Could [the Internet] be leveling the playing field in scientific research? Ms. Ding and colleagues... compared user data involving Bitnet, an Internet forerunner established by Yale University and the City University of New York, and the Domain Name System, which is the naming protocol currently used to identify addresses on the Internet. The study's conclusion is that in all three groups that were examined -- female scientists, young scientists, and scientists at lower-ranked institutions -- researchers showed greater increases in publishing productivity attributable to their use of the Internet than did researchers outside their group.