The printing press quickly induced massive reprinting of old and often, in the strict scientific sense, obsolete works. Although this introduced the birth of information overload with all its noise problems, it also unified the widely scattered knowledge and data repositories of humankind. As Eisenstein clearly points out, this general availability of the human intellectual heritage was needed since the universal mastering and assimilation of all previous knowledge was necessary before it could be properly surpassed.

At the moment we are already witnessing the trend of making all kinds of works available in electronic form. It indicates that in the electronic era, more than ever before, all previous scientific reporting, discussions and controversies become available as permanent sources for referencing, inspiration and, where needed, dismissal. It also implies that parts of old works can be integrated easily into new works. In this way a new period of general information re-evaluation can start.

Next to the obvious rôle in advancing the education and general cultural level of society, printing also enhanced the integrity of the information as such, since deteriorating information due to heavy use, damage or aging can be checked against other copies of the same edition.

The availability of many identical copies allowed serious scientific discourse and exchange of views based on exactly the same information. This aspect became an essential ingredient of scientific development (including the concept of certification) and is, of course, an essential feature of electronic media too, now extended to sound, film, and colour.

An important related aspect is the use of books for self-study overtaking the old master-apprentice relationship. Knowledge is no longer coupled to a person but is easily available for the independent student. In an electronic environment "interactive textbooks" will complete this historical line with courses adaptable to the various levels and needs of the students and scientists. Re-use of information also means that it should be stored differently: less in the form of large comprehensive linear texts and more as a collection of units, modules, or objects which can be dynamically combined.

In the course of this centuries long process well established standards for writing and reporting emerged, which now appear natural. Standards in the chain of events from scientific experiment to publication are now vested in research protocols, instructions to authors, and research funding proposal forms. The quality control and certification procedures find their expression in Journal names and Imprints of publishing houses. Although quality and certification requirements will prevail, standards will partly change in an electronic environment. Different standards and ways of presentation for different kinds of information will develop: for example, the presentation in electronic form of raw experimental data demands another standard of (manipulatable) presentation and judgement (e.g. in peer review protocols) than mathematical proofs or scientific claims.

Increasing familiarity with regularly numbered pages (in Arabic numbers), punctuation marks, section breaks, running heads, indices helped to order the thoughts of all readers, whatever their profession or craft. In an interesting essay, Katzen [3] analyses the development of typographical and lay-out structures in a case study of the Philosophical Transactions from 1665 until today. Highlighted text, running headlines, and all other techniques to identify different kinds of information in a printed text are now transcended in functional approaches such as the Standard Generalized Mark Up Language (SGML), where the information content is identified separately from its typographical representation. The ordering of information will change again, as page numbers cease to exist. New ways of structuring and referring to information are needed; this is the subject of my own research group.

The invention of errata allowed the continuing improvement of works in subsequent print runs. In an electronic environment one could argue that we errata become unnecessary, if a mistake is identified the electronic file can be updated. The file date or its version number will then inform the reader which file is the most recent and hence the correct one. In doing so, two problems have to be dealt with namely: (i) it is important to keep the very first (original) version to enable comparison with the corrected one(s), since the reader of the original version has to know what has been corrected in order to understand the correction; (ii) many errata are not simply misprints but comprise arguments or in-depth corrections. In such cases updating blurs the uniqueness of the original and hides possibly important discussion, in short, the scientific integrity is at stake. In such cases the erratum should be considered as a comment to a communication and hence should be appended permanently to the original instead of being integrated.
This aspect also points to the notion that collectively working on one article in an electronic environment does not necessarily lead to a single homogeneous text. Real integrated discussion can become the hallmark of a modular electronic article.

In the coming period we will experience again a complete overhaul of all characteristics of scientific information. In order to cope with this intriguing perspective we have to clearly dissect two types of problems that must be dealt with:
(i) The problems related to the introduction of the electronic medium as the replacement of paper for the existing culture of scientific information exchange.
(ii) The problems, or perhaps better the opportunities, the new medium gives us for introducing fundamental new forms and ways of scientific information exchange.

To paraphrase the US secretary of state during the Cold War, John Foster Dulles, in dealing with the flood of electronic possibilities we have to develop a policy of containment as well as roll back. The first set of problems mentioned deal with containment, the second set with a victorious roll-back.

(i) The established rôles of the scientific publication for author's and readers have to be addressed and clearly spelled out. A first overview is given by Kircz and Roosendaal [4]. It goes without saying that in an electronic environment at least the same level of registration quality, integrity and certification procedures must be guaranteed. Hence, clear rules on the status and reliability of electronic pre-prints have to be established.
(ii) Scientific publications cease to have a unique appearance (the printed article), given that the electronic format allows a great many ways of presentation depending on the readers wishes and technical capabilities. This leads to the need for development of clear standards for submission and storage in electronic form.
(iii) The capability and desire for integrating all scientific articles into coupled electronic archives also demands a clear structuring that allows re-use of articles or parts thereof independent of the actual level of technology. In addition, the structure must be broad enough to encompass all fields of science, medicine and humanities. Together with point 2 above, this directs us to an energetic development of document exchange languages such as SGML.
(iv) Since the scientific integrity and certification of the original (and each updated) version must be uniquely defined in an electronic archive (or library), standards for dating and electronic watermarking must emerge. This will enable future generations to follow trails in scientific discussions even if the documents evolve dynamically and more authors change and improve an electronically available text.
(v) The development of free text searching techniques will continue to be an essential aid in retrieving relevant information. A new balance has to be found between the possibilities of pre-coordination (SGML-tags, keyword and classification terms) and free text post-coordinating methods including user profiles for relevance ranking, etc.