Introduction In this paper I have in mind only academic publishers, and the academics who might or might not need them. The question is: Do we need any longer the whole apparatus of publishing for the communication of scholarship? Or, in more detail, Are scholars not increasingly free and able to publish themselves on the Web? Do we not more and more need the instantaneity of Internet publishing? Does the commercial orientation of publishers not get in the way of the dissemination of scholarship? And, perhaps even more to the point, how on earth can we afford the prices publishers are charging these days, all the more so when all the information we can get on the Web is free (if we are provided with computers as part of our job and are connected to an academic network) or at least seems pretty cheap? I will write first about personal publishing of one's research on the Net, then about the value added to research by the professional publishing process. |
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