There's been a good deal of online chatter about this recent Science article that discusses the effects of online access on scholarship -- see, e.g., discussions here and here and blog entries noted therein. The report is not available without paying a toll or subscription, but the abstract is freely visible:
Online journals promise to serve more information to more dispersed audiences and are more efficiently searched and recalled. But because they are used differently than print -- scientists and scholars tend to search electronically and follow hyperlinks rather than browse or peruse -- electronically available journals may portend an ironic change for science. Using a database of 3[...]