Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
publishers started offering one rate (eliminating the print only option). For example,
INFORMS charges libraries, which usually pay more because of the multiple uses
of their copies, $286 for both an e- and p-version; the society does not offer a p-only
subscription to libraries.
In another market model, individual subscribers may choose to subscribe for a
full year or they may choose to pay per article. For example, ADONIS, a CD-ROM
based collection of biomedical journals,
34
charges subscription plus royalty payment
per article accessed on a CD-ROM
[50,2]
.
35
A similar subscription model is Pay-per-
view (e.g., SpringerLink).
36
A reader pays for each viewing or downloading of an
article. Berge and Collins
[3]
findings that scholars read individual articles rather than
complete issues support this fee structure concept. One limitation of this method is
that it discourages readers (especially students) from reading additional manuscripts
because of the cost. We are not aware of any advanced electronicity e-journal that
adopted the pay-per-view fee structure.
E-journals associated with professional societies collect subscription fees with
membership dues. For example, the
Communications of AIS
, an e-journal established
by the Association for Information Systems (AIS), is bundled with the society's
membership fee.
E-journals (much like p-journals) can use advertising to recover some of the pub-
lishing costs and thus reduce subscription fees
[41]
. However, we are not aware
of any e-journal that is currently using advertising as a source of income. In ad-
dition, many e-journals are a part of a consortium that provides full text access
to libraries for a fixed monthly rate. An example is JSTOR. Therefore, instead of
paying individual or institutional subscription for a given journal, universities pay
a fixed fee to the consortium, which in turns pays royalties to the individual jour-
nals.
5.2.2
The Free Access Movement
The open access movement is growing. It is estimated that as of 2003, 10-20 per-
cent of online journals provide free access to their content
[59]
. Several articles by
proponents describe ways to support free access
[59,54,7]
. An analysis of the elec-
34
ADONIS is part of an electronic publishing initiative developed by a consortium of well-established
scientific, technical, and medical publishers
[50]
.
35
CD-ROMs were available on the library network. Users can select articles and download them to their
own computers. The library paid a flat (subscription fee) and a fee for every article downloaded
[50]
.
36
For information on how to purchase a per-per-view article from SpringerLink see
http://www.
