Mary-

        The loss of membership or subscriptions due to freely available
publications is a fear of many kinds of societies and journal publishers.
Many journals now make their publications available on the web, but one
still needs to subscribe in order to be able to see the
journal/magazine/article. Readers get in through usernames and
passwords or IP addresses (e.g., a university library will subscribe and
all of the IP addresses that serve the campus or library will be allowed
access (each computer hooked up to the web has an address consisting
of a string of numbers, however, most people who connect to the web
through a commercial provider does not have a permanent address, so
they must use the username/password combination)). Some publishers
are even allowing non-subscribers access for fee (paid via credit card).
There are several non-profits that publish on the web. I am familiar with
the scientific non-profits which tend to be rather large with several
publications and therefore a large financial base to work from, however,
I do not think it will be so expensive for one publication.

        If you want to check out some other on-line publications, see
<http://www.aip.org> and go into the on-line journals section. If you try to
access an article you will see how they ask for a username and
password. Also, if you go to <http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/> and
go to the journals section, you will find a list of journals that Univ. of
Chicago Press publishes for a variety of societies and see how those
are set up (you could even contact some of the societies to see how
it works for them, and they are not all science (there is usually a link to
the society homepage from each journal homepage)).

        Depending on how your journal is funded, other questions that
come up when working on this sort of thing is whether to offer on-line
plus print, on-line only, or print only subscriptions (some people will want
a hardcopy and an on-line subscription). Also, what format to place it on
the web, e.g., make HTML pages, PDF files, GIF images of the pages, or
something else.

        I hope I haven't frighten you off of placing your publication on the
web. There is a lot to worry about, but it isn't as difficult as it would
appear.

                                                angela putney
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