New Value-Added Services for Electronic Journals in Classics

Abstract

E-journals are undoubtedly less widespread in the Humanities than in the Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) field. This is not just because of a lag in Humanities journals' development, but also because of the different extent at what electronic publishing technologies fit respectively the different nature and requirements of disciplines. The wide range of functionalities and services that can be offered online in addition to the print copy of a journal is one of the most important differences between paper-based and electronic publishing. Value Added Services (VAS) represent also a key aspect to be leveraged in the development of a sustainable business model for open access journals. VAS need to be though carefully. To provide them comes at a cost and it is a process that can just partly be automated. The paper aims at designing a new model for Classics e-journals specifically tailored on classicists' needs, identifying a set of functionalities that may be provided by e-journals on the basis of a deep understanding of the field and of recent user studies. The implementation of such functionalities and the automatisation of the process needed to enable them are then discussed in detail.