ARC: Community: ELMAR: Posting

Related ARContent: Open Content

I think it is time to think of taking a flying leap and substantially ratcheting up the very laudable ELMAR effort in regularly bringing out the Table of Contents of Marketing journals. All Marketing scholars and students would benefit from an entirely electronic outlet for all published research. Turnaround will be faster, access will be easier and less expensive and searching for relevant work could be built right into the database. I really do not see the point in the paper version of the journals in the age of the Internet and pdf. I could and do print only what I need. To start with, JM, JMR, etc could go this route, since all of them are AMA journals. Instead of printing them, the final "ready for printer" issue would be simply placed on this site as a fully and professionally formatted Adobe pdf. Once the modalities are worked out, other journals could be invited to participate. Of course, they could adopt the same electronic route but set up their own server. Many faculty and graduate students, especially at non-flagship schools simply cannot afford subscriptions to printed journals and many schools do not have access to ABI Inform and other expensive commercially licensed databases. Marketing faculty, students and scholars generate the content of these refereed journals. We should be thinking of making access to all this knowledge inexpensive, more convenient, faster etc. Plus save a few trees too! Implementing this would be a huge endeavor, at least initially and would need to be thought through. However, there is no doubt in mind that it is eminently doable. One idea for funding this would be through AMA or MSI seed money followed by sharing of the annual cost of maintaining the server by schools with doctoral programs. The server could rotate as well, going to the editor of the journal.

Some thing to think about! Thanks and regards, – gg

gopala "GG" ganesh, ph.d.
professor of marketing
department of marketing and logistics
college of business administration
university of north texas
1167 Union Circle #236
po box 311396
denton tx 76203-1396
940.565.3129
fax.565.3837
e-mail1: ganesh@unt.edu
e-mail2: gg@unt.edu
url: http://faculty.coba.unt.edu/ganesh/