Serials
Serials, as in journals and periodicals have their own advantages and disadvantages, besides those mentioned for monographs above. An instant advantage of electronic journals is that they do not take up shelf space, as each journal title often takes up more space than a monograph. Furthermore, journals require ongoing maintenance, such as the binding of issues into volumes and if any of the issues are damaged this could add to the costs of conservation. The journals are constantly at a risk of damage or loss and cannot be replaced like most monographs can. Electronic journals, on the other hand, are accessible offsite, there is no risk of losing an issue and require less maintenance. Moreover, by subscribing to the electronic journal, publishers often allow access to all the past issues that have been digitised. Currently, such is the state that there are a lot of back issues that have not been digitised yet, which is another step back from reaching a paperless information environment.
A major advantage of electronic journals is that they are efficient for cross-searching or cross-referencing between other journals and electronic publications, assuming that the information centre has subscribed to an electronic content provider that hosts various databases of journals and electronic books, such as EBSCO. The capability to exploit the content further and perform complex analyses and the ability to embed audio-visual content that could never have been accessible in printed formats are furthermore advantageous than a manual search and read through paper journals. The information centre with paperless access to journals and books will also have the ability to refer to articles within in electronic journals by adding a link on an electronic reading list. So the student or researcher can access the reading list item without moving from the comfort of their seat. Finally, the financial incentive of saving on the increasing costs of "physical space" in favour of the diminishing costs of data storage is rather beneficial (Lee and Boyle, 2004).
Despite the advantages of efficient research and analysis of an electronic resource, there are researchers that prefer to physically handle and read a printed material. Researchers are often witnessed laboriously photocopying articles from multi-volume encyclopaedias, despite the encyclopaedia being available online. Some, however, prefer to print out the results of their article searches and prefer to read at leisure away from the computer screen. Thus, going digital or "paperless" would not mean that this will have a great impact on the environment, but nevertheless it will certainly have some positive impact on the natural resources that are increasingly becoming depleted and exhausted, which is plausible.