The Economics of Scholarly Publications and the Information Superhighway

Abstract

Electronic technology offers many interesting opportunities for lowering the costs, increasing the variety, and speeding the dissemination of scholarly publications. This chapter briefly describes the economics of scholarly publication and how it may be affected by electronic distribution. Scholarly publications serve several distinct uses, each of which in some measure creates demand for scholarly books and journals. Scholarly publications also function as tools for evaluating researchers. The advantage of scholarly publications is that the prepublication review process and subsequent citations (as an indicator of impact) are important sources of information about scholarly standing. The economics of illegal copying of scholarly publications fits nicely into the supply and demand model. A common belief among library administrators and other potential users of electronic media for the distribution of scholarly publications is that the information superhighway offers prospects for solving the problems of escalating journal publication costs.