How Electronic Publishing Changes the Production and Distribution of Scholarly Journals

Information technology has had a great effect on the flow of scholarly communication, the research community and scholarly publishing. It is now practically universally accepted that scholarly journals will have to be available in digital formats. What is not settled is whether they can be much less expensive than print journals. Most traditional print publishers still claim, just as they have claimed for years, that switching to an electronic format can save at most 30 percent of the costs, namely the expenses of printing and mailing. In this paper first we talk about evolution of scholarly publishing and economics of electronic journals. Then, we will discuss how electronic publishing changes the production and distribution of scholarly journals.