Electronic Journals and Changes in Scholarly Article Seeking and Reading Patte... - The Diigo Meta page

• 30 Jun 09
  

  Michel Roland

  scholars reading e-journals citations serendipity

  • Readings from library-provided electronic journals has increased substantially, while readings of older articles have recently increased somewhat. Ironically, reading patterns have broadened with electronic journals at the same time citing patterns have narrowed.

  • Surveys conducted from 1977 through 2005 show that university science faculty on average:
    

    
    
    
    
    
    
    1. read more in less time per reading,
    2. rely less on browsing and more on searching,
    3. rely more on library provided articles than from other sources,
    4. and, because they make choices based on what helps them get their work done, will readily adapt to new technologies that are convenient to their information-seeking, reading, and work patterns.
  • 6 more annotations...
  • • While the average number of article readings per scientist is increasing, the average time spent per reading is declining. In the 2005 surveys, scientists reported spending an average of 31 minutes per reading, down from 48 minutes in 1977. Multiplying the average time spent per reading by the number of article readings shows that the total commitment to reading by U.S. science faculty increases from approximately 120 hours annually in 1977 to 144 hours annually in 2005. It appears that the amount of time available for reading scientific articles may be reaching a maximum capacity.
    • The number of readings increased by an estimated 130 readings per scientist from 1977 to 2005. The "other sources" increased by about 20 readings (from 23 to 43), which might be attributable to open access initiatives since the current 43 readings are 11 from preprints; 19 copies provided by authors, colleagues, etc.; 4 from an author website and 2 from other websites (plus 7 from an unspecified source). Reading from personal subscriptions decreased about 27 readings per faculty scientist. Some of the decrease represents a drop in personal subscriptions, but most is attributable to less reading per subscription (i.e., about 21 readings per subscription in 1977 to 15 in 2005). Most remarkable is that readings from library-provided articles increased by 137 readings, which is comparable to the net increase in readings overall (130 readings). Much of this increase is due to electronic journal or aggregation collections in libraries.
    • Over half of readings in 2005 are from electronic sources (59.5% vs. 40.5% from print sources). However, as shown in Figure 3, personal subscription readings frequently continue to be from print issues. On the other hand, most library-provided articles and other sources are read from electronic versions.
    • The most frequent principal purpose of reading is research (48.5% of readings), followed by teaching (22.5%), writing (articles, reports, proposals, etc. – 10.8%), and current awareness/keeping up (8.0%).
    • Articles published in 2005 (prior to October/November when the surveys were done) were largely identified through browsing (52.6%), but as the articles became older, readers more frequently became aware of them by other means. Articles published prior to 1996 were mostly identified through citations (46.9%) and searching (32.8%).

    • While citing patterns may be narrowing, reading patterns are not. This is due to several differences between why scientists read and why they cite articles.
      

      
      
      
      • Reading is done for many purposes: current awareness, teaching, and administrative in addition to research and writing. Only those readings for research and writing are cited.
      • Scientists read many articles for every one that they cite. Choosing the best article to cite may be subject to peer pressure in the form of choosing more often to cite those that are cited by others. Following citation links in electronic journal articles may have proportionately more influence on citation behavior than reading behavior.
• 25 Nov 08
  

  Lisa Spiro

  Tenopir & King: "Abstract
  
  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 to follow links to see what other authors are citing. He concludes that electronic journals have resulted in a narrowing of scientific citation patterns. This brief article expands on the evidence cited by Evans (Boyce et al. 2004; Tenopir et al. 2004) based on the authors' ongoing surveys of academic readers of scholarly articles. Reading patterns and citation patterns differ, as faculty read many more articles than they ultimately cite and read for many purposes in addition to research and writing. The number of articles read has steadily increased over the last three decades, so the actual numbers of articles found by browsing has not decreased much, even though the percentage of readings found by searching has increased. Readings from library-provided electronic journals has increased substantially, while readings of older articles have recently increased somewhat. Ironically, reading patterns have broadened with electronic journals at the same time citing patterns have narrowed."

  research reading print-to-digital

• 

  Gosia Stergios

  This brief article expands on the evidence cited by Evans (Boyce et al. 2004; Tenopir et al. 2004) based on the authors' ongoing surveys of academic readers of scholarly articles. Reading patterns and citation patterns differ, as faculty read many more ar

  how_scholars_work information_behavior Evans_discussion

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