Though it has, among all the available strategies, perhaps the greatest potential to solve the crisis in scholarly publication, it has yet to fulfill that potential. In the early 1990s, electronic access to scholarly research was thought by many to be the solution to the crisis. Because it bypasses certain production and distribution costs, it was thought that electronic access would temper high inflation rates, particularly in science and technology journal costs. This promise has not been realized, however, in part because there have been enormous costs in converting print-based operations to electronic and because commercial publishers will not allow revenues to decline. In fact, journal costs have increased at a higher rate during the last part of the 1990s, fueled apparently by publishers' discovery that they could recoup conversion costs from their highly captive market.
Electronic access is, however, fraught with challenges.
Libraries have typically chosen to maintain print journal collections, even when they have access to electronic versions. There are many reasons for this choice. There are great uncertainties about the preservation of electronic scholarship. Paper lasts a very long time. With hardware and software changing rapidly, however, few players within the scholarly communication enterprise are willing to commit to perpetual electronic preservation.