Enhanced Online Content (Pratt, 2009)

Moving the ASHA journals to an online format on HighWire Press has resulted in a number of benefits for both the journals’ readership and article authors. Readers can receive an electronic table of contents (eTOC) via e-mail each time an issue appears, as well as e-mail alerts when articles with specified content become available. The Papers in Press feature benefits both authors and readers by reducing the delay between manuscript acceptance and content availability. In addition, the burden of obtaining continuing education credits for reading articles and reviewing manuscripts has been reduced. However, I wish to highlight in particular one recent addition—the inclusion of enhanced online content—because it has the potential to greatly alter the nature of our publications. Enhanced online content consists of supplementary material that authors submit with their manuscripts. This content can consist of images, figures, text, raw data, audio files, or video clips that will reside online and can be accessed from within a published online article. The material receives peer review along with the manuscript and is copyedited where possible. Most important, however, is that the content augments the article in ways not previously possible with hard-copy journal articles.