But you have to plan for managing an electronic journal so that it never becomes unreadable. This is not possible with PDF, it is only possible when all the features, structure, special characters, etc. are coded in the original electronic product. And this is where the University of Chicago Press has taken the lead. The result is an archive, which the public never sees, which contains all the information necessary to derive automatically the screen version, the PDF version for printout and the paper typeset version. Once the archive exists it becomes possible to translate the archive into any new standard and to rederive the entire public electronic version to utilize new browser tools as they become available.
Automatic translation offers the only hope to keep the journal updated at a reasonable cost.
Before they pay good license money, libraries should be asking publishers about the longevity of their material. There are a series of obvious questions. These are serious concerns. The Commission on Preservation and Access has done its best to call attention to the problem of ensuring long term archiving and access. But librarians and users should be educated about what constitutes a good electronic journal.