In 1989, when I was appointed as assistant editor of CRCL/RCLC and at which time the publication of the journal has been three years late, I converted the publication of the journal to the desktop mode and while under my editing and publishing the journal's publication was on time, four times a year. The expertise I acquired during the years of publishing the journal -- 1989 to 1992 as assistant editor and 1992 to 1997 as associate editor -- from editing, the procedures and processes of evaluation of manuscripts, the journal's finances including its marketing and the writing of grant applications, the training of editorial assistants to the technical aspects of desktop publishing, etc., have proven invaluable and of benefit to both the CRCL/RCLC and myself. It is in this period -- the 1990s -- that new media technology allowed for much innovation in the publishing industry such as the conversion of the CRCL/RCLC from traditional printing processes (expensive and cumbersome) to desktop publishing resulting in the reduction of the costs of the journal's publication by up to 80%. In addition, graduate students assigned to me to train in all aspects of the journal's publication gained marketable skills and from the several dozen editorial assistants over the years a good number found work in the publishing industry in Canada and elsewhere, part time and full time. By the mid-1990s the world wide web burst on the scene and in 1995 I placed material for work in comparative literature in the website of the Research Institute for Comparative Literature at <http://www.ualberta.ca/ARTS/ricl.html> (the website was active 1995 to 1998). In 1997 I left RICL and the CRCL/RCLC and decided to take advantage of new media technology and the web to start a new journal for work in comparative literature and comparative cultural studies. Further, my objective to publish a new journal was to create a forum whose intellectual direction would reflect my own interests where I combine tenets of the discipline of comparative literature with tenets of cultural studies. And last but not least, the founding of an online journal allow me to practice my commitment to the humanities where access to knowledge is free to anyone and anywhere with a computer and internet connection. Indeed, the publication of a peer-reviewed full-text online journal in the humanities in general and in comparative literature and comparative cultural studies in particular remains exceptional in that among the large number of journals in the humanities world wide there are less than a handful such published online in full-text and in free-access (for a list journals in comparative literature, see <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/journals.html>).
4. After consultation with colleagues in a number of countries across the globe, it became obvious that the launching of an online journal would make sense indeed and that such a journal would fill a gap on the landscape of scholarship in the humanities in literature and culture. In consequence, an advisory board and associate editors group was struck, application for an ISSN number was processed with and obtained from the National Library of Canada (1481-4374), the listing, archiving, and mirroring of the new online journal with the National Library of Canada at <http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/e-coll-e/index-e.htm> has been arranged, etc. The first issue of CLCWeb was placed online in March 1999. The University of Alberta Faculty of Arts server provided the URL and the necessary disk space for the web location of the journal, the university's Help Desk and the University of Alberta Faculty of Arts Technologies for Learning Centre (TLC) at <http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/TLC> provided occasional technical help for the journal and its functions such as the CLCWeb moderated listserv.
5. The intellectual direction of the journal is holistic and pluralistic: while work in and with contextual approaches is favored and actively sought after, no submission is rejected a priori as long as the editor, the members of the advisory board / associate editors, and outside assessors determine, in blind peer review, the intellectual/scholarly value of a submission for publication (for the aims and objectives of the journal in more detail, go to <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/aims.html>, for procedures of publication go to <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/proced1.html>; for procedures of submission go to <htttp://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/proced2.html>; at Purdue University Press, the journal's description is at <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/journals.htm>). Briefly, CLCWeb is a scholarly journal in the humanities and social sciences in the fields of comparative literature, cultural studies, communication and media studies, culture and literary theory, interdisciplinary studies, and comparative cultural studies; it is peer-reviewed; it is published quarterly by Purdue University Press online in free-access full-text; annuals with selected papers from the year's work are published in the Purdue Series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies (see <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/compstudies.htm> and <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/ccs-purdue.html>. The material of the journal is archived by the National Library of Canada at <http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/e-coll-e/index-e.htm> while mirror sites are at the British Comparative Literature Association <http://www.bcla.org/clcwebjournal/> and at the International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication at <http://clcwebjournal.icaap.org/>.
6. In addition to papers and book review articles, the journal maintains a Library with bibliographies, selected research material and syllabi, an international directory of scholars in the field, a moderated listserv, etc., at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/library.html>. Colleagues are invited to send new work for publication to the editor, Steven Tötösy at <totosy@lib.purdue.edu>. For review, publishers are invited to send books to the editor, Steven Tötösy, 8 Sunset Road, Winchester, MA 01890 (a second copy is required directly to the reviewer upon note by the editor). The journal's structure of the advisory board / associate editors is non-traditional in that instead of the traditional two-tier structure where members of the advisory board include renown figures, "stars," in the field, that is, such members give renommee to the particular journal via the value of name recognition but are otherwise, in the rule, not involved with the journal, CLCWeb's structure of advisory board / associate editors is meant to work as a team -- a combination of renown and senior scholars as well as junior scholars -- whose members are involved in the assessment of work submitted for publication, in the solicitation of new work for publication, in the promotion of the journal, and generally in providing ongoing commentaries re the journal and all its functions. The journal's online history as in web traffic statistics can be accessed at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/stats/index.html> (the statistics include those from the journal's time at the University of Alberta).
7. During its inception in Canada, the set-up and start-up of CLCWeb including all technical aspects such as the design of its index page occurred without funding. Attempts have been made to obtain funding from Canada's SSHRC: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (new technology and learned journals program). Unfortunately, the program administrators insisted that CLCWeb, similar to the requirements for traditional hard-copy journals, must have 200 paid subscribers and the argument that the journal is online and in the mode of free access did not carry any weight. And the argument of the high web traffic of the journal already with only two issues online or the argument to accept the "hits" on and "session use" of the journal's material in lieu of paid subscriptions as a demonstration of its use in the scholarly community did not persuade the SSHRC to consider funding. Similarly, the University of Alberta Department of Comparative Literature considered the journal my "personal effort" I received no financial support or support "in kind" such as graduate student assistantships although the Department expressed intellectual and moral support for the journal. As far as the Department is concerned, the situation re the journal was deemed appropriate because the Department felt it would not be able to support two journals at the same time (the CRCL/RCLC housed by the Department and then the new CLCWeb).
8. By January 2000 following considerations of and plans for the development of CLCWeb and its legitimization in the world of scholarship, in cooperation with the journal's advisory board / associate editors I began exploring possibilities to relocate the journal from the Faculty of Arts at the Uiversity of Alberta to a university press. After several months of contacts, e-mail exchanges, and discussions with up to a dozen university presses and virtual libraries across North America and Europe, the editorial board of Purdue University Press <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu> approved the relocation to Purdue and the publishing of CLCWeb by Purdue. Purdue's decision is remarkable and far-sighted for several reasons. All other presses and even those who expressed avid interest to host and publish the journal ceased to be interested upon my insistence that the journal should remain in the free-access mode (presses initially interested suggested that the journal would have to be published in the paid-subscription mode). Purdue, on the other hand, accepted my argument that CLCWeb should remain in the free-access mode because of principles such as social responsibility, the notion of the internet and the web as a democratic venue for the globalization of knowledge, scholarly communication, and knowledge transfer. Of course, the question of where the money would come from if all online journals were in the mode of free access is valid. However, the argument for the mode of free-access of online journals in the humanities and social sciences -- despite the fact that such scholarly journals online are very few to date -- includes the proposition that income for the press by offering CLCWeb in the free-access mode is generated by name recognition for the press based on the high web traffic of CLCWeb. Thus, with issue 2.3 (September 2000), CLCWeb is published by Purdue University Press. The journal and all its functions incl. its Library (e.g., the international directory of comparatists, bibliographies, etc.) and its moderated listserv for news and announcements in comparative literature and culture are supported and assisted in the technical domain by Purdue University Libraries and Purdue University Press.
9. After my leaving the University of Alberta with 30 June 2000 and now residing in Winchester at Boston and the journal now published by Purdue, I remain the editor of CLCWeb. The members of the journal's advisory board / associate editors are <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/editor.html> Herbert Arlt (Wien), Mark Axelrod (Chapman University), Thomas Bacher (Purdue University Press), Remo Ceserani (University of Bologna), F. Elisabeth Dahab (Calfornia State University Long Beach), Roumiana Detcheva (Montréal), Babis Dermitzakis (University of Athens), Elizabeth A. Flynn (Michigan Technological University), Patricia D. Fox (University of Missouri-Columbia), Armando Gnisci (University of Rome), Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia), Marko Juvan (University of Ljubljana), Bart Keunen (University of Ghent), Benton Jay Komins (Oregon State University), Jose Manuel Losada Goya (University Complutense Madrid), Sophia A. McClennen (Illinois State University), Aldo Nemesio (University of Torino), Peter Petro (University of British Columbia), Anthony Julian Tamburri (Florida Atlantic University), William Thornton (National Cheng Kung University), Elka Tschernokoshewa (Institute of Sorbian Studies), Reinhold Viehoff (University of Halle-Wittenberg), Wang Ning (Beijing Language and Culture University), Pablo Zambrano (University of Huelva), and Vera Zubarev (University of Pannsylvania).
10. As a peer-reviewed forum of scholarship and in a form that combines traditional scholarship and practices and new media scholarship and technology, the journal offers the possibility of training and involvement in the study of the humanities in general and in comparative literature and culture in the particular. Owing to the nature of new media scholarship and publishing, editorial assistants can be located physically no matter where. For the above reasons as well as for the reason of assistance needed in the work of the journal, CLCWeb appoints graduate student editorial assistants for periods of one academic year (renewable). The tasks of the graduate student assistants include editing, file transfers and formatting, HTML, bibliography work, the maintenance of the journal's Library incl. the checking of active/non-active web links, technical, administrative, and market dimensions and aspects of new media scholarship and publishing, etc. Upon an advertisement posted on the listserv of CLCWeb in May 2000, in the ensuing two months thirty positive responses from seven countries arrived from whom I selected Steven Aoun (Monash University) and Wendy C. Nielsen (University of California Davis) for the academic year 2000-01 as editorial assistants for CLCWeb. The appointment of further graduate student editorial assistants is under ongoing consideration. In 2001-02 Wendy C. Nielsen, upon obtaining her Ph.D. in comparative literature, accepted the appointment of book review editor, the editorial assistants of the journal in 2002 are Steven Aoun (Monash University), Marta Guirao (University College London), and Patricia I. Vieira (University of California Santa).