Digital Formats and the Economics of Editing Academic Journals

This article addresses the economic impact of the transition to digital formats on academic journals in the social and human sciences, based on the case of Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales. It considers the economic model of the journal and its evolution in a context where electronic distribution by bundle is increasing and subscriptions to the journal are diminishing. In this context, overall growth in readership is paradoxically accompanied by an erosion of financial returns. This observation leads to an interrogation of the different options for covering the costs of editorial work, the preservation of which is one of the central stakes of the debate.