Revel in electronic and paper media

Some BMJ readers are proud of not using the world wide web. Others are scornful of paper media, predicting that one day everything will be purely electronic. Both are wrong, and we urge BMJ readers and authors to exploit to the full both paper and electronic media.

The BMJ has two audiences that overlap only a little. Each week we send out about 115 000 paper journals, mostly to people in Britain. Yet in any one week only about 5-10% of these people access bmj.com. At the same time we have around 100 000 weekly visitors to bmj.com. Most are from outside Britain, and only about 15% of them see the paper version regularly.

Only a small proportion of those who get the paper journal access bmj.com, perhaps because they cannot see any point in doing so. They are wrong. The single biggest reason why they should access bmj.com is to read the rapid responses: the letters to the editor that we post within 24 hours of receipt every day, including at the weekend. We regularly post 20 letters and some days it is 40 or more.

Rapid responses are a form of immediate debate on topics that bother doctors. Look, for instance, at the 50 or so responses that accumulated in the month following publication of the editorial on “Do not resuscitate” decisions and elderly people.¹,² It will take us a few more weeks to publish some of the letters in the paper journal, and we will be able to publish only a small proportion. Readers who are missing these debates are missing something rich and useful.

Readers of the paper BMJ might also want to access bmj.com in order to find information on a particular topic. The weekly BMJ is a series of slices of information, but bmj.com is an accumulating database that goes back to 1994. It includes nearly 25 000 articles—some 15 million words—and readers will discover that they can find relevant and high quality information on almost any health related topic. Through bmj.com users have direct access to the websites of the BMJ Publishing Group's specialist journals. Together these resources comprise a continuously updated reference shelf.

Those who access bmj.com but do not use the paper journal might want to do so for two simple reasons: readability and portability. It's a hard job to read a full issue of the BMJ—as opposed to one or two articles—on the web.

We also urge the BMJ's authors to make greater use of the two media. They should aim to present short, readable articles in the paper journal. These articles will be reproduced on bmj.com, but authors can add additional material including more information, data, explanations, examples, and links. The tension between providing a readable article for generalists and giving more information to those with a greater interest cannot be avoided in a purely paper world, but it can be in a world that is simultaneously paper and electronic.