Electronic publishing and internet learning.

or the past five years, it has been our great pleasure to serve as the editorial team of the Journal of Clinical Pathology. We have been fortunate to be able to implement several changes to the journal, and have kept our readership aware of these by means of several editorials. 1–8 Now that our term of office is coming to an end, we would like to review the developments of the journal during the past five years, and try to look into the future, especially with regard to electronic publishing. Changes in the world of electronic publishing happen quickly and we have tried to keep abreast of them. JCP has been fully on line with full access to papers for several years now, 1 and in view of the many " hits " our website gets this is quite a success. Access has been made free to the developing countries 2 to stimulate research and progress in the diagnostic field. The last big change has been the implementation of a fully inter-net based electronic submission system called Bench>Press. 7 This has speeded up the reviewing process dramatically, and has resulted in a much faster editorial turnaround time. It has also facilitated the submission of papers to JCP from remote areas of the world, which is in line with the journal's international scope. The journal, together with the other journals in the BMJ Publishing Group, has undergone a major change in layout, which makes it easier to read. We have also introduced several new sections , such as Historical Fillers, 9–11 Grand Round Presentations, 12 Best Practice Papers, 13–24 and ECHOES. The latest addition to this arsenal is the Diagnostic Brief. These are one page articles containing diagnostic algorithms of important practical value, which we assume many professionals will copy to put on a pile beside the microscope. The first one on the immunohistochemical classification of T and NK cell neoplasms is published in this issue. 25 Although such Diagnostic Briefs may especially suit his-topathologists, the series will also cover microbiology, chemical pathology, immu-nology, and haematology. Although Diagnostic Briefs will in principle be commissioned, JCP also welcomes spontaneous submissions. Our continuous professional development (CPD) programme, Pathology Interactive , which was introduced on CD-ROM in 1999, 4 26 27 is now also available on line (http://cpd.bmjjournals.com/). When browsing the JCP website, CPD questions related to JCP papers can now be directly accessed …