ARL Report: Five Years to E-Journal Tipping Point?
Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 12/7/2007
A new report by the Association of Research Libraries concludes that publishers and libraries are caught in "an extended transition zone" lasting at least five years between print-only and e-only journals. The report, "The E-only Tipping Point for Journals: What's Ahead in the Print-to-Electronic Transition Zone," authored by former SPARC executive director Richard K. Johnson and library consultant Judy Luther, asserts that the demands of "dual-format" publishing and the additional costs of keeping e-journals "operating within the bounds of the print publishing process" is taxing the status quo for all stakeholders: publishers, libraries, authors, and readers."The question of when dual-format journals will complete the transition to single-format (electronic) publishing is taking on increasing urgency," the authors note. Approximately 60 percent of some 20,000 active peer-reviewed journals are now available in electronic form, and the e-journal is now unquestionably the preferred format.
Economics, however, is not the only factor extending the transition, the reports concedes, noting preservation challenges, and the potential loss of key readers, especially by society publishers. The report is based on published resources as well as interviews conducted between June and August 2007 with two-dozen academic librarians and journal publishers. Commercial publishers, researchers, and students were not interviewed.
"The role of the printed journal in the institutional marketplace faces a steep decline in the coming five to10 years," the report notes. "Financial imperatives will draw libraries first—and ultimately publishers also—toward a tipping point where it no longer makes sense to subscribe to or publish printed versions of most journals."
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