THE COST OF IMPLEMENTING AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL

The ELVYN project was established in the United Kingdom to examine how a publisher might best interact with research libraries in the delive ry of an electronic version of a printed journal. As part of the study , data were collected at both the publisher and the libraries on the c osts (in terms primarily of materials and manpower) that were incurred in setting up, and subsequently running, such an electronic version. The costs incurred by the publishers are examined here in terms of the activities involved. For the type of scientific journal considered in this project, it is clear that the costs and the computer shills invo lved in setting up an electronic version are considerable.