The impact of electronic scholarly publishing

Abstract

Scholarly electronic publishing, especially of journals, will have an enormous impact on the future operations of libraries. The introduction of electronic publishing has, however, raised a number of issues which are critical to the successful operation of a library in the electronic environment. The major contribution of electronic publishing lies in the speed of publication, diversity, and choice it brings to the marketplace. However, these do not come without a cost. This paper provides a brief literature review and discussion to assist librarians to understand more fully many of the issues involved in scholarly electronic publishing.