Re: Is it time to stop printing journals?

["adam hodgkin" <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

This is half right -- but surely the real indicator is what are 
the publishers and their customers currently investing in? This 
is where 'money talks'. I have a very strong sense that Libraries 
(or Universities or Research Institutions who may be reassessing 
the role of the campus library) are putting their medium and 
long-term investment into digital solutions NOT into new bricks 
and mortar for new stacks and print repositories. Similarly, one 
has a strong impression that all the leading STM publishers 
regard their primary investment targets now to be in electronic 
publishing and access systems. No publisher in this field is 
giving a lot of attention to investment in new printing plants 
and I doubt that the warehouse investments are half as taxing as 
the potential for digital infrastructure.

By contrast, there are signs that the Newspaper business (which 
is surely at least as challenged by its digital future as the STM 
journal) is a sector where very substantial investment in new 
printing and physical distribution plant is still going on. See 
recent comments of Monique Villa (of Reuters)  'If you think that 
News International spent in the last three years $1 Billion on 
their printing presses, it completely blows away the argument 
that print will die in five years.'

Parallel print digital/print distribution may last longer in 
newsprint than in primary research -- that is what one would 
infer from current investment plans. But I wouldnt give newsprint 
too long......

adam hodgkin


On 4/5/07, Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:
> The measure of the viability of print journals is not when users
> say they no longer want it (How would they know?  No user
> invented the iPod).
>
> The measure is when publishers either decline to acquire print
> rights from authors or license print rights to third parties,
> believing that there is no longer even a remote economic
> opportunity. This is the Old Economy notion of putting your money
> where your mouth is.  I am aware of no publisher that has done
> this in the core academic journals business, though there are
> examples of this in other publishing segments (e.g., industrial
> standards; see ANSI and IHS).
>
> Interestingly, publishers do sometimes allow authors to retain
> digital rights and sometimes permit third parties to publish
> digitally (IRs, etc.).  The biases in the trading practices in
> this industry continue to be toward print.
>
> Joe Esposito