Problems and the Epistemology of Electronic Publishing in the Arab World: The Case of Lebanon

Publishing in the Arab world still is in its development stage. Many journals discontinue publication because of financial pressures, while those that asynchronously function are almost totally dependent on institutional (academic) funds. Other barriers as editorial hegemony, national and political instability, and institutional discouragement that hinder researchers and writers to submit or even try to publish work in indigenous Arab journals. Scholarly output is generally tied to the epistemological perspective of the researcher-writer; this in itself has been the major milestone to the lack and absent electronic journals in the Arab world. Electronic publishing has not appealed to the scholarly community in the Arab and Middle Eastern society and remains to be in dormant state. Scholars need to understand the World Wide Web and recognize the revolutionary elements of electronic journals as pacifiers to the hegemony of traditional publishing.