INTRODUCTION: The World Wide Web (WWW) has emerged only this decade, and is beginning to be a powerful medium for the publication of scholarly work. The Graphic, Visualisation and Useability Centre's Third WWW User Survey of 13 000 WWW users found that 75% browse through sites once a day, and over a third use the WWW for academic research. However it has been stated that many articles published on the WWW follow a print media format and are of no greater quality than print-based articles. A report conducted for the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee noted that all electronic serial journals are currently peer reviewed and free of charge, but have difficulty representing tables and equations and suffer the problem of anonymity. The report stated that authors needed support and recognition from their institutions, noting larger works had been aided by commercial publishing firms. This four-minute survey investigates the use and opinion of academic papers published on the WWW.