Economic and intellectual value in existing and new paradigms of electronic scholarly communication

The function of this article is to examine both the current state of scholarly communication and its prospects. Among the issues to be examined are the viability of the present model of scholarly publishing, the cost of the delivery of unit articles and the difficulty of assigning value to this whole process. The operating principle of this article is that the scholarly communication process is a partnership between a number of players, but that while the nature and content of the relationships are changing, there needs to be a serious engagement with the many issues if the process is to move onwards.