CENDI Cost Study: The Changing R&D Information Economy in the Digital Age

摘要

This paper offers the following key judgements: (1) Since the Electronic Revolution is in its infancy, experts in the industry cannot predict the long-term effects. With little serious substantiated economic experience or cost studies, there is no current consensus about the consequences of introducing digital technologies. Many recognize that for the immediate future, a dual systemconventional print coupled with new electronic services--may be required. In this environment, costs in the short term are likely to increase. (2) The real payoff from the Electronic Revolution may not be economic. Rather, the investment may be returned in the creation of more effective products designed to generate quality decisions more rapidly. As a corollary, there is broad agreement that as the price per published unit of information declines, costs of delivering more value-added, personalized products to larger populations of end-users will cause costs to rise overall. Ever since the introduction of digital technologies, conventional wisdom imagined that the combined costs of acquiring, storing, retrieving and disseminating R&D documents would decline when compared with costs associated with delivering conventional print products.