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The impact of electronic publishing on library services and resources in the UK

2.8.1 Electronic-only journals

There are several proposals in the literature (ref7) extolling the virtues of electronic-only journals, perhaps set up under the aegis of an academic institution or society. These proposals are usually built around the potential economic advantages of electronic communication bypassing traditional 'intermediaries' such as publishers, librarians, and subscription agents, and of not printing material which remains largely unread.

While the idea is initially appealing, considerable reservations emerge on closer scrutiny:

1. It is implied that subscriptions to scholarly journals constitute an almost insupportable burden for libraries. While it is undeniable that the relative cost of journals has risen rapidly, recent figures show that only about twenty per cent of university library expenditure in the UK is devoted to periodicals. Publishers are well aware of the constraints on library budgets and strive to increase the attractiveness of their products to the academic market.

2. It is also presumed that publishers contribute little of value to the information system. This is incorrect, for if this were true they would have been squeezed out long ago. Major scholarly societies operate substantial publishing operations for the benefit of their members and for their subject or discipline. These activities are supported because the appropriate governing bodies are satisfied of the importance of the work. Commercial publishers have provided alternative channels, and finance, for researchers publishing for emerging and cross-disciplinary communities.

3. Several electronic journals have experienced significant difficulties because of lack of author support, attributable to the lack of status of electronic journals within the academic community as compared with conventional publication, and technical problems concerning ease of access, standardisation, layout, and the transmission of graphics. The long-term preservation of material published in an electronic journal remains in question, for there is no archival mechanism and no assurance that the information will remain readily available in a decade or so.

4. Editorial economies are usually over-estimated. The fact that refereeing is largely an unpaid task carried out by researchers has been allowed to obscure the fact that considerable investment is required for every good large journal to organise and administer a refereeing system and carry out other editorial functions. Proposals which advocate dispensing with these processes immediately run into the barrier of (3) above.

5. Although electronic journals can offer increased access to research findings in well- equipped libraries and offices, at the same time they will seriously restrict access for those without the ready availability of appropriate terminals, network, and printing facilities. There is a risk of creating an elite class of information users, at the expense of a large class of underprivileged 'information poor'.

6. Nationally-based electronic journals (as are sometimes proposed) would run counter to the general trend in science towards internationalisation, both in authorship and circulation.

7. Subsidised, centralised journals run the risk of stifling innovation and would not be responsive to market needs. Centralised systems could pose new problems for academic freedom if authors were constrained by the system to publish their papers in them.

In practice, libraries will be faced with a bewildering array of free and commercial 'journals' made available over electronic networks. Inevitably, a substantial amount of parallel publishing of journals in electronic and conventional hard-copy form will develop. Many publishers will issue electronic versions of their products on the networks, driven by a combination of author and user demand, as a defensive strategy against 'electronic-only' journals.

There is currently a great need for a fully costed model of an electronic journal, taking account of the necessary editorial expenses, including archiving and indexing processes, and assessing likely income.

The ways in which libraries plan to provide and facilitate access to electronic journals for their users also need to be explored, for if users prefer to bypass the library and collect information through an office terminal, then a new economic model will emerge. Information will then be delivered to the network as a whole for retrieval, rather than be distributed, and paid for, through libraries. The purchasing power and influence of the library and librarian will then decline.

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