Future Trends in Electronic Document Delivery Services

For decades, getting a journal article you didn’t have meant filling out a request form, waiting for a librarian to track down a copy, and collecting a photocopy days later. That world is fading fast. Electronic Document Delivery Service (EDDS) is now defined less by physical transport and more by instant digital access, automated workflows, and national-scale subscription policies. Understanding where this service is heading matters for every student, researcher, and library professional, because the way we access scholarly information is being rebuilt from the ground up.

The shift to digital first 🔗

The most visible trend is the steady decline in requests for physical documents. As libraries subscribe to large electronic collections, the need to physically borrow or photocopy materials shrinks. When users can already find the full text inside a database their library subscribes to, they simply stop requesting it through document delivery.

This pattern is well documented. A study of interlibrary loan records at an academic library found that the growing availability of electronic full-text resources significantly reduced borrowing of photocopied materials across disciplines, regardless of how recent the needed material was. In other words, convenience is replacing the older request-and-wait model.

The reasons are straightforward. Digital delivery is faster, cheaper, and easier to manage. When a journal article or book chapter can be scanned and sent electronically, it often reaches the user within days rather than the weeks a physical loan might take. Physical books still travel by post and carry shipping costs, but the demand for non-returnable photocopied articles keeps falling as more content becomes available online.

What is driving the decline 🔗

Three forces are working together. First, linking technology connects databases directly to full-text articles, so users retrieve what they need without placing a separate request. Second, e-journal subscriptions mean libraries already hold electronic access to thousands of titles. Third, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the move online, as libraries closed physical spaces and had to deliver everything digitally. Many of the solutions adopted during that period have been retained permanently.

Library consortia versus pay-per-view models 🔗

As physical requests decline, two contrasting access strategies have emerged for obtaining information. Both respond to the same problem: libraries cannot afford to subscribe to everything, yet users still need content the library does not own.

The first strategy is the pay-per-view or pay-per-article model. Here, libraries purchase information in smaller units, like a single journal article or a book chapter, rather than subscribing to an entire journal. This information can be obtained through document delivery, interlibrary loan, or pay-per-view download. It suits occasional, unpredictable needs where a full subscription would waste money.

The second strategy is the library consortium. Instead of negotiating alone, libraries band together to license electronic resources collectively, securing access to a large body of content at a heavily discounted consortial rate. A consortium is essentially a group of libraries pooling resources and services to achieve collective procurement of e-journals, databases, and other electronic materials that no single member could afford on its own.

Major consortia in the Indian context 🔗

India has built several well-known consortia. The INDEST-AICTE Consortium was set up to serve engineering and technology institutions, while the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium was launched by the University Grants Commission to provide e-resources across all disciplines to universities. Studies note that UGC-INFONET provided thousands of international peer-reviewed journals over the internet free of cost to member institutions, transforming research access for universities that previously subscribed to very few international titles.

Other consortia followed, including N-LIST for colleges, CSIR for scientific research bodies, and FORSA for astronomy and astrophysics. Over time, several of these national efforts merged into a single entity, e-ShodhSindhu, coordinated by the INFLIBNET Centre, to streamline access to scholarly e-resources across higher education.

The consortium approach has a clear effect on document delivery: it reduces demand for article-by-article requests. When a consortium makes thousands of journals available at the desktop, fewer users need to order individual documents. This is why the consortium model and the pay-per-view model are often described as two contradictory trends in document supply, both reshaping how access is organised.

The impact of open access 🔗

Open Access (OA) is freeing research from subscription paywalls altogether, and it carries major implications for document delivery. OA refers to a publishing model that makes scholarly research immediately available to readers at no cost and free to reuse for scholarly purposes. When content is openly available, there is no need to request it through a delivery service at all.

For students and researchers, this matters enormously. A user who finds an article in an open-access repository or journal can read and download it instantly, bypassing both the library’s collection and any delivery mechanism. As the volume of OA content grows, the role of traditional document delivery narrows to materials that remain locked behind subscriptions.

One Nation One Subscription 🔗

India has taken a striking step in this direction with the One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) initiative, which became operational on 1 January 2025. ONOS is a centrally negotiated, government-funded national subscription that provides institutional access to global research across disciplines. The government allocated a substantial budget for the scheme, reported at around ₹6,000 crore, with access coordinated through INFLIBNET.

The scale is significant. Coverage extends to roughly 13,000 journal titles from around 30 international publishers, reaching government-funded higher education and research institutions nationwide. The stated aim is to eliminate the disparity where well-funded institutions enjoyed rich access while colleges in smaller towns struggled, effectively bridging the urban-rural knowledge divide.

It is worth noting that ONOS is not the same as open access, and analysts have debated this distinction. ONOS centrally pays for access to paywalled journals rather than making content freely open to the world. A critical review in a policy journal argues that while ONOS could reduce institutional costs and democratise access, its long-term success depends on overcoming publisher resistance, funding uncertainties, and infrastructure gaps, and recommends combining it with genuine open-access mandates. For document delivery, the practical effect is similar: when access is centralised at the national level, the demand for individual article requests falls further.

How AI and cloud computing will transform DDS 🔗

The fourth and perhaps most far-reaching trend is the move to cloud-based, automated delivery systems powered increasingly by artificial intelligence. Document delivery is shifting from a staff-mediated, manual process to one where software handles much of the work behind the scenes.

Cloud-based resource sharing 🔗

Modern interlibrary loan and document delivery now run on cloud platforms. OCLC’s Tipasa, for example, is a cloud-based ILL management system that lets libraries automate routine borrowing and lending functions without heavy IT support or server management. Because the system is web-based, it can be accessed from anywhere, and updates happen automatically with no scheduled downtime.

These platforms automate the parts of delivery that once consumed staff hours. RapidILL, now part of the Ex Libris family, streamlines and automates the process, reducing turnaround time and cutting costs. Built around a community of reciprocal users committed to fast turnaround, RapidILL reports a request fulfilment rate of around 95% and an average delivery time of under 12 hours for digital assets. This is a dramatic improvement over the days or weeks of older methods.

Automation and intelligent routing 🔗

The intelligence in these systems lies in how they route requests. Rather than a staff member deciding which library to ask, the software does it. Tipasa calculates turnaround time to work out which library can supply an item fastest and performs load balancing so that no single library receives more requests than it can handle. RapidILL similarly tries one lender at a time, selected automatically from a pod of partner libraries.

This is where automation already mimics decision-making that once required human judgement. The next step is deeper AI integration. Looking ahead, AI is expected to support smarter matching of requests to sources, predictive analytics that anticipate which materials users will need, automatic metadata correction, and copyright compliance checks. Machine learning can analyse usage patterns to help libraries decide what to license and what to deliver on demand, making collection development more responsive.

What this means for library staff and users 🔗

Automation does not remove the need for skilled professionals; it changes their role. As routine tasks are handled by software, staff can focus on complex requests, copyright questions, user support, and managing the systems themselves. For users, the experience becomes faster and more self-service oriented, with requests placed directly through electronic interfaces and materials delivered straight to a personal dashboard or inbox.

The broader picture is a service that is increasingly invisible. The most advanced delivery happens transparently, augmenting existing workflows and fulfilling requests behind the scenes so that users receive material quickly without seeing the machinery that delivered it. Combined with the growth of consortia, open access, and national subscriptions, the future of electronic document delivery points toward instant, automated, and increasingly free access to scholarly information.

What do you think? As open access and national subscriptions like ONOS expand, will traditional document delivery services eventually become obsolete, or will they simply evolve into something new? And how should libraries balance the convenience of automation with the professional judgement that human librarians bring to the process?

References

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233275947_The_Decline_of_the_Number_of_Interlibrary_Loans_by_Medical_Students_in_a_Small_Academic_Medical_Library_A_Study_of_18_Years_of_Data
2. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/35910/5/Unit-9.pdf
3. https://academicjournals.org/article/article1379699855_Kaur.pdf
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057231713000210
5. https://blog.mdpi.com/2025/11/25/open-access-in-india/
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Nation_One_Subscription
7. https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-025-00028-y
8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322969.2025.2604489
9. https://www.oclc.org/en/tipasa.html
10. https://exlibrisgroup.com/interlibrary-loan-system/
11. https://library.hee.nhs.uk/resources/inter-lending-and-document-supply/resource-sharing-market-review-and-options-appraisal/kls-resource-sharing-2