Preferred Citation: Ekman, Richard, and Richard E. Quandt, editors Technology and Scholarly Communication. Berkeley, Calif Pittsburgh?]:  University of California Press Published in association with the Andrew K. Mellon Foundation,  c1999 1999. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5w10074r/

 
Chapter 25— The Future of Electronic Journals

Supply of Scholarly Communication

The academic reward system is structured to encourage the production of ideas. It does this by rewarding the production and dissemination of "good" ideas- ideas that are widely read and acknowledged.

Scholarly publications are produced by researchers as part of their jobs. At

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most universities and research organizations, publication counts significantly toward salary and job security (e.g., tenure). All publications are not created equally: competition for space in top-ranked journals is intense.

The demand for space in those journals is intense because they are highly visible and widely read. Publication in a topflight journal is an important measure of visibility. In some fields, citation data have become an important observable proxy for "impact." Citations are a way of proving that the articles that you publish are, in fact, read.

Chapter 25— The Future of Electronic Journals
 

Preferred Citation: Ekman, Richard, and Richard E. Quandt, editors Technology and Scholarly Communication. Berkeley, Calif Pittsburgh?]:  University of California Press Published in association with the Andrew K. Mellon Foundation,  c1999 1999. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5w10074r/