The dawn of a new age in the dissemination of and access to information will not have escaped your notice. I refer, of course, to the world wide web. The Internet has developed and grown so rapidly that neither publishers nor editors of journals can afford to ignore it. It is definitely not going to go away. Gut has had an Internet presence for some years now but it has been a rather limited affair —just tables of contents and some general information on the journal. In October 1998 Gut joined its illustrious cousin, the BMJ, at the HighWire Press. A division of Stanford University’s Green Library, HighWire’s mission is to “foster research and instruction by providing a more direct linkage between the writers and readers of scholarly materials.”1

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The revamped Gut website, still at the old address (www.gutjnl.com), contains many of the features any of you familiar with eBMJ will recognise: eGut will allow you to view the current issue, search for articles published previously in the journal and to browse the archives. The website will also draw attention to rapidly developing areas in gastroenterology and hepatology through customised alerts and allow you to cross search, through the collected resources function, any journals in the HighWire stable including Hepatology,Gastroenterology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cell, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. eGut also links directly with eBMJ and other journals in the BMJ Publishing Group. In addition there is direct access to Medline to enable you to search for articles related to a Gut paper or to access previous publications cited in the reference list of a Gut paper.

Access to eGut is free until July 1999. Various pricing models for subscriptions to eGut are currently under discussion, so please watch our homepage for further information.

This is an exciting time to be a journal editor—who knows where or what the final frontier will be. At Gut we try to anticipate what our readers want and we certainly hope thateGut will fulfil your expectations. As always, your views and constructive criticisms on these new developments in the journal are welcome.