As Judy Nagy and Chris Bigum
write in the
Online Journal of Distance Education: “The advent of computing and communication technologies provides knowledge workers and the consumers of their products with alternative means of production and distribution, thereby directly challenging the role of publishers. Publishing on the Internet significantly reduces the time it takes for a consumer to obtain a product. The use of the Internet in this way highlights the role of publishers as essentially the middleman in the knowledge production and dissemination of knowledge products.”