Multiple use of machine readable data in publishing

This article reports an investigation of the technical and economic aspects of the multiple use of bibliographic data and abstracts of articles in machine readable format. Various techniques such as OCR, word processing, and photocomposition are available for data acquisition and transmission. There is also sufficient economic justification to encourage sharing of such data among publishers. But questions of cost sharing, standards copyright, and procedural adjustments in management and accounting are powerful deterrents to the multiple use of publication data both within an organization and among different publishing concerns. The advantages of sharing bibliographic data can be achieved only if publishing concerns in both the public and private sectors are willing to cooperate and adjust.