Scholarly Publication, Academic Libraries, and the Assumption That These Processes are Really under Management Control

It has long been assumed that the refeering process used by scholarly journals served as an effective safeguard against the publication of work that is either inferior or repetitive of earlier publications. However, the tremendous increase in publication volume that cannot be reconciled with the number of scholars undertaking and reporting their research suggests that the process has developed cracks, if indeed it has not broken down completely. Pressures to publish everything «somewhere» not only protect the most significant journals but also channel the remaining articles into lesser journals, which are equally protected directly by the researches forces to publish in them, even if they are reductant to do so. Libraries are increasingly important to publishers because studies have shown that the nonlibrary purchasing base for scholarly journals continues to erode, while libraries are constantly pressured with regard to what they are supposed to buy