An online edition of a journal provides several benefits to authors, including:

Online journals also deliver benefits to researchers as readers. These advantages include the ability to search within and across large collections of content; locating specific articles or data; the convenience of locating relevant content via hyperlinks; access outside the library; deeper searching and linking through taxonomic structures and semantic tagging; the ability to copy and save articles; 24/7 availability; the ability to use task-oriented online tools;10 and access to online articles ahead of print.11

Researcher behavior studies and preference surveys indicate an accelerating comfort with—and demand for—online access to peer-reviewed journal content.12 One indicator of this comfort is the extent to which researchers, at least in North America, have grown willing to accept their library cancelling the print edition of a journal in favor of electronic access.13 This is true not only of STM (science, technical, and medical) journals, many of which moved online early, but also for journals in the humanities and social sciences. Increasing online access to journals in these fields—bolstered by the reach of the JSTOR online archival collections in academic research institutions—has changed research behavior across all disciplines.14

Although researchers in the sciences and social sciences use electronic resources more frequently than most researchers in the humanities, usage patterns differ considerably between disciplines. Indeed, usage studies indicate that, on average, art historians use electronic resources more heavily than others in the humanities.15 This frequent use of electronic resources relates to the discipline’s particular research methods, the online resources available,16 and the widespread use of digital technology for classroom teaching. 17

As Ballon and Westermann note, “[a]rt history is characterized by a computer-literate professoriate, an established commitment to digital presentation, and an appreciation of the analytic potential of electronic tools.”18 This familiarity with digital resources suggests an openness on the part of art historians to innovations in online journal publishing models, such as those being implemented in the online edition of the JSAH.19

Many authors and researchers express dissatisfaction with long publishing cycles that can delay an article’s appearance for a year or more. Online publication is sometimes presented as a mechanism to reduce such delays since it is possible to publish articles online immediately, as they become available. However, inordinately long latency periods typically result not from printing delays but from lengthy peer review and editorial cycles, and these will not be shortened simply by moving to online publication.

Online editorial workflow management systems, which are often integrated into an online publishing regime, can accelerate the process and help increase publication speed, but it is more difficult to quicken the pace of reviewers and editors.

Online publication is frequently cited as an opportunity to lower the cost of scholarly publishing. Indeed, a complete transition to online-only publication eliminates print production costs (in effect, shifting the costs onto the user who prints articles out locally), assuming that the journal’s production process is reengineered accordingly.20 Even if printing and print distribution costs are eliminated, however, the “first copy” costs of the journal remain. Further, online production, fulfillment, and hosting add new costs to the publishing process. While online distribution offers many benefits, a substantial reduction in total publishing costs is not among them.21

The ability of authors to make greater use of images—especially color images—is often cited as one of the benefits of online publishing. This assumption is based on the relaxation of physical page constraints and the lower cost of digital image reproduction. It is true that an author can supplement an online article with more images than would be possible in print, and that the cost of distributing color images digitally is lower than the cost of print reproduction. However, online publication does not change the fundamental copyright restrictions and permissions costs that encumber the use of images in print. Nor can free online image exchange services be relied upon to provide the level of image quality required for publication.22

Digital publishing technologies and ubiquitous networking have not led to more flexible rights terms and lower permissions costs, as some had anticipated. Rather, conservative interpretations of fair use and the expansion of copyright protection have resulted in higher permissions costs for peer-reviewed journals.23 As Ballon and Westermann note, “[i]t is a paradox of the digital revolution that it has never been easier to produce and circulate a reproductive image, and never harder to publish one.”24

As noted above, online dissemination can expand a journal’s reach and increase the citation rates of its articles. However, realizing these benefits requires that a society implement enabling policies.

By lowering the marginal cost of dissemination to near zero, online publishing offers societies the opportunity to introduce pricing that makes a journal available to audiences—including smaller institutions and international markets—that might previously have been unable to afford the journal. To realize this potential, however, requires a pricing structure and less-developed countries (LDC) access policy designed to achieve greater market reach and penetration.

Likewise, online publication can result in greater exposure and increased citation impact. However, the extent to which this will be the case will depend on how easily a journal’s content can be discovered online. This will depend on whether the journal’s content has been indexed by Google and other major indexing services, whether the journal participates in CrossRef, and whether the journal’s access and pricing policies facilitate researcher use of an article once discovered.

It is not unusual for Google to account for over 75 percent of all referring URLs for an online journal. If you partner with a nonprofit or commercial publisher to distribute your journal online (as described in "Online Publishing Options," in Chapter Six), the publisher will typically assume responsibility for ensuring that your site is indexed appropriately by Google, Google Scholar, and other general search engines.25 Indexing by Web search engines complements the subject-specific indexing and abstracting services that have traditionally covered print journals,26 and which still provide the principal starting place for researchers seeking articles on a specific topic.27