Scholarly Communication as a Loosely Coupled System: Reassessing Prospects for Structural Reform

Scenarios of restructuring the scholarly communication system have dominated our profession's view of how major problems confronting libraries will have to be resolved. This paper comes to a different view. It suggests that any fundamental reform would presuppose an interdependent system, one with a fair amount of integration or consensus. Scholarly communication, however, is in reality a loosely coupled system of largely autonomous constituencies with little communication, coordination, or even direct cause-and-effect relationships. Loose coupling reflects certain functional needs, such as flexibility, local adaptation, and innovation, afforded by such «organized anarchy»