The scientific article in the age of digitization

Abstract

This study is concerned with the consequences of digitization for peer-reviewed research articles published in electronic scientific journals. It has often been argued that digitization will revolutionize scientific communication. However, this study shows that this is not the case for formal scientific communication by means of research articles published in journals. Authors make little or no use of the possibilities offered by the digital medium, new procedures for electronic peer review have not been developed, and users do not seem to have a need for new forms of interaction offered by some electronic journals. The main innovations are to be found at the level of the infrastructures developed by scientific publishers. Scientists themselves appear to be extremely reluctant to change their established patterns of behaviour in formal scientific communication.