The Biological Bulletin, an eclectic, 97-year-old journal published by the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, will collaborate with the Information Systems Division of the MBL to produce an electronic companion: the Biological Bulletin Marine Models Electronic Record (BB-- MMER). This new journal, distributed via the World Wide Web, will publish practical information about nonmammalian marine organisms that are useful in basic biological and biomedical research. Marine organisms and the preparations made from them have served as experimental models for more than a century, and their use has led to many fundamental discoveries, particularly in developmental biology, neurobiology, and cellular physiology. Unfortunately, neither the particulars of collecting, maintaining, and culturing these organisms, nor the detailed protocols, recipes, and bibliographies essential to their use in experimental science, are published in traditional journals due to limitations of space. Thus the details that underlie the findings are lost, or must be rediscovered in different laboratories. The BB--MMER will approach this problem in two ways: as a traditional scholarly journal; and as a novel electronic database available to scientists everywhere in the world. First, like its hard-copy cousin, the BB--MMER will solicit and accept contributions, and these will be reviewed by the Biological Bulletin's stable of referees. All papers accepted for publication and distributed by the BB--MMER will therefore be genuine, citable journal articles. Concurrently, the staff of the MBL's Information Systems Division will use the Mosaic environment to develop hypertext linkage and data management features for the journal. Each BB--MMER contribution will be presented hierarchically: i.e., first the title page containing an abstract and a table of contents; then (by option) the body of the paper, and finally (by option) step-by-step laboratory protocols and other detailed materials in appendices. Superior illustrations will be provided in color or black-and-white, and video segments will be included eventually. Publishing a journal electronically can improve indexing, retrieval, and multiple use. Moreover, electronic publishing enables authors to modify or upgrade previously published work. But most value is added by the linkage and management features that are made possible by the electronic environment. Thus, users of the BB--MMER will not only be able to obtain comprehensive information about a large selection of model organisms and their tissue preparations, but also to compare protocols, recipes, preparations, or other units of information called from many different papers. And this facility will become more fruitful with time, as the size and complexity of the database increases.
