Academic Electronic Journals: Past, Present, and Future - Advances in Computers - page 148

scholars cite work from many different journals not only the few key ones,
scholars read material from other disciplines.

In the late 1990s, scholars had to request numerous inter-library loans (ILL) to re-
ceive all the material they needed. Now almost everything is available online.
The cost benefits of each form are discussed in Section 5 .

4 . 4 N e w C h a l l e n g e s

Each electronic form also introduces new challenges. For example, the prestige
of academic journals is often associated with their acceptance rate. The lower the
acceptance rate, the higher is the journal's prestige. The added space afforded by
advanced electronicity and replacement e-journals allows an increase in their accep-
tance rate. Increasing acceptance rate increases publication opportunities for authors
but at the cost of reduced reputation for the journal.
Hybrid journals can post the electronic versions of articles as soon as they are
ready, thus reducing cycle time. However, such practice needs to consider timing.
For example, a scholar with on-line access can cite an e-article not yet published
in a p-version. If access to the e-version is restricted 21 (as it almost invariably is)
non-subscribers to the e-version do not have access to the article for a period of
time. Similarly, if electronic versions of articles contain value added information
that is only available to e-version readers, subscribers to p-versions cannot access
that information unless their library subscribes to the e-version.
For paper replacement and advanced electronicity e-journals, references can be-
come invalid if a web site is moved and the URL is changed [45] . The current practice
of stating the last access date helps readers determine when the site was last avail-
able. This practice will not help readers in the distant future to determine where the
material then resides.
Each form of e-journal affects academic publishing stakeholders differently. This
idea is discussed in Section 6 .

5. The Economics of E-Journals

The increasing cost of scholarly journals is a major concern for researchers and
faculty members [50] . Thus, the economic benefits of e-journals were the first area
of research to be addressed. Early studies analyzed the cost to produce journals in
the hard sciences. Only recent studies expanded the cost analysis to all disciplines.

21

The usual custom is to embargo access for non-subscribers for a period of time, such as a year.