from the Krafty Librarian at: http://kraftylibrarian.com/
July 14th, 2009
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article about the American Chemical Society ending the print editions and begin producing only online journals for all but three of their journals. It was a financial decision. “Printing and distribution costs now exceed revenues from print journals,” according to a story in Ars Technica which The Chronicle sites.
On the biomedical side of things BMJ was one of the first journals to use the online version as their official version instead of the printed version. BMJ’s “continuous publication” means that all articles appear on bmj.com before being included in an issue of the print journal. While this has caused some among readers and librarians, it is clearly a just the beginning of what is soon to come.
Advertising dollars, subscriptions, and even article submissions are all affected in some way as the switch from the printed issue to the online issue happens within the publishing industry. In some areas there are great opportunities and promise with an online article such as the multitude of ways that data, images, sound, etc. can now be better represented. But for every growth opportunity there will be some growing pains….
Read entire post at: http://kraftylibrarian.com/?p=107
Filed under: scholarly publishing | Tagged: electronic journals, librarianship
