Introduction

The conflicts becoming apparent in scholarly communication have been anticipated for almost two decades. In 1982 Patricia Battin wrote:

During the decade of the 1970's, librarians faced declining budgets, increasing volume of publication, relentless inflation, space constraints, soaring labor costs, a horrifying recognition of the enormous preservation problems in our stacks, increasing devastation of our collections by both casual and professional theft, and continuing pressure from scholars for rapid access to a growing body of literature. It is ironic that both librarians and publishers introduced computer applications into libraries and publishing houses to save the book, not to replace it. Both were looking for ways to reduce labor costs rather than for visionary attempts to redefine the process of scholarly communication.... The former coalition shattered and publishers, scholars and librarians became adversaries in a new and unprecedented struggle to survive in the new environment, each trying in his or her own way to preserve the past and each seeing the other as adversary to that objective.^[1]