Managing academic electronic publishing: Six case studies

Academic publishing faces major challenges such as increasing costs and a reduced subscription base. Electronic publishing promises benefits and solutions to these and other challenges. This study examines six cases of academic electronic journals and the management practices used by their editorial boards. The cases indicate that many of the anticipated benefits of e-journals can be achieved given structured management practices. However, electronic publishing presents several previously unknown challenges some of which can be resolved by individual journals but others, which we term Universal Issues, require new academic structures and a globally agreed upon set of policies. The case studies reported in this article are part of a larger study that interprets the cases in terms of an 8-M framework developed by the first author.