IMHO, this is the appropriate time (or very close to the time) for stopping printing of journals due to the availability of many huge storage options. I prefer to have e-copies, then I print only specific essential documents. Why do we have to keep tons of printed papers, while searching among among and within them is impossible?!

There is still room for printed journals, even if the reasons have a psychological base. Private ownership of material. The slightly greater effort involved in acquiring a printed copy, interaction with others, the sensory nature of journal ownership.

In spite of their academic nature, scholarly journals exist to make money. The traditional way of doing this is large subscription fees paid by libraries.

Today, online storage is easy, but that opens the door to predatory journals who do not really do peer review and charge the author huge publication feed. However this does not mean that a online journal cannot be highly reputable.

Knowing that a journal has a print edition can give some assurance, at least, that it is a legitimate publication and not a scam.

Dear Michael W. Marek,

I do not find a strong contradicting relation between the publishing industry, and transition to the full e-world. Therefore, I request you to elaborate your feedback. I think that the main drive to our respect of specific publishers/journals are the quality of knowledge they accept, the pre-publishing and post-publishing services, and the quality of the indexing systems. Therefore, the publishing media will not affect their level, and will not elevate the level of originally predatory journals. To be clear, we are already living in an e-world, but sometimes we do not want to believe that, right?

The future of books is electronic... This also includes publications of journals. More prints journals are going electronic, while many others are halting the print vertion.. We have preference for redability, however, electronic copies give dynamic opportunities that print can not give. At the end, our perception of preferences and their distribution would determine whether or not any form of information (i.e. print and electronic) will last the test of time.

Perhaps it will become extinct in the coming years. All (authors, researchers, publishers) are moving towards electronic form and prefer it.

It is too early to conclude that printed journals will so go into extinct. It will interest you to know that somewhere in this 21st century, university management still considers e-journals (open access) as fake, they insist that all academic staff must submit more of printed journals than online journals for promotion. It depends on the level of technology and information development of a country. Maybe it is possible in the developed countries, but that will be far fetched in most less developed countries.