This paper reports the results of a study comparing the performance of commercial document suppliers with the performance of traditional interlibrary loan (ILL). The results indicate that (1) commercial document suppliers do not provide documents more quickly than interlibrary loan suppliers; (2) higher charges do not lead to faster document supply; (3) locally based commercial suppliers do not supply documents more quickly than suppliers located some distance from the source of a request; (4) foreign language materials, items published before 1970, technical reports, and proceedings do not arrive more slowly nor cost more, and are not more difficult to supply than current, English-language journal articles; and (5) cost, speed of supply, and success rate (the proportion of all document requests successfully filled) do not vary by subject area, except for engineering.
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Connie Miller (1988) studied this question.