[Reseña] Science communication on the Internet. Old genres meet new genres

Abstract

To everyone working in the field of English for Specific Purposes, thenotion of genre has enormous importance. Scientific and professional textsare only comprehensible if we approach them from a sound understandingof genre as the key to the way professional discourse communities uselanguage to perform social actions. In the last ten years, however, ourknowledge of professional genre repertoires has been increasinglychallenged by the emergency of new digital genres, often existing in parallelwith the traditional ones. This development has been particularly interestingin the area of scientific publication, where researchers and publishers havebeen eager to grasp the possibilities of Internet-based media. This volumemakes a significant contribution to our understanding of this rapidlychanging scenario.