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This article addresses the opportunities that XML can offer to the publishing scientist and explores why there has been such a relatively slow take‐up. XML can revolutionize the way that scientists publish their work, but few publishers have shown enthusiasm for it. This article also describes the development of XML‐based tools and technologies as alternative methods for scholarly communication in several science fields. These methods include combined data and text (datuments), robotic validation and the combination of markup languages. The authors believe that these methods will certainly challenge the current publishing practices and transform the librarian’s role in providing e‐journal services.

The use of XML in the lifecycle of e‐journals has recently emerged as a hot topic in the library world. This burst of interest is largely due to proposals to use XML in e‐journal archiving and also a growing awareness of the advantages of XML for metadata. But the publishing community are increasingly viewing XML as playing a central role in the future of the entire e‐journals process. The papers in this special issue cover a breadth of opinion but there is a common theme; namely, that XML and its related technologies can help to fulfil the promise of e‐journals.

Present and possible future developments in the techniques of document management are reviewed, the major ones being text retrieval and scanning and OCR. Acquisition, indexing and thesauri, publishing and dissemination and the document management industry are also addressed. The emerging standards are reviewed and the impact of the Internet is analysed.