The impact of computer networking technology on journals is well explained by Kahin (1995): ``Under the old model, publishers saw that books and journals were manufactured and physically delivered; libraries cataloged and archived books and journals from many publishers and made them available to one user at a time.'' In that model, publishers and libraries formed a pipeline between authors and readers, and to some extent, publishers and libraries had a division of labor. But ``in the networked environment,'' Kahin writes, ``the pipeline model of publishing collapses. Authors can speak directly to readers. Publishers and libraries find themselves in the same business: providing access to information.''
There are a number of different models for online journals2 which have different implications for authors, libraries and publishers (Grycz, 1992), (Harnad, 1995), and (Odlyzko, 1995). Among the most revolutionary is Harnad (1995), who presents a view of how the entire journal industry may be upended with the introduction of networks. Harnad first makes the distinction between the ``trade'' and ``esoteric'' author. The trade author expects to be paid for his work; journalists and writers of popular books are trade writers in Harnad's sense, and so are academics when they write textbooks. The esoteric author resides almost entirely in academia: the authors do not expect to be paid directly for their words; the market for a particular work is very small; and they sometimes even pay for their words to reach more readers (such as paying for and sending reprints). Their pay is tied to their recognition and status, which is indirectly gained from the words they write. Thus, esoteric authors want their words to be as freely accessible as possible. Harnad writes:
The first step in getting the word to one's peers, however, is to publish it at all, and in the Gutenberg age the only way to do this was through the mediation of the slow and expensive medium of printing and paper distribution. It was because of the high cost of this, the only means of making one's ideas and findings public at all, that esoteric authors have ...been willing to make the ``Faustian'' bargain of trading the copyright for their words in exchange for having them published. ... So for the esoteric author, there was always a conflict of interest built into the act of publishing: One wants to get the words out there to everyone who might be interested, but one agrees to erect a price-tag as a barrier, to cover the costs (not one's own, but those of the publisher) and a fair return (again not to oneself, but to the publisher who had incurred the costs).
Harnad then argues that ``with the advent of electronic publication, the Faustian era for esoteric authors is now over. The per-page cost is so much lower for purely electronic publication than for paper (if one reckons it properly) that it no longer makes sense to recover it on the subscriber model of trade publication.'' He details journal's costs, where he speaks from experience--he edits both the paper journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences and the online journal Psycoloquy, sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA). There are two components to costs: distribution costs and ``first copy'' costs (all the costs up to distribution). Distribution costs for an online journal approach the trivial. Harnad argues that the savings for first copy costs of a totally electronic journal over a paper journal are on the order of 70-90%. Some find these cost reductions implausible (Scovill, 1995, p. 15), but others, such as Odlyzko (1995), are convinced.
A study by Jog (1995) of six academic journals shows that the average journal in the study costs $70,000 per year to produce. Typesetting (9%), printing (28%), and shipping (12%) costs account for almost 50% of the costs of the journal. Administrative costs were 25%, while editorial expenses were 23%. The paper-based costs of publication would disappear with an online journal. Some journal administration can also be automated and handled electronically (but that could also be done for a paper based journal). Editorial copy-editing expenses can be reduced. For example, if authors are required to submit the paper in a particular style format, then the journal's expenses of preparing a paper for the typesetter can be substantially reduced. Currently, authors with poorly copy-edited manuscripts are subsidized and efficiency would dictate that the authors rather than subscribers bear those costs. Springer-Verlag sometimes requires submission of LaTeX in a Springer style, and no copy-editing is done. Kluwer has its own LaTeX style files. Some math journals now reject any submission that is not in AMS-TeX and most psychology and education journals reject submissions that are not in APA format.
Editorial text-editing costs do not change much in the electronic world. The cost reduction debate may be mostly a question of how much editorial text-editing is done by a journal--some journals do little or none while others do a substantial amount. In any event, we believe that the costs of an online journal are easily 50% less than those of a hard copy based journal, and can be 100% less. One excellent example is the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics which is free and which has no direct costs. Editors, and referees serve for free, there is no copy or text editing, submissions are in TeX, and software produces the journal.
Pricing electronic journals, when there are first copy costs, brings up a number of interesting issues. The knowledge in journals represents a pure public good, as Arrow (1962) noted. Journals themselves can be thought of as quasi-public goods because one can subscribe to one personally, or go to the library and read a shared one (Ordover and Willig, 1978). In Harnad's system, journals become a pure public good (in distribution) with the cost of providing this good borne by those who benefit the most from it: the authors and their sponsors. Although readers also benefit--not only from the content of the paper but also from the selection mechanism (editorial and referee process)--charging them reduces the readership which the esoteric author does not want. In addition, as pointed by Varian (1995), electronic journals, with relatively high first copy costs in comparison to distribution costs, face decreasing average costs, thus making it difficult to recover costs if goods are priced at marginal cost. But, with Harnad's system, journals are priced at zero and the costs (if any) are borne by those who benefit the most.
Harnad proposes that the costs of producing an online journal can be collected in several ways. Professional societies, universities, private foundations or the National Science Foundation might pay for the first-copy costs of an online journal. In effect, this means that the public good is purchased through some manner of collective decision. A second possibility is that journals would be supported by a small page fee. This might be collected from either authors or their sponsors; for example, most science journals impose page charges. Or charges might be collected from those who make the information accessible to others, like libraries or universities. In any case, the works will then be freely accessible and available to readers.3 This makes sense from the standpoint of ``esoteric'' authors, who would like to have their material broadly available. Also, since the marginal cost of distribution is close to zero, economic theory would seem to argue that distribution at close to zero cost would have desirable efficiency properties (if hard copy is desired, then the individual reader bears the cost when they print out a copy).
It is also worth remembering that the cost of paper journals involves a number of opportunity costs that go beyond their production cost. Even if you have the journal in your office, you cannot search it electronically, but instead you must look through indices for individual years. The physical presence of a journal also takes up precious shelf space. If you want to read just one article, you must still carry the entire journal with you. Getting a journal from the library entails a round-trip of perhaps half an hour, assuming the journal is carried by the library and it is correctly shelved and no one else is using it including the bindery. If a local copy is not available, inter-library loan can take days or weeks. In the online world described above, any journal can be read with just a few clicks of a mouse. These costs must be balanced against online costs--equipment costs, learning to use electronic media, less portable media or local printing costs, etc. However, those online costs are shrinking daily due to advancing technology and general computer usage so that the balance is tipping (quickly) against hard copy.
There are a growing number of totally online journals, including Psycoloquy, the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, the Electronic Journal of Differential Equations, and Geometry and Topology. All are freely available to readers, with first copy costs supported by others when there are any first copy costs. Hundreds of others are listed in Association of Research Libraries (1996).