Learning to live with e‐journals

Abstract

The Electronic Library recently received a disappointed e‐mail asking why the journal, with a title like that, wasn't available electronically. A very good question, which is only partially answered by the fact that the journal is 15 years old and came into the world when the Internet was half its present age and a fraction of its size, CDs were an embryonic technology and the World Wide Web just didn't exist. E‐journals are now here to stay and any publisher worth its salt is looking at how its publications, too, can be made available in this manner. There is inevitably a very large element of keeping up with the neighbours involved — no one wants to seem to lag behind the competition — and too many companies plainly are not flunking the matter through before launching their electronic products. We have no desire to go broke or to launch an unviable product in the name of progress, and perhaps that is why we have so far erred on the side of caution: but believe me, we are working on it.

Citation

Jeapes, B. (1997), "Learning to live with e‐journals", The Electronic Library, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 27-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045532