When you subscribe to a paper journal or monograph, you can keep it as long as the paper lasts. Electronic versions are often leased, not owned. And no one has yet resolved the question of how electronic journals will be preserved, given the rapidity with which hardware and software systems change. Finally, some scholars simply do not like electronic publications and do not want to see them replace paper. Nonetheless, electronic publishing of scholarly research holds great promise for bringing down costs, especially as a way of introducing competition into the market.
Some journals are inexpensive, even the institutional costs.
Its publisher is likely to be a for-profit company. As more commercial publishers find how profitable journals can be, journals in some of the social sciences are also posting annual increases even greater than those in the STM areas. Every year, these journals eat up more and more of libraries' acquisitions budgets. Nothing, of course. Scholars need to know, however, that some fundamental changes have taken place in the economy and the values of journal publication.