Electronic Dissertations Library

Exploring the development of the independent, electronic, scholarly journal, by Alison Wells

Players in model.

The system of scholarly communication consists of scholars, academic libraries, publishers and learned societies. In 1979 there was a National Enquiry into Scholarly Communication in the US. This report was novel because the whole process had not been looked at holistically before, and it noted that each part depended fundamentally on the others and the "system" was highly sensitive to influences from the actions of the funding agencies and new technology. (Milne, 1999)

Each member of the system has their own part to play. The scholars do the research and write the articles, the publishers and learned societies accumulate, copy-edit, produce and distribute them, then the academic libraries buy and store them. (Odlyzko, 19.1.99)

Willis (1995) has this view of the current communication process:

This shows quite starkly that the University pays for the whole process in one form or other, either directly through research funding, or indirectly through journal subscriptions and also the large hidden costs in library storage and maintenance.

References

Milne, P. (January 1999). Electronic access to information and its impact on scholarly communication. [http://www.csu.edu.au/special/online99/proceedings99/305b.htm]. Site visited at 16.4.99

Odlyzko, A. (19.1.99). Competition and co-operation : libraries and publishers in the transition to electronic scholarly journals. [http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/competition.cooperation.txt]. Site visited at 16.4.99

Willis, J. (1995). Bridging the gap between traditional and electronic scholarly publishing. [http://www.coe.uh.edu/~brobin/Educom95/EducomJW/index.html]. Site visited at 16.4.99

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