This paper explains how, after many temptations to define what is an “electronic journal”, nowadays we haven’t a standard definition about it yet. This is caused by the nature of these objects; in fact they have an ephemeral consistency and consequently is very difficult to hand out a specific and only one definition. Like Crossman (a philosopher from Oxford, but better known as a politician and military strategist during the Second War World) wrote: “if we don’t know a specific meaning of any words that we use every day, we can never discuss about anything”.