Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Canadian Business School's Journal Opts Out of Print and Onto the Internet By KAREN BIRCHARD One of Canada's top business schools has decided to stop selling the paper version of its journal and will give the publication away online instead. The Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Ivey Business Journal with the introduction of its new Web version on September 19. Although the print journal had both paid subscribers and what its managers describe as a "healthy" advertising base, the online publication will not charge readers and will not accept advertising. "That's not part of our current business plan," said the publisher, Edmund T. Pearce. "It doesn't fit with what we are trying to do. We're not interested in making money, although by switching to online-only, we'll save about $300,000 a year in print-production costs." Ivey already has an extensive Web site, he said, so the costs involved in encoding the publication will be minimal. The coding can be done by the business school's existing Web staff. Although it hopes to triple its readership by offering the magazine as a freebie, Mr. Pearce said the e-journal is also hoping that most of its new readers will be from outside Canada. Ivey is interested in expanding internationally and sees the Internet as a key marketing tool. Making the journal electronic-only "is part of the overall growth of Ivey as it moves into the world business-education community," Mr. Pearce said. About 40 percent of Ivey's current graduates are international students. The school has a campus in Hong Kong and has recently appointed both a European advisory board and an Asian advisory board. In the United States, there are increasing numbers of Ivey alumni in New York, New England, the Midwest, and California. Mr. Pearce, a former editor of the Ivey Business Journal, said that because the publication concentrates on practical management, it has always featured a mix of articles by senior business people and internationally recognized names in academe. The school is the second-largest producer of case studies in the world and is the Canadian distributor for materials from the Harvard Business School. The theme of the first online issue is governance -- "a topic of interest to everyone at the moment," said Mr. Pearce. Subsequent editions will deal with leadership, globalization, and innovation. Background articles from The Chronicle: Publisher of Free Online Science Journal Charges Authors a 'Processing Fee' (1/18/2002) 40 Computer Scientists Abandon a Print Journal for an Online Competitor (11/2/2001) A Revolutionary Idea in Publishing (3/09/2001) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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