Abstract
Electronic publishing with dissemination via the Internet has hugely changed the landscape of academic publishing in the 21st century. Now, few journals are print-only Many are available in print and online, while perhaps a slight majority in science, technology and medicine (STM) are published online only. This distribution is a reflection of the new reality that, for most disciplines, electronic journals have become the preferred method for discovering and accessing journal literature. Publishing content electronically, with dissemination online, is obviously less costly than publishing and disseminating print copies around the world, so there is also certainly an economic incentive for this trend, not just a social and functional preference. Alongside this growth and preference for online journals, there has been a notable rise in the growth and popularity of a particular type of online journal – open access (OA) journals, which expressly allow anyone on the Internet to read them for free without paying. Such journals make it even easier for people to discover, access and re-use journal literature.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 14-17 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Bulletin of the American Society for Information Society and Technology |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2013 |
Keywords
- Open access
- altmetrics
- electronic publishing
- e-journals
- online journals
- impact
- research evaluation
- Social Web
- electronic journals
- impact of scholarly output