Economic and intellectual value in existing and new paradigms of electronic scholarly communication
| Date | 01 March 2000 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830010314401 |
| Pages | 37-45 |
| Published date | 01 March 2000 |
| Author | Steve O’Connor |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Economic and
intellectual value in
existing and new
paradigms of electronic
scholarly communication
Steve O'Connor
The scholarly communication process is on the
one hand a simple process and at its heart a
complex one. It is simple in that the process has
been one which has recorded the research and
scholarship of the world's universities. It is
complex in that the relationships among
authors, publishers, libraries, and readers is
changing with the advent of new computer and
communication media.
This article is presented in three stages. First,
the context is established. Second, the
environment in which the system operates is
described and reviewed. Finally, the prospects
for a future process are examined and
presented.
Part 1: the context
Author, publisher and librarian as context
In the Middle Ages, the monks through their
monasteries were the custodians of knowledge,
usually in the form of manuscripts. The
monasteries were the houses of teaching and
learning. It was only with the advent of the
Gutenberg presses that this whole arrangement
came under complete change. The universities
were born and grew while increasingly making
their scholarship available with the assistance of
these new presses. In this the role of the library
as a repository came to the forefront.
The story as outlined above may be
simplifying the events but it does highlight that
the modern library grew to realise certain
relationships between the academic as author
and the library as the repository and navigator.
It is important to realise that it is only in quite
recent times that we have seen the publisher as
the communicator join in the process. The
process now resembles a loop at times. The
author is in fact also the user; while the
publisher survives on the business of the authors
via the financial sustenance of libraries; the
publishers carry out the role of editing,
publishing, and distributing, while the libraries
carry out the informational/navigation and
archival roles. Clearly the publisher and the
library together have a symbiotic relationship in
support of the author; or is it the user? Sir Roger
Elliott saw this in pragmatic terms: ``The
scientific community worldwide has become to
realize that as author and user it is in a strong
The author
Steve O'Connor is Chief Executive Officer, CAVAL Limited,
Bundoora, Victoria, Australia. steveo@caval.edu.au
Keywords
Publishing, Information technology, Libraries
Abstract
The function of this article is to examine both the current
state of scholarly communication and its prospects. Among
the issues to be examined are the viability of the present
model of scholarly publishing, the cost of the delivery of unit
articles and the difficulty of assigning value to this whole
process. The operating principle of this article is that the
scholarly communication process is a partnership between a
number of players, but that while the nature and content of
the relationships are changing, there needs to be a serious
engagement with the many issues if the process is to move
onwards.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
37
Library Hi Tech
Volume 18 .Number 1 .2000 .pp. 37±45
#MCB University Press .ISSN 0737-8831
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