Science resources: does the Internet make them cheaper, better?

Over the past several years the price of science, technical and medicine (STM) materials has been increasing steadily at a rate unimaginable and unexplainable in economical terms. Over the same period of time, there has been a technological revolution that would change the way libraries deliver their services forever. The Internet and, subsequently, the Web have become the greatest delivery options available to publishing. Hence, one of the suggested solutions to the serials crisis was to eliminate the typesetting, printing and distribution costs of journals with the hope that that would make them cheaper, speed up the distribution process and give end‐users more control. This paper focuses on whether the Internet has made STM resources cheaper or better. In order to gather information, a survey and interviews of science librarians in academic institutions and STM publishers and vendors were conducted.