Facilitating Scholarly Communication: cost and benefits of a Digital University Press

摘要

Firenze University Press (FUP) started in 2000 as the Digital Press of the University of Florence (Italy). It is focused on authors/readers, attempting to eliminate obstacles and barriers to effective scholarly communi-cation.The performance indicators chosen for monitoring the service were: 1) customer satisfaction, 2) impact, 3) time, 4) cost. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected during 2000-2001 for improving the services and the products of the Digital Press. In a survey, the existing authors/readers were asked why they had chosen FUP; the potential authors/readers were asked what would persuade them to print/buy from FUP. When considering the economics of a digital press it may be tempting to focus on financial factors that are directly related to digital press products and services, for example the price of publications and the services of the infrastructure. It is important, however, to be aware of other economic factors. Results of the evaluation indicated that a system-wide view of the costs and benefits of producing and delivering scientific publications must acknowledge the costs and benefits to users and the total costs to the institution. These include, for the user, the elimination of such obstacles as the lengthy editorial process, the cost of downloading bandwidth-hungry images, and the time spent filtering information; while for the university, they include the cost of collecting books in libraries and the cost of the infrastructure needed for the research. As well as facilitating the fixing of exact price, i.e. basing the price of information on the actual cost of publication, the electronic environment facilitates the communication between scholars.