The Future

Although scholars have no incentive to maintain the current journal system, they currently also have no incentive to dismantle it. Even the physicists who rely on the Ginsparg preprint server continue to publish most of their papers in established print journals. The reason is that it costs them nothing to submit papers to such journals and also costs them nothing to have their library buy the journals. The data from the Association of Research Libraries [ARL] show that the average cost of the library system at leading research universities is about $12,000 per faculty member. (It is far higher at some, with Princeton spending about $30,000 per year per faculty member.) This figure, however, is not visible to the scholars, and they have no control over it. They are not given a choice between spending for the library and for other purposes.

Until the academic library system is modified, with the costs and trade-offs made clear to scholars and administrators, it is unlikely there will be any drastic changes. We are likely to see slow evolution (cf. [Odlyzko3]), with continuing spread of preprints (in spite of attempts of journals in certain areas, such as medicine, to play King Canute roles and attempt to stem this natural growth). Electronic journals will become almost universal but most of them will be versions of established print journals and will be equally expensive. Free or inexpensive electronic journals will grow, but probably not too rapidly. However, this situation is not likely to persist for long. I have been predicting [Odlyzko1, Odlyzko2] that change will come when administrators realize just how expensive the library system is and that scholars can obtain most of the information they need from other sources, primarily preprints. Over the decade from 1982 to 1992, library expenditures have grown by over a third even after adjusting for general inflation [ARL]. However, they have fallen by about 10% as a share of total university spending. Apparently the pressure from scholars to maintain library collection has not been great enough, and other priorities have been winning. At some point in the future more drastic cuts are likely.

Although library budgets are likely to be cut, total spending on information systems is unlikely to decrease. We are entering the Information Age, after all. What is likely to happen is that spending on information will increasingly flow through other channels. Traditional scholarly books and journals have always been only a part of the total communication system. Until recently they were the dominant part, but their relative value has been declining as the phone, the fax, and cheap

airplane travel as well as the more widely noted computers and data networks have opened up other channels of communications among scholars. This decline, together with the feasibility of lower cost journal systems, is likely to lead to cutbacks in library budgets. How those cuts will be distributed is uncertain. In discussions of the library crisis, most attention is devoted to journal costs. However, for each $1 spent on journal acquisitions, other library costs come to $2. If publishers can provide electronic versions of not only their current issues, but also older ones (either themselves or through JSTOR), they can improve access to scholarly materials and lower the costs of the library system (buildings, staff, maintenance) without lowering their own revenues. It is doubtful whether those savings will be enough, though, and it is likely that spending on traditional scholarly journals as well as the rest of the library system will decrease. To maintain their position, publishers will have to move to activities in which they provide more value instead of relying on scholars to do most of the work for them.

I thank Erik Brynjolfsson, Joe Buhler, Peter Denning, Mark Doyle, Paul Ginsparg, Stevan Harnad, Steve Heller, Eric Hellman, Carol Hutchins, Don King, Rob Kirby, Gene Klotz, Silvio Levy, Laszlo Lovasz, Harry Lustig, Robert Miner, Ann Okerson, Bernard Rous, Arthur Smith, Ron Stern, Edward Vielmetti, Lars Wahlbin, Bernd Wegner, and Ronald Wigington for their comments and the information they provided.