Electronic Commerce in Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing An industry analysis with focus on intermediation and disintermediation

Electronic commerce is becoming one of the drivers of competition and is starting playing a role in industry structural change and in affecting the competitive advantage of companies. In this article it is showed how electronic commerce might affect the scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing sector. More specifically the paper looks at the emergence of the electronic journal as a substitute for the paper journal and tries to provide some empirical evidence of the effects of disintermediation and electronic intermediation in the value chain of the STM industry. It is further argued that some actors of the STM industry value chain are reengineering for electronic commerce thus operating both in the marketplace and the marketspace as a result of the changes in the industry competitive forces and especially the potential threat of disintermediation. The paper also provides examples of established companies that are including electronic commerce in their business model and new fully Internet-based intermediary.