A Rationale for the Redesign of Scholarly Information Exchange

Abstract

The disintermediation that will inevitably result from the increased electronic publication of specialized scholarly information affords an excellent opportunity for one of the traditional intermediaries (e.g., libraries, publishers) to assume responsibilities previously held by other intermediaries. Members of the academy should use this opportunity to take back the responsibility for a significant portion of the specialized scholarly publishing that has, in the traditional environment, been placed in the hands of external publishers. The most imposing impediment to such a reappropriation by the academy derives from the inability of institutions to cooperate with each other. If new attitudes could be created within the academy to circumvent that obstruction, then an academy-based process of scholarly information exchange would finally be feasible. One effective model for such a new form of scholarly publishing would be to establish separate domains, or designated channels, for individual disciplines.