The Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) is an international professional association of online film journalists, historians and scholars who publish their work on the World Wide Web. The organization was founded in January 1997 by Harvey S. Karten, an early online critic who discovered that membership in the New York Film Critics Circle was open only to journalists working for newspapers and magazines. Online critics have generally found it difficult to gain acceptance for their work, and one role of the OFCS is to provide professional recognition to the most prolific and successful online critics.