The Impact of Disruptive and Sustaining Digital Technologies on Scholarly Journals

Clayton M. Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma is viewed within academic circles as one of the most important management books of the last twenty years. Christensen described the impact that disruptive and sustaining technologies had on various industries. Yet no one has investigated disruptive and sustaining technologies by applying Christensen’s analytical framework to scholarly journals. This paper begins by discussing Christensen’s principles of disruptive and sustaining technologies and the response that other intellectuals have had to their explanatory power and possibility. The paper next discusses how scholarly publishers are being affected by disruptive or sustaining technologies, specifically digital journal operations (e.g., open access, preprints, library publishing operations, and open-resource repositories). What strategies, then, can journal publishers, university presses, or academic societies take to preserve their pivotal role when scholarly journal publishing continues to change in response to sustaining and disruptive digital technologies?