New perspectives in electronic publishing: an investigation into the publishing of electronic scholarly monographs

The literature on electronic publishing reveals that scant attention has been paid to the area of scholarly monographs. This paper reports on a study into the nature and provision of electronic scholarly monographs and textbooks in the UK. Following a brief description of the methodology, publishing structures are reviewed; the physical characteristics of electronic scholarly monographs are analysed, and issues associated with access are discussed. The final section sets out areas for future work. The study reported on here was a supporting study for the UK Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme.