Despite the opportunity to put information in front of every potential user, access to most journals is still limited to subscribers.
In science, journals have long been the glue that binds a multifaceted system of scholarly communication. In the humanities and social sciences, monographs play a similar role.
Today most scholarly journals (and a small but growing number of monographs) are distributed on the Internet. Yet despite the opportunity to put information in front of every potential user, access to most journals is still limited to subscribers — just as it was when journals were invented some 350 years ago.
In contrast, many informal aspects of scholarly exchange — taking place within the so-called “invisible college” — have been far more dynamic than the formal and deeply entrenched publishing process.