Digital Commons Network^™

Changes In Scholarly Reading In Finland Over A Decade: Influences Of E-Journals And Social Media, Elina Late, Carol Tenopir, Sanna Talja, Lisa Christian

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Nationwide surveys of researchers in Finland in 2007 and 2016 distributed with the assistance of FinELib, the Finnish national consortium, show that researchers use a growing range of sources to find and access scholarly articles and that some reading patterns are changing. The percentage of articles found by searching and browsing are decreasing, while researchers are using more social ways to locate articles. Research social networking sites are rated as important to their work. They read more onscreen, although still print some material out for final reading. Reading patterns for books are different, as researchers still rely more on printed …

New Web Services That Help Authors Choose Journals, Amy Louise Forrester, Bo-Christer Björk, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

The motivations for an author to choose a journal to submit to are complex and include factors relating to impact and prestige, service quality, and publication costs and policies. Authors require information about multiple characteristics of journals that may be difficult to obtain. This article compares and contrasts the new author-oriented journal comparison tools and services that have emerged to assist researchers in this important step of the scholarly publishing process. Many of these tools combine factors to provide full web-based manuscript submission decision tools, however all have limitations that reduce their usefulness.

What Motivates Authors Of Scholarly Articles? The Importance Of Journal Attributes And Potential Audience On Publication Choice., Carol Tenopir, Elizabeth Dortch Dalton, Allison Fish, Lisa Christian, Misty K. Jones, Mackenzie Smith

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article we examine what motivations influence academic authors in selecting a journal in which to publish. A survey was sent to approximately 15,000 faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers at four large North American research universities with a response rate of 14.4% (n = 2021). Respondents were asked to rate how eight different journal attributes and five different audiences influence their choice of publication output. Within the sample, the most highly rated attributes are quality and reputation of journal and fit with the scope of the journal; open access is the least important attribute. Researchers at other research-intensive …

To Boldly Go Beyond Downloads: How Are Journal Articles Shared And Used?, Carol Tenopir, Gabriel Hughes, Christian Lisa, Suzie Allard, David Nicholas, Anthony Watkinson, Hazel Woodward, Peter Shepherd, Robert Anderson

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

With more scholarly journals being distributed electronically rather than in print form, we know that researchers download many articles. What is less well known is how journal articles are used after they are initially downloaded. To what extent are they saved, uploaded, tweeted, or otherwise shared? How does this reuse increase their total use and value to research and how does it influence library usage figures? University of Tennessee Chancellor’s Professor Carol Tenopir, Professor Suzie Allard, and Adjunct Professor David Nicholas are leading a team of international researchers on a the project, “Beyond Downloads,” funded by a grant from Elsevier. …

The Growth Of Journals Publishing, Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

For the last 60 years, scholarly journals have witnessed unprecedented growth, controversy and change. Since the late 1940s, the number of scholarly journals has increased sharply, with hundreds of new titles and new topics being introduced each decade. Beginning in the late 1960s and especially since the 1990s, the form of journals has been transformed into digital versions that speed both access and delivery of articles to readers and provide enhanced functionality. E-journals are now more popular with libraries and readers than their print counterparts, although both forms continue to coexist for a majority of titles. This combination of more …

Electronic Journals And Changes In Scholarly Article Seeking And Reading Patterns, Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

A recent article by James Evans in Science (Evans 2008) is being widely discussed in the science and publishing communities. Evans' in-depth research on citations in over 34 million articles and how online availability affects citing patterns, found that the more issues of a journal that are available online, the fewer numbers of articles in that journal are cited. If the journal is available for free online, it is cited even less. Evans attributes this phenomenon to more searching and less browsing (which he feels eliminates marginally relevant articles that may have been found by browsing) and the ability …

Perceptions Of Value And Value Beyond Perceptions: Measuring The Quality And Value Of Journal Article Readings., Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

When measuring quality and value of journals, what is being measured, to whom does the value accrue, and why the measurement is being done must be considered. Both implicit and explicit measures of quality and value are possible. Preliminary results of ongoing readership research show that academic library e-journal collections have both purchase and use value to academic faculty. They spend their time reading, read many articles each year, and reading benefits their work in many ways.

An Evidence-Based Assessment Of The "Author Pays" Model, Donald W. King, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Much discussion of author payments as a means to Open Access lacks consideration of evidence on their potential impact on the scholarly journal system. Our recent work perhaps sheds new light on both favourable and unfavourable aspects of this option.

We emphasize the diversity of communication communities among authors, and between the authors and the extensive non-author reading community. We also take a broad system perspective, given that the author payment model will potentially impact not only authors but also, for example, R&D funders, university and other organization staff and library budgets, publishers, and readers. This raises several issues. Who …

Use Of Electronic Science Journals In The Undergraduate Curriculum: An Observational Study, Carol Tenopir, Peiling Wang, Richard Pollard, Yan Zhang, Beverly Simmons

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Phase 2 of a 2-phase project funded by the NSF- National Science Digital Library Project observed undergraduate and graduate engineering, chemistry, and physics students and faculty while they searched the ScienceDirect e-journals system for scholarly science journal articles for simulated class-related assignments. Think-aloud protocol was used to capture affective and cognitive state information, while online monitoring provided an automatic log of interactions with the system. Pre- and post-search questionnaires and a learning style test provided additional data. Preliminary analysis shows differences in search patterns among undergraduates, graduates, and faculty. All groups used basic search functions the most. Graduate students on …

Undergraduate Science Students And Electronic Scholarly Journals, Carol Tenopir, Richard Pollard, Peiling Wang, Dan Greene, Elizabeth Kline, Julia Krummen, Rachel Kirk

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Phase I of a 2‐phase project funded by the NSF‐National Science Digital Library Project used focus groups to determine how undergraduate science students perceive journal literature and how they use digital library resources. Their perceptions and use are contrasted with faculty and graduate teaching assistants in engineering, chemistry, and physics. Undergraduates have difficulties understanding journal articles. Although they consider themselves experts on the web, they rarely use online indexes or e‐journals unless required to for class. E‐Journals should be incrementally introduced to students starting at the time they declare a major. E‐Modules developed by the library and faculty could introduce …

Electronic Journal Use: A Glimpse Into The Future With Information From The Past And Present, Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Electronic Or Print: Are Scholarly Journals Still Important?, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author's work in collaboration with Donald King has encompassed many studies over a 25-year period that have provided a wealth of data on the usage of scholarly journal articles by scientists. She uses the data to arrive at some major conclusions about scientists' behaviour: they read a lot, the material from journals is essential to them, they use different ways to get hold of the material, they use electronic sources when convenient, and journals in many fields divide into core and peripheral titles - core titles obtained on subscription and peripheral material as separates.

Designing The Future Of Electronic Journals With Lessons Learned From The Past: Economic And Use Patterns Of Scientific Journals, Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Studies of thousands of both university and non-university scientists demonstrate the importance of scholarly journals to their work. Amount of reading has remained high and scientists who read more, are more successful. Readings have shifted from personal subscriptions to more readings from library provided journals. Personal subscriptions have gone down from 5.8 subscriptions per scientist in 1977 to about 2.9 subscriptions. The drop is due to the rising prices of subscriptions, prices that have increased beyond inflation rates. Processing costs decrease some with electronic journals, but the high fixed costs associated with creating scholarly journals are the same for print …