Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
journal publishers, who have for centuries depended on the sale of
unwanted content to keep themselves afloat. This is not an indictment
of publishers: in the print era, they had no choice but to sell unwanted
content, partly because the economies of scale required it and partly
because there was no way to anticipate which articles would be wanted
by which subscribers. In the online era both publishers and their
customers have been slow to realize that the purchase of unwanted
content is no longer necessary. But it is nevertheless the case, and it is
this fact more than any other that makes the current model of scholarly
publication unsustainable: a system that works because its participants
have not yet realized how poorly it serves them is a system that will fail
sooner or later.
A new model for journals
What will take its place? It seems likely that while the journal will
persist as a branding device (further discussion below), the idea of the
journal
issue
is already moribund, and the subscription is soon to meet
its demise. In an environment in which it is possible to show end-users
everything that is available and charge them (or their broker agents)
only for those items they want, it is difficult to believe that a wasteful
and inefficient system like the subscription can continue to function.
What does seem to make sense is a system whereby a journal
maintains a website on which articles are posted as soon as they are
ready for distribution. The publisher would need to maintain a
relatively steady stream of output in order to keep customers' interest,
but there would be no reason to hold individual articles until a batch of
them was ready - the articles could be posted one or two at a time. Each
article would be individually dated and assigned a unique digital object
identifier (DOI). End-users would be able to search the full content of
all articles, but would be able to see only the full citation and abstract
(plus, perhaps, a representative page or two of text) at no charge, and
would pay for the right to download the full text - or perhaps pay a
smaller fee to view the full text on screen and a larger fee to download
and save a copy.
A system such as this would allow for the possibility of a
'subscription', which in this case would mean that a library or end-user
would pay up front for the right to download everything published
