Coping With the Volume of Information
There is undoubtedly good news for the research community about the
positive outcomes of changes in the last 10 years, particularly in terms of
widening access to content at lower price per access. However, these positive
outcomes are tempered by continuing concern about the sheer volume
of published articles and the ability of libraries to continue to fund their purchases.
Librarians frequently ask publishers not to launch more new journals,
and, at the same time, researchers continue to request new publications to
help establish and communicate new disciplines. But if one plots the number
of U.S. workers engaged in research and development (R & D) against the
number of articles published each year over a number of years, there is a
straight-line correlation between the two..
Therefore, the number of articles and journals is directly related to the
volume of research undertaken.