  Contemporary scholarly discourse follows many alternative routes in addition
to the three-century old tradition of publication in peer-reviewed journals.
The field of High- Energy Physics (HEP) has explored alternative communication
strategies for decades, initially via the mass mailing of paper copies of
preliminary manuscripts, then via the inception of the first online
repositories and digital libraries.
  This field is uniquely placed to answer recurrent questions raised by the
current trends in scholarly communication: is there an advantage for scientists
to make their work available through repositories, often in preliminary form?
Is there an advantage to publishing in Open Access journals? Do scientists
still read journals or do they use digital repositories?
  The analysis of citation data demonstrates that free and immediate online
dissemination of preprints creates an immense citation advantage in HEP,
whereas publication in Open Access journals presents no discernible advantage.
In addition, the analysis of clickstreams in the leading digital library of the
field shows that HEP scientists seldom read journals, preferring preprints
instead.
