Economic Issues Concerning Electronic Publishing and Distribution of Scholarly Articles

WHILETHERE HAVE BEEN LITERALLY HUNDREDS of articles and other publica-tions dealing with electronic publishing, few go beyond expressions of opinion or speculation. Very few recent publications, even those having the term “economics ” in their titles, provide any empirical evi-dence concerning these speculations. This article presents some eco-nomic issues, provides some quantitative evidence concerning the eco-nomics of scholarly journal publishing, and extends these data to ex-amine the economics of electronic publishing. It is believed that pub-lishers and librarians alike tend to apply traditional economic ap-proaches to journal publishing in which economic competition is among journals. However, evidence shows that consumer choices are in fact among alternative ways of obtaining needed information and the attributes of the alternative sources of information rather than choices among journals. Readers of scholarly articles appear to apply a valid economic rationale to deciding from which source to obtain needed information. These economic choices appear to drive the current journal market demand and may do so for electronic alterna-tives in the future