The demand for journals — fact versus fiction

When I first entered the industry 10 years ago, most of the conferences that I attended heavily promoted the technology and technological products of our industry. In part, this was due to the fact that technology is exciting and at the cutting edge, which maybe makes it more interesting than discussing claims and renewal cycles. Although electronic formats of published material were certainly at the forefront of many peoples minds, when I looked into what constituted our revenue, I found it was print based subscriptions with literally just a handful of CDs and diskettes. Ten years on, we still describe electronic media, most particularly electronic journals, as being in their infancy. When will electronic media come of age? In ten years, however, there has been a multitude of developments. The technology itself has moved on and is unrecognisable from the technology of a decade ago. Publishers have been working to take advantage of electronic methods of publishing, as well as dipping a toe into the uncharted waters of provision of electronic formats. Librarians have looked long and hard at their IT infrastructure and networks, as well as the needs of their clients. They have tended predominantly, to provide links to free electronic journals through their websites rather than anything more sophisticated. Multi-disc towers, juke boxes and networks have provided improved access to CD-ROMs.