The impact of computers on book and journal publication

Rising wages have made the cost of composition and printing editions of a few thousand copies exorbitant. Rising book and journal prices have contributed to the rising operating expenses of libraries. At the same time, the volume of scientific and technical literature is increasing rapidly and the publication and library system is increasingly incapable of satisfying user needs. Electronic publication of scientific and technical literature is technically feasible. One machine-readable copy of a document may be stored in a computer and accessed at any remote location by a user with a computer terminal. Current costs of preparing a machine-readable text, storing it on a computer, communicating with the remote computer, and computer time for the user to read or print the document are low enough that, for many applications in scientific publishing, a computer-based system may be less expensive than the existing paper-and-ink system. Rapidly decreasing computer and communications costs indicate that electronic publication will be increasingly cost-effective compared to alternative systems.published or submitted for publicatio