Toll Booths on the Information Superhighway

Abstract

‘‘Information superhighway’’ is a metaphor that conjures up a powerful image of an expressway going to new places and new information. You read to find information and you want to find it fast and efficiently. This is clearly an outgrowth of the computer age, a technique for managing information like nothing before it. Last month we announced a free gift for you—a complete library of all issues of The Angle Orthodontist for your very own at www.angle.org. Thanks to computer technology, we can also give this gift to everyone else on the globe at no extra cost. The multiple copies are free. The originals, unfortunately, are not. The current traditional approach puts all of the costs for preparation of articles on the paper publication. Since modern printing requires articles to be in electronic format for paper publication, moving them online is a relatively minor additional cost. Online publication was just a simple addon. The future depends on how you, the user, responds to all of this. If the more computer-literate future readers ignore the paper, the paper libraries will become obsolete. However, since we currently charge for paper and give away the digital model, what then will be the source of revenue? If we shift the charges for article publication to the digital model, we will be setting up ‘‘toll booths’’ on the information superhighway. Libraries face the same dilemma. Some think the paper journal era is waning to be replaced by computers. They see their subscription costs rising more rapidly than their budgets. ‘‘The good guys, in the eyes of many scientists and librarians, are the revolutionaries offering an alternative to the publishing status quo. They are creating online journals that charge no subscription fees. These agitators for change want to rescue librarians from the tyranny of prohibitively