Scholarly communications: the view from the library - Digital Information: Order or Anarchy? - page 54

exists, and its clear superiority to traditional mass printing and
speculative distribution will push the old distribution methods out of
the mainstream of the marketplace fairly quickly. While blockbuster
novels and popular nonfiction will continue to be printed on a just-in-
case basis for some time to come, everything at the margins (which
comprises the vast majority of published output) will be printed only as
needed, when needed.
Journal publishing
Journal titles will become brands with which to identify high-quality
articles rather than actual serial publications; the concept of a 'journal
issue' will be relegated to the past. This development may take longer
than the shift from speculative to on-demand book printing but it is
inevitable, for many of the same reasons. Traditional journal publishing
will also feel an impact from an inevitable shift in promotion and tenure
standards, though this will take even longer. In 2009 there are still
members of university faculties who do not understand that there is no
necessary difference in quality and rigour between printed and online
peer-reviewed journals. This problem is largely generational and will be
remedied by retirements over the next decade; what will take longer
will be the establishment of updated standards that will allow tenure
committees to evaluate non-standard publication formats and venues.
References
Amazon (2009) Kindle: wireless reading device ,
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Blachman, N. and Peek, J. (2007) Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) ,
www.googleguide.com/results_page.html [accessed 4 November 2009].
Butler, D. (2008) PloS Stays Afloat with Bulk Publishing, Nature , 2 July, 454, 11,
www.nature.com/news/2008/080702/full/454011a.html [accessed 4 November
2009].
Cambridge University Library (2009) About Open Access ,
www.lib.cam.ac.uk/create_change [accessed 4 November 2009].
Drummond, D. (2008) New Chapter for Google Book Search, The Official Google
Blog , 28 October,