Despite all these gains, the move to digital forms of article creation and delivery has introduced challenges that no one could have anticipated. Versions of articles are proliferating. The final published versions in print are not necessarily the same as those available online. Articles are being made available earlier without page numbers, making citation problematical. What exactly is the definitive version of an article, where can it be found and what counts as the official publication date? How can a secure digital archive be created? Who should maintain it? How can it be financed? Should authors be allowed to put versions of their articles onto public web sites? If so, which version, and does it matter? None of these thorny issues existed in a pre-digital age, but they are fast becoming real practical obstacles to efficient scholarship rather than philosophical conundrums for debate at library and publishing conferences.
These challenges arise from two main features of digital documents: their infinite reproducibility without control and their infinite changeability without necessary sanction by any authority. In a paper world, scholarly publishing was ‘digital’: a document was published or it was not; if it was, then that version was the fixed official and final one. In an electronic world, scholarly publishing becomes ‘analogue’: a continuum of versions can exist of varying degrees of ‘published’ and ‘final’....
[A]ny saving in costs of digital publication is largely eaten up by the costs of new activities. Savings potentially range from 0 – 10% at most. For such economies to apply across the board, all journals would have to be produced as electronic-only publications. The reality is, however, that most customers still wish to be provided with a paper version as well as an electronic one. To do this requires the maintenance of two production tracks with all the old processes as well as the new ones. Paradoxically, the digital transition has resulted in publishers bearing a dual cost structure which is more expensive than the traditional paper world and which is unlikely to disappear until print itself disappears.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/22/2006 07:31:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
