Book People Archive

Inside Higher Ed: The Shift Away From Print

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http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/12/08/schonfeld

December 8, 2005 | Inside Higher Ed

The Shift Away From Print

By Eileen Gifford Fenton and Roger C. Schonfeld

For most scholarly journals, the transition away from the print format 
and to an exclusive reliance on the electronic version seems all but 
inevitable, driven by user preferences for electronic journals and 
concerns about collecting the same information in two formats. But this 
shift away from print, in the absence of strategic planning by a higher 
proportion of libraries and publishers, may endanger the viability of 
certain journals and even the journal literature more broadly -- while 
not even reducing costs in the ways that have long been assumed.

Although the opportunities before us are significant, a smooth 
transition away from print and to electronic versions of journals 
requires concerted action, most of it individually by libraries and 
publishers.

In reaching this conclusion, we rely largely on a series of studies, of 
both publishers and libraries, in which we examined some of the 
incentives for a transition and some of the opportunities and challenges 
that present themselves. Complete findings of our library study, on 
which we partnered with Don King and Ann Okerson, were published as The 
Nonsubscription Side of Periodicals 
(http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub127abst.html). We also recently 
completed a study of the operations of 10 journal publishers, in 
conjunction with Mary Waltham, an independent publishing consultant.

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