The first electronic journals were started in the 1980s.[1] In contrast to today's perspective which is dominated by detail problems like Open Access in the 1980s the debate was held in a more general perspective. It was compared what the difference is between electronic journals and printed journals. The perhaps most interesting point is, that peer review and the existence of an editor are typical elements of a printed journal. They are producing sense and it is not possible to avoid them.
Let us take a look into the workflow. According to the description an author writes a paper, submits it to the editor and the editor submits it to the peer reviewer.[1] Why this workflow is remarkable is, because it was mentioned in the year 1982 as a role model for printed journals. At this time, electronic journals weren't available or they were started slowly. And if the peer reviewer has together with the editor and the author revised the document it gets printed and delivered to the reader.
Now it is possible to explain why this workflow was used by printed journals. Suppose an author submits a manuscript directly to the printer. the result is, that many authors will do so. Lots of draft articles get printed and the amount of article would be very high. The editor and the reviewer are useful to slowdown the process. Their main task is to stop an author, select only the best manuscripts and make sure that the publication is postponed.
This kind of moderation is a reaction to the printing press. A printing press is a bottleneck. Printing a document is a costly process and it will take time It is not allowed to print a manuscript if it contains of spelling mistakes or if the quality is low.
Suppose the idea is to start a printed journal from scratch. The chance is high that this fictional journal will work with the same principle in mind like the journals from the past. That means, the author is slowdowned by the editor and the peer reviewer with the attempt that only high quality knowledge is send to the printer.
In electronic journals the printing press is missing. It is possible to publish low quality manuscripts full of spelling mistakes. The reason is, that printing out something doesn't cost anything but publication is nothing else than creating an electronic file. Do we need an editor and peer reviewer to slow down the process? It is a rhetorical question. The only reason why electronic journals have a peer review is because they are trying to emulate the printed journal system from the past. That means, that the journal gets printed and the electronic version is an addon.
Or let me explain the situation from a different perspective. It is pretty easy to explain the peer review system for printed journals. Peer review provides an important filter in the process and without peer review, a printed journal can't be created. The problem is, that it is much harder or impossible to explain the peer review process in case of electronic only journals. The basic question is, why it is not possible to publish the raw version of a manuscript?
___Peer review___
The underlying assumption for a peer review is that it helps to filter the information. this makes the peer review process a powerful instance. It is in the hand of the peer reviewer to decide if a certain manuscript gets printed. What is ignored is, that not the peer reviewer is the important instance but the printing press itself is the reason why a manuscript gets rejected. A printing press is a machine which produces costs. If a certain manuscript should be published in a journal, it has to be printed first. If the journal has a circulation of 10k copies, the printing press will print out the manuscript 10k times. This process takes time and will produce costs.
Because of this reason a printing press is used seldom. That means, it is not allowed that anybody can print out his ideas but the machine has a priority queue. This queue is not something which is determined by a journal but it has to do with the limits of the mechanical machine. That means, printing works in a sense that it will produces costs and costs need to be managed.
Let me explain it the other way around. What all the printed journals have in common is, that the printed text are spelling free and that they were peer reviewed at least 10 tiimes. Only if a manuscript is absolute perfect, and only if the journal editor is 1000% sure that the reader will need the information, he will send the manuscript to the printer.
___Technology___
From a computer perspective, electronic publication has been solved. The first programs for desktop publishing were invented in the late 1980s and since the advent of HTML and PDF it is possible to publish a document in the internet. What is missing is the cultural shift towards electronic knowledge. This shift is possible only in theory but not realized yet. The problem with electronic publication is, that the amount of information will become much higher than before. It can be compared with inventing the printing press a second time.The original printing press has increased the amount of books from a few hundreds to millions. And electronic publishing will increase the amount of books from millions to ...
___Literature___
[1] Turoff, Murray, and Starr Roxanne Hiltz. "The electronic journal: A progress report." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 33.4 (1982): 195-202.