There's quite a bit of information at the Web site about the types of material this journal is looking for, and guidelines for how to submit to them if you wish. What they say about themselves is that, "This truly scientific journal expands the frontiers of academic publishing by combining the traditional values of peer-reviewing and strict quality control with publication on the World Wide Web."

When I was there, I was still unclear on the concept, even after reading this description, so I went to their archives to take a look at the types of material they had already reviewed and accepted.

Here's a brief quote from the intro of one of the papers they have published entitled "The Semiotics of SimCity" by Ted Friedman, a graduate student at Duke University:

"Introduction

"Every encounter between reader and text is a kind of exchange [1]. A book lies inert until it you pick it up and begin to read, extracting meaning out of the jumble of markings on the page. Once you've begun reading, your understanding and expectations structure your encounter with each new passage; that text, in turn, affects your subsequent response to the next passage. The exchange continues, back and forth, so that a good book can seem to 'suck you in' until you lose track of where you end and the book begins.

"This magical connection between reader and book, however, is tenuous, and difficult to maintain. A moment's distraction, and the words are once again just markings on a page. In a way, the exchange is always one-sided; no matter what you do on your end, the text remains the same. What makes interaction with computers so powerfully absorbing - for better and worse - is the way computers can transform the exchange between reader and text into a feedback loop. Every response you make provokes a reaction from the computer, which leads to a new response, and so on, as the loop from the screen to your eyes to your fingers on the keyboard to the computer to the screen becomes a single cybernetic circuit.

"Of course, there's many different kinds of software, and different levels of engagement with computers. Using a word processor is a fairly disengaged activity. You see the words appear on the screen as you type, but the rest is up to you. Surfing the Web offers a moderate degree of engagement, as the term "browsing" implies. The feedback is incremental rather than fluid - each new page offers a series of discrete options; each surfing choice brings up a new page of hyperlinks. For a sense of full immersion, there's nothing like a computer game, in which the computer responds almost instantaneously to every action of the player, which in turn provokes a new reaction from the player, and so on...."

The writing is high quality, but not off putting. Recommended.