Some online eJournals

As of this writing, few scholarly serials in the humanities are available solely online. Serious article writing in the humanities is still done in print, and there appears to be considerable resistance to publishing solely online. Based on anecdotes and periodic articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, I believe that most of the resistance by potential submitters arises from by tenure review committees not viewing online articles favorably. They are viewed as light-weight, unreferred and impermanent. At least one example below would support that view. One journal below has not caught-on and last had an article in 1997! Such failure is self-reinforcing.

On the other hand, online reviews seem to be popular in the humanities, as evidenced by H-Net. The reviews on H-Net have improved to the point where some match the professional journals. (I do not think they generally match the level of a discursive intellectual periodical like The New York Review of Books, but the NYRB is unique in the United States.)

There is an interesting Oct 1999 article at D-Lib magazine "Evaluation of Usage and Acceptance of Electronic Journals" by Diann Rusch-Feja and Uta Siebeky. German research, which attempted to be cross-disciplinary. From the summary:

[The data] reveal a significantly high acceptance of electronic journals and an unwillingness to return to print versions only. The frequency of use of electronic journals from the four publishers [including Elsevier, Springer and Academic Press -pR] did vary from daily to once-a-month use.... [....] Desktop access, currency, ease in downloading, additional search modi, etc., were considered to be the greatest advantages of electronic journals. The most significant disadvantages were the lack of archiving and migration mechanisms for electronic journals (which threatened continued access), incomplete issues, and absence of back issues. [....] Comments found in the survey repeatedly expressed the desire for an integrated access system or interface to all journals, as well as to other information services.

D-Lib also has other articles on the same or related topics, worth skimming.

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Overviews

A good list and overview of all Online EJournals is maintained here http://www.crispinius.com/nfh2/zeitschriften/hjg-ejournals.html. God love the compiler, it includes genealogy newsletters, which are very, very popular.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr., of the University of Houston. An excellent bibliography, periodically updated by Bailey, which includes electronic serials and some linked articles.

Resources: Electronic Serials, also compiled by Charles W. Bailey. Judicious set of links on e-journals.

Humanities Scholarly Electronic Journals

Studies in the World History of Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation
http://h-net2.msu.edu/~slavery/
Sponsored by H-Net. Appears to be dead (none since 1997). I'm not sure why it didn't work. Too ambitious? Not enough prestige for tenure?

The Early America Review. A Journal of Fact and Opinion On the People, Issues and Events of 18th Century America
http://earlyamerica.com/review/
This is actually a commercial site! Has articles by lesser-known academics. Editor identified, but no statement (that I could find) of editorial purpose. Lots of picture of the writers. Colloquial tone. Feels popular, light-weight.

Perspectives Online. The Electronic Newsletter of the American Historical Association
http://chnm.gmu.edu/aha/persp/index.html
Online (and more up-to-date) version of AHA's Perspectives.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/
Ambitious, if ugly. Bookreviews. "Bryn Mawr Classical Review purports to be the second oldest online scholarly journal in the humanities" Lousy search abilities.

First Monday http://www.firstmonday.org
Claims to be "one of the first peer-reviewed journals on the Internet, about the Internet. First Monday expands the frontiers of academic publishing by combining the traditional values of peer review with publication on the World Wide Web."

American Diplomacy. An Electronic Journal of Commentary, Analysis, and Research on American Foreign Policy and Its Practice
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/
Has its own ISSN (a real publication). Ugly, amateurish (at times) design. Has editorial board and statements reversed http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/about_amdipl.html. Includes these statements:

NOTE: The opinions expressed by the authors published in this Journal are not necessarily those of members of the Editorial Advisory Board or of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies.
©All articles and other original materials are property of American Diplomacy Publishers unless otherwise indicated. Registered, ISSN Center, Library of Congress, ISSN No. 1094-8120

The Journal of the Association for History and Computing
http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCindex.HTM
Editorial statement describes purpose, frequency and mentions that older issues are sometimes updated. Editors listed separately. (Includes a lengthy statement on why e-journals should/should not exist. http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/Editorials/EditI1.HTML)

Library Electronic Journals

D-Lib (Digital Library) Magazine
http://www.dlib.org/dlib
One of the most respected e-publications on digital libraries and digital collections.

Ejournal
http://rachel.albany.edu/~ejournal/ejournal/ejournal.html. Principally an e-mail journal. From its masthead "_EJournal_ is a peer-reviewed, academic, electronic periodical. We are particularly interested in theory and practice surrounding the creation, transmission, storage, interpretation, alteration and replication of electronic 'text' - broadly defined. [....] _EJournal_ was begun at Albany in 1989. The first issue was e-mailed in March, 1991."

These notes were written Oct 1999 as a short report of online electronic journals. The Gilder Lerhman Collection was planning an electronic journal called The Gilder Lehrman eJournal of American History, to be based at www.historyjournal.com.