Should scientific journals be printed? A personal view

Although the widely appreciated advantages of electronic journals in the sciences would indicate that they should be the preferred form of publication, they persist in print as well. The data on the relative use of bound and unbound journals in an academic biology library suggest that almost all of the journals studied are suitable as electronic only; only a very few are reasonable choices in both print and electronic formats. Most scientific articles might be better suited for publication not in journals at all, but rather in a suitable Internet‐based repository.