Internet UseAre mainstream scientific researchers using the Internet to its full multimedia potential? As a medium for presenting research, the Internet was designed to provide publishers with much more than just access to text. It's incredibly simple to incorporate photographs, diagrams, illustrations, sounds, animations, films and all kinds of non-text content into a website using today's user-friendly web development software . This subject, Networks and Multimedia in Science and Technology, was designed to open its students' eyes to the exciting multimedia possibilities available that can communicate research results more accessible, more effective and more concise than plain text. A review of some of the research presented by many of these students, linked to the NAMIST CONFERENCE PAGE, makes it clear that well-designed websites can make even the most potentially boring topics (statistics? butterflies?) engaging and interesting through to the use of intuitive structures and appropriate multimedia. However, a browse through the website of Australia's leading government-funded scientific organization, the CSIRO AUSTRALIA page, reveals myriads of research articles published almost exclusively in text-only format. The official announcement http://www.nobel.se/announcement-98/physics98.html of the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics includes a few diagrams, but nothing you wouldn't find in a textbook Many links from the American science organization www.Sigmaxi.org's science resources page, http://www.sigmaxi.org/scienceresources/scienceresources.htm, contain a small amount of graphic content, but I found only one site, http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/ - a site dedicated to volcano research - consistently used movie files, sounds and animations, and this site was filed under "fun for kids" on the sigmaxi resource list. I believe there are many reasons for the scientific community's apparent aversion to multimedia. The perception that research presented in a flashy and colorful manner lacks substance and that researchers who spend a lot of time on their presentation compromise the research itself could be a significant factor. The traditional presentation of research has been through publications in scientific journals, not known for their attention to visual appeal, and reliance on extensive visual or multimedia assistance to grab the reader's attention could be considered condescending. , while relatively simple to use with today's advanced, user-friendly development software, nevertheless takes much more time than using simple text. In the context of a scientific report, including visual cues requires much more work than equivalent textual explanations in most cases. Additionally, many researchers are unfamiliar with the techniques needed to produce them and are more likely to attempt written explanations rather than commissioning graphic works..