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This paper provides an extensive survey of the recent literature on scholarly publishing and its conversion to the electronic medium. It then presents the results of a questionnaire survey of the UK‐based scholarly publishing industry. The results of this survey suggest that the publishers are moving quickly towards the use of the Internet as a major medium for the distribution of their products, though they do not expect an early print publication. They also do not expect that any alternative system, based on scholars providing their results free of charge at the point of use, will seriously threaten the future of the commercial scholarly publisher. They do, however, perceive several significant difficulties in the near future. These include a shortage of appropriately trained staff, uncertainties about pricing mechanisms, lack of adequate budgetary provision by universities for library purchases, and unrealistic expectations on the part of scholars that electronic information should be inexpensive.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and examine streams in the literature related to academic publishing, with a focus on works in marketing. The content of the works within each theme are then explored to identify what issues have been examined and their implications.

The paper is a literature review, drawing on 30 years of research on academic publishing in marketing. The review is designed to cover the underlying issues examined, but is not designed to be comprehensive in terms of all the works exploring each stream of research.

There are five main streams in the literature focusing on: rankings; theory and knowledge development; how to publish;, criticisms of publishing; and other issues. Within each stream, a number of sub‐areas are explored. The works tend to be fragmented and there is generally limited in‐depth qualitative research within streams exploring the underlying assumptions on which publishing is based.

The focus of the research is on the streams of works, rather than the findings within each stream and future research could explore each of these streams and sub‐streams in more detail. Generally, the works appear to becoming increasingly sophisticated in terms of their analysis, which is only possible with the new technologies available. New metrics proposed in the literature that can be used to better understand publishing and additional qualitative research exploring some of the basic assumptions could also be explored.

The research suggests that some streams with regard to academic publishing may have reached saturation and future publishing in these areas will need to be innovative in its approach and analysis, if these works are to be published.

This paper is the first attempt to develop streams within the literature on academic publishing in marketing and thus draws together a diverse cross‐section of works. It provides suggestions for directions for future research in the various streams.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from the research of aspects of journal publishing in the field of social sciences in Croatia in changing working conditions caused by the rapid development of information and communication technology.

This paper is based on an online survey of 79 journals in the field of social sciences in Croatia.

Findings indicate a dual publishing nature of the scientific journals as they exist both in the traditional paper based and in the electronic environment. In addition to slow shift towards publishing exclusively in the electronic environment, editorial teams cope with insufficient financial support for the publication of printed versions of their journals, low‐quality of article submissions, badly formatted articles, lack of help to the editor, etc. Researched journals use the internet for the improvement of the interaction with authors, reviewers and readers and digital repositories for long‐term storage of articles. To remain relevant to the scientists in Croatia, researched journals must be led by professional editorial teams whose only job will be management of the journal they work for.

The paper contributes to the growing body of knowledge about current developments in scientific journal publishing under the influence of information and communication technology.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study to explore the Egyptian social science scholars’ academic writing behaviour in local and international context. Understanding the challenges that scholars in social science and humanities face while publishing in the international outlets would help to suggest strategies to improve academic writing in non-Arabic journals.

This study deployed mixed methods approach. The quantitative data were collected using an online questionnaire. Interviews were conducted with a group of scholars in the five faculties to elucidate the publishing behaviour of the sample.

The interviews and the questionnaire showed that social science scholars in Egypt prefer local publishing outlets. The number of scholars who publish internationally is very low compared to scholars who publish locally. Scholars who tried to publish internationally faced many challenges, such as language barriers, lack of academic writing skills and lack of appropriate training.

This study was conducted in one university in Egypt. While the results can be generalised to Egyptian and Middle East universities, it cannot be generalised to non-Arab communities because of the differences in culture and education system.

This study provides insight on publishing practices in the international context among social science scholars in Egypt using a mixed methods approach. This helped to capture the scholarly publishing practices and the attitude toward international publishing and the main challenges that scholars face who attempt to publish in international outlets.

One of the tasks of the special librarian is to facilitate current awareness: services are set up to encourage user groups to keep up‐to‐date with developments in their own and related subject areas. The librarian advocates current awareness as an essential prerequisite for members of that user group to remain effective practitioners, researchers or teachers within their subject area. The librarian encourages and advocates because unfortunately some of those practitioners, researchers and teachers are either unconvinced of the need for current awareness or haven't the time/are not interested/cannot be bothered.

This study aims to summarise the information about open access publishing models and to analyse the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).

The paper is based on a review of the academic literature, to conduct a comprehensive SWOT analysis and adopt the multiple case study approach to analyse the open access publishing model.

Useful results include the findings that the success factors of open access business models are: creating savings in publishing costs, increasing incomes, adoption of innovative technologies and controlling the quality of journals. The open access publishing model makes the research permanently visible and accessible, with sustainable development.

While the findings may be applicable to open access journals for reasons other than impact factor, further research would be required to confirm this.

This study provides results that may enhance one's understanding of the open access publishing model, allowing both the reader and the author to benefit from it. Open access publishing leads to wider dissemination of information and greater advances in science.

The purpose of the study is to know the various factors librarians consider while selecting Open Access (OA) journal for publication and to identify the challenges librarians face with OA journal publishing.

Online questionnaire was designed to collect data from 402 academic librarians in 87 universities in Africa using SurveyMonkey software.

The study found that academic librarians are aware of the “green” and “gold” routes but not familiar with the “diamond” route. The study revealed that a large number of the academic librarians have published only one paper in OA journals, followed by those who have not published any paper in OA journals. The study also revealed that reputation of journal and impact factor of journal were seen as very important among the factors that inform them of choosing OA. The majority of the respondents agreed that author fees, and lack of stable internet connectivity are the major barriers to publishing in OA journals.

The study recommends that academic libraries in institutions of higher learning in Africa should organize seminars periodically on the need for their librarians to research and publish in OA journals.

Identifying factors involved in author decisions to publish in OA journals will help illuminate issues that may encourage or discourage author support of OA publishing models. Further understanding of these issues can assist the efforts to improve author perceptions of and confidence in OA publications.

It is believed that this study of African librarians publishing in OA journals is the first study in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical framework and guidance, based on the authors’ local experience, for libraries investigating or in the early stages of planning to offer scholarly publishing services for journal literature. While the authors use a number of publishing tools and platforms at Penn State, based on the content and needs of the requester, here the focus is on a model of using Open Journal Systems for a range of needs from peer-reviewed scholarly journals to more informal publications such as student research.

Penn State Libraries Publishing and Curation Services has been both defining the philosophy and building the mechanics for delivering a formal publishing services program for a variety of clients and formats. This article traces the authors’ journey as a facilitator within the research life cycle.

The authors’ results from working with a range of clients show that there will need to be an equally varied range of publishing options to meet the expectations. A descriptive service template available in advance plus a flexible approach to implementation is the authors’solution. The authors use the concept of “tiers of service” where the Libraries and the journal proposers agree on roles and expectations as part of the negotiation and implementation processes. Such an approach allows for some creativity and also offers efficiency in dealing with the universal requirements for discoverability, appearance, workflow management and intellectual property oversight.

The authors’ experience emphasizes the consultation and data gathering process, and its importance to a successful journal project collaboration.

The purpose of this paper is to presents the very recent development of e-journal publishing services at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte. In 2011, the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte created a new unit in the library, the Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), which partners with faculty and graduate students in the use of digital and networked research tools to create, disseminate and store new knowledge. E-journal publishing and hosting are among the suite of services offered by the DSL, and we currently publish three journals (https://journals.uncc.edu/).

This report provides an overview of the context of our library’s decision to begin publishing journals, including a discussion of our university’s becoming more research-intensive, our university system mandating increased efficiencies and sharing research with the state citizens, and the library’s own goals of raising awareness of and supporting open access. Also outlined are the technical and procedural choices made, important activities undertaken to develop, define and publicize the new services, campus response to the service and next steps.

This report provides detailed accounting of how a large academic library implemented an electronic publishing service to support open access scholarship. Important activities such as marketing communication, policies development and technical/procedural activities are defined and results described. The report provides observation and lessons learned for academic libraries in development and support of electronic journals.

Library as the publisher is a new concept. This report will be of interest to many libraries who are considering offering publishing services and to libraries that currently offer publishing services.

There are a number of published studies that have ranked journals publishing research in information systems and related areas such as electronic commerce. Despite electronic government (eGov) research reaching a decade‐old milestone, none of the existing research has attempted to explore and determine the quality of journals publishing research related to this multidisciplinary area. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to present the findings from a pilot survey exploring the scholarly perceptions of academic journals publishing eGov research.

A questionnaire‐based pilot survey was employed as the method for conducting this research. The survey was conducted by employing an e‐mail questionnaire which was designed as a Word file. In total, 31 usable responses were received and these provided the data presented in this paper.

The findings in the form of scholarly perceptions of journals publishing eGov research from this pilot survey explored the quality of journals. This pilot survey also explored respondents’ views on the following: whether the journals dedicated to eGov should be included in various journal rankings; and whether there is a need to have separate rankings for journals that publish eGov.

The generalization of findings is limited due to the small sample size as it was a pilot study. Hence, the findings should be treated as indicative rather than confirmatory of the quality of journals publishing eGov research. A larger survey needs to be conducted, in order to validate and generalize the findings reported in this submission.

The findings would be helpful for eGov researchers in terms of determining potential outlets with appropriate quality for future publications, and for universities/institutions engaged in supporting research in this area by recognizing and promoting publication in high‐quality outlets. The findings may also aid the decision making of those involved in maintaining journal rankings in reference to disciplines, in order to include dedicated eGov journals in such rankings.

There has been no research conducted and published (as far as the author is aware) that explores and determines the quality of journals publishing eGov research, which this paper attempts to achieve. Therefore, the findings presented in this paper are timely, original, and relevant to the eGov scholarly community. Since this is the very first step towards determining journal quality for publishing eGov research, the most important contribution of this paper would be to stimulate constructive debate amongst researchers of eGov (and its reference disciplines) on this topic, which (the author hopes) will then lead to the creation of rigorous consensus‐based ranking of journals publishing eGov research.