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PurposeThis paper seeks to present six key articles from the archives of Internet Research within a research framework, covering infrastructure, organization, commerce, governance, linking, and interface.Design/methodology/approachThe six articles are introduced, summarized, and used to focus attention on each of the core areas of research that impacted the growth of the Internet.FindingsThe prism of time is one of the most powerful tools of observation available to scientists and researchers. Palaeontologists think in terms of aeons, archaeologists consider millennia a mere starting‐point, even the biologists, chemists, and physicists have centuries of prior research to consider. Internet Research, the Journal, is only 20 years old – and the field only slightly older than that. Yet what decades those have been. Six articles from the early years of Internet Research epitomize much of the innovation, excitement, challenges and vision that would reshape the world. While tremendous advances in technology have been made in the past 20 years, a number of the original issues and challenges remain unresolved.Practical implicationsThe paper serves to frame the historic articles within a broader research context.Originality/valueThe paper provides a conceptual framework for researchers seeking insights into some of the early formative research on the Internet and web.

Examines the use of shared semantics information to link concepts in an organizational memory to e‐mail communications. E‐mail is by far the dominant business application of the Internet, yet the use of e‐mail relies on a number of assumptions regarding the effectiveness of interpersonal communications. One of these assumptions is that of common meaning or shared semantics. Assuming shared semantics in electronic communications can lead to a breakdown in communication, and the very managerial improvements that e‐mail is intended to foster can be negated by the resultant lack of understanding. In this paper how shared semantics are created, maintained, and used to enhance e‐mail communications is discussed. A framework for determining shared semantics based on organizational and personal user profiles is presented. How shared semantics are used by the HyperMail system to help link OM content to e‐mail messages is illustrated.

Notes that until the advent of the Internet, major libraries and text repositories were considered by all as bastions of information, but the Internet has opened up a treasure‐trove of information for researchers and seekers of knowledge throughout the world. It has become common practice by researchers of all kinds to turn to the Internet as a convenient source of information. Asks how effectively does the Internet really present these researchers with a representative picture of the state of human knowledge? Identifies the potential misuse of the Internet as a source of biased information. Defines biased information as information not representative of the state of human knowledge. In order to provide a basis for comparison, begins by defining the concept of a representative subset, which is used as a basis for comparing the nature of different information resources. This is followed by a presentation of the use of the knowledge‐comparison function in evaluating different information resources. Then discusses the significance of information equivalence in the information age as a basis for setting concrete goals for Internet research policy. Concludes by presenting a number of courses of action including a description of X‐DEX, an Internet indexing standard based on the US Library of Congress cross‐reference system.