Changes in the Information Dissemination Process Within the Scholarly World: The Impact of Electronic Publishing on Scholarly Communities of Academic Social Scientists

This paper describes part of the results of recent research carried out in Brazil and the UK, which investigated the perceptions by academic social scientists of the impact of electronic publishing on the information dissemination process within their scholarly communities. Results showed that there have been similar experiences by both communities of researchers. Accordingly, it was observed that electronic communication in general, and electronic publishing in particular, have had an impact on both the scholarly community and the dissemination process within it. This is especially so in terms of the dynamics of interactions within the community and the pervasiveness of the electronic media in the stages of the process. It was found that the scholarly community has both expanded their boundaries and increased the interactions at international level. Moreover, the traditional model of the dissemination process, as entirely based on the print media does not exist anymore. On the other hand, an entirely electronic based model, as proposed by some authors, has not yet been fully implemented. Therefore, a hybrid dissemination model best depicts the situation so far. In this sense, the impact of electronic publishing, (that is, the formal aspects of the process –its final stage), on the dissemination of information amongst academic social scientists has been less strong than the impact of the use of electronic communication on informal contacts, (discussion with colleagues -its initial stages), which has become totally prevalent. Nevertheless, it has been foreseen by a number of respondents that there is an irreversible trend towards the prevalence of electronic media at all the stages of the process in the near future, especially in terms of electronic journals. However, electronic books are not yet under consideration by those scholars.