Managing academic electronic publishing

Published academic work is used both for knowledge building and dissemination, and for the distribution of rewards, prestige and funds. Current academic publishing, based on printed journals, faces major obstacles such as time lags, increasing production and distribution costs, shrinking markets, decreasing ability to publish innovative and unorthodox work, space limitations, limited accessibility, limited format and lack of interactivity. The introduction of electronic publishing offers benefits such as reduced costs and cycle time, increased in space availability, increased accessibility and interactivity. At the same time electronic publishing introduces new challenges such as protecting copyrights, controlling publication quality, maintaining long-term sustainable copies and developing an appropriate fee structure in a seemingly “free” medium.; Although some case studies describe specific efforts to introduce academic electronic journals, no integrated, comprehensive studies analyze the factors and elements that drive and influence Academic Electronic Publishing (AEP) nor are there studies that observe existing electronic journals and determine the extent to which they solve problems in traditional academic publishing. This dissertation addresses this omissions in two ways: (1) It presents a research framework for Academic Electronic Publishing that includes: (a) The technology used, which depends largely on the media; (b) The economics, markets and management. Of electronic publishing in academia; (c) The social issues involved in the creation, distribution and maintenance of academic electronic journals. (2) It increases our understanding of AEP by focusing on: (a) The extent to which electronic journals use the technology available to them in terms of the media, mode, material and means; (b) The prevailing money, market and management practices; (c) How electronic journals manage the social aspect (Mannerism) of AEP; (d) The commonalties that contribute to the success and penetration of electronic journals; (e) How and to what extent AEP solves the problems facing traditional academic publishing.; The output of the dissertation are scenarios, propositions and models that describe the relationships between electronic journals and their management practices in terms of the five issues described.