The Changing Economic Model of Scholarly Publishing: Uncertainty, Complexity, and Multi-media Serials

Abstract

Scholarly publishing is undergoing a transformation that affects every participant in the information chain. Serials used to be a relatively uncomplicated activity, driven by the need of scholars and researchers to publish (see Fig 1). Until the 1980s, libraries found it possible to maintain coherent collections of the journals required to serve the teaching and research needs of their individual institutions, albeit at the expense of their monograph collections. Since that time, both journal price inflation and the growth in the number of journals and the numbers of papers published have outstripped the ability of even the most lavishly funded library to purchase what faculty and students demand. At the same time, modern technology has, in the last few years, offered us the opportunity to develop new media of distribution for scholarly literature: media that offer the researcher