B - Electronic journals and changes in scholarly article seeking and reading patterns

Tenopir C, King DW, Edwards S, Wu L. Electronic journals and changes in scholarly article seeking and reading patterns. Aslib Proceedings; 2009: 61(1)5-32

DOI: 10.1108/00012530910932267

By tracking the information-seeking and reading patterns of science, technology, medical and social science faculty members from 1977 to the present, this paper seeks to examine how faculty members locate, obtain, read, and use scholarly articles and how this has changed with the widespread availability of electronic journals and journal alternatives. The analysis was based on questionnaires. Results show that the average number of readings per year per science faculty member continues to increase, while the average time spent per reading is decreasing. Electronic articles now account for the majority of readings, though most readings are still printed on paper for final reading.

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