Scholarly associations and societies also can and do frequently fulfill this function, as well as other roles commonly associated with publishers. Once the work has been judged worthy, the publisher must embody the work in an unchanging form the enduring authenticity of which it can guarantee, and make it formally, publicly available. The academic review committee that considers a scholar for tenure or advancement through the institutional hierarchy generally looks at his or her publications. They must be confident that the published works submitted by the person are the same as those judged intellectually meritorious by his or her peers. It is also necessary for a work to remain constant if it itself becomes an object of study and evaluation by other scholars.
Publishers also have needs.
They need to generate funds to finance their contribution to the knowledge culture. To do this, they need to be able to publicize the availability of new works, making people aware of their existence, and thereby creating a market. They also need to be able to control and monitor access and use in order to negotiate payment. At the same time, the market for an electronic work will be of limited duration, and we are probably safe in assuming that publishers will not want to bear the cost of storing and maintaining publications when the costs of doing so exceed the revenue being generated by access and use of them. Therefore mechanisms must be in place to trigger transfer of control and custody of the information from the publisher or scholarly society to the archive and library community to ensure that the intellectual value is preserved after the economic value is exhausted.