Scholarly Communications

There are many other concerns related to scholarly journal publishing. The business models of journal publishing have evolved over time, so are the diversity in publishing processes. ICT-enabled environment helps the journal publishers directly connecting to users’ communities and other stakeholders. Now-a-days journal contents are accessible both in print format and electronic format. Online journal contents are accessible via desktop computers as well as mobile devices. This is a new development to make journal contents accessible through mobile devices, which has not yet been adopted by non-profit publishers operating from developing countries. The economically emerging nations, more particularly BRICS countries are now in focus as commercial publishing companies see their growth opportunities in terms of increased sales revenues in those countries. While distribution of print journals is slow and costly to reach their subscribers, electronic journals offer much faster access or install access provisions. The electronic journals provide free ToC alerts through emails, RSS feeds and social media groups. ToC alerts help the prospective researchers to read and use relevant articles in their respective research areas. Print subscribers often face the problem of missing issues, and after several reminders they may get some missing issues from the publishers or local distributors. If an old print issue of a journal is lost from the library, this becomes permanent loss for the researchers associated with that institution. In addition to let a library requires ample space to archive back issues of a periodical, it is a costly process. On the other hand, online subscription also has several limitations. One such is that if a library does not continue subscription to a particular journal, the library may not have perpetual access to the old journal volumes for which the library had already paid subscription fee. The library also has no option to download all articles of a subscribed e-journal for lateral institutional use. Some online journals allow authors in self-archiving of their published articles in their respective institutional repositories or in authors’ personal webpages. Whereas, some publishers give certain embargo period for delayed self-archiving of their published articles. Many publishing companies have the journal-specific embargo periods to restrict authors in self-archiving, whereas some companies ask their authors to pay a gold open access fee for immediate self-archiving.