The nature and role of electronic journals have been widely discussed over the past few years, and there is an emerging consensus on the parameters of such journals and the space in which they operate. ESL, however, is an unusual area in being inter-­ and multi-­disciplinary, and in having a constituency which in some ways is not like that of regular academic areas covered by journals. This paper discusses the conception and inception of "TESL-­EJ," a new refereed journal in the ESL area with a particularly wide mandate. Special attention is paid to the properties of electronic journals, how these bear on ESL, and how "TESL-­EJ" could interact with its discipline to construct new ways of developing academic discourse.