Professional publishers face a dilemma. E-journals are cheaper to produce. At the same time publishers will lose some of the individual subscribers who can access articles electronically. Libraries may not buy more then one electronic copy of journals or books. Copies can be made and distributed freely.
Publishers can charge per-usage fee.
The per-usage fee may cause major objections among scholars who are used to free access to library material. Per-usage fee may cause drops in access to such material by students. The publishing community may resist electronic publishing in the near future and try to preserve existing methods of copyrights charges, payments and distribution. At the other end of the spectrum the publishing community may be a leading force in electronic publishing. Tenure committees, consisting of established scholars, may delay the acceptance of AEP by rejecting or simply ignoring the phenomenon.