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Hypermedia Online Publishing: the Transformation of the Scholarly Journal

4.2.3 Print output

While it might seem a little incongruous to talk about print output in the context of electronic journals, many people still want to print out articles for a variety of purposes. Printers used to be expensive, slow, low resolution and monochrome. Technology advances in the field of both ink-jet and laser printers have addressed all of the above concerns.

Ink-jet printers are now available at costs that are small percentages (of the order of 10-20%) of the cost of an entry-level computer. Low-end ink-jet printers typically have running costs of less than A$0.05/page for monochrome output or less than A$0.20/page for colour output, print faster than a page/minute, have resolutions of at least 300 dots per inch (dpi) and provide reasonable colour quality. Higher-quality ink-jets provide faster printing speeds, resolutions of up to 1400 dpi and excellent colour output. Ink-jets are best for proofing colour or items where colour output is important.

Laser printers are approximately twice as expensive as inkjet printers and are restricted to monochrome output (unless one wants to pay a lot of money) but offer much faster printing (4-6 pages per minute), support for Postscript (see 4.5.3: Page oriented solutions on page 63), and better resolution (usually 600 dpi). Laser printers are best suited for text-intensive work.

The affordability of cheaper printers (and the spread of networking as discussed below) means that most professionals should be able to print out monochrome articles as desired, with an increasing proportion being able to print out colour as well.

Last modified: Monday, 11-Dec-2017 14:41:40 AEDT