Digital publishing's ability to support niche publications and variety while maintaining quality is crucial. Another long-term concern is maintaining the robustness of hyperlinks within electronic publications. Copyright issues must be addressed. Editors have little or no authority in changing copyright policies, especially for journals published by commercial publishers. Some editors of scholarly publications find electronic publishing to be less expensive, due to reduced printing and mailing costs, both during the editorial process and in dissemination to readers.
Societies rely on subsidization from journal sales.
Startup costs of electronic publishing and the potential loss of subscriptions in an electronic era are concerns. Scholars recognize the need for new business models in an electronic era. Those models could include extensions of current practice, e.g. submission charges to help defray editorial costs. Others believe that the peer interaction that can occur in these systems is strong and can result in better work. Other areas of concern with preprint servers are copyright, the sheer amounts of information, and whether presence on a preprint server constitutes prior publication.