Scholarly Use of Internet-Based Electronic Resources: A Survey Report - author abstract

Library Trends, Spring, 1999 by Yin Zhang

INTRODUCTION

Internet-based e-sources are increasingly used for scholarly purposes. However, the details regarding scholars' use of these sources are still unclear as are the problems and concerns scholars have when they use resources for research. This survey, part of a larger project on scholarly use of Internet-based e-sources, aims to establish a baseline of the use as reported by a group of library and information science researchers. Moreover, this survey investigates how to improve scholarly use of Internet-based e-sources from researchers' perspectives.

SURVEY DESIGN AND ADMINISTRATION

Samples

This survey focuses on the field of library and information science. In a preliminary study, the ten most highly cited print journals (p-journals) in LIS, as well as four refereed LIS electronic journals(1) (e-journals), were examined for e-source citing.(2) The journal sample for this study listed below includes the four e-journals and the four p-journals with the greatest number of e-citations from the preliminary study:

   Print journals
      College & Research Libraries
      Journal of Academic Librarianship
      Journal of the American Society for Information Science
      Library Trends
   Electronic journals
      EJournal (http://www.hanover.edu/philos/ejournal/)
      LIBRES: Library and Information Science Research Electronic
        Journal
        (http://aztec.lib.utk.edu/libres/)
      MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship
        (http://wings.buffalo.edu/publications/mcirnl/)
      Public Access Computer Systems Review
        (http://info.lib.uh.edu/pacsrev.html)

This study's author survey sample includes all authors who had in-press papers as of July 1, 1997 in these eight journals. Requests for bibliographical information about the in-press papers were sent to the editors of the eight journals. Authors of these papers were contacted for the reference lists if the editors had not already provided such information. When the survey started in late February 1998, 203 authors whose contact information (either postal or e-mail address) was known were included in this study. During the survey, it was found that two authors were not reachable due to affiliation change, which reduced the sample size to 201.

The distribution of the author sample by journal format and presence/absence of e-citations in the papers is summarized in Table 1. Overall, 7 percent of the authors were to publish their papers in the e-journals, while 93 percent of them were to publish in the p-journals. The group of e-journal authors was much smaller than the p-journal author group because, at this stage, the publication frequency and journal size of the e-journals were much smaller than those of most p-journals. Also, in the sample, nearly one-third (32.3 percent) of the authors cited e-sources in their papers while about two-thirds (67.7 percent) did not.

TABLE 1.

AUTHOR SAMPLE BY JOURNAL FORMAT AND PRESENCE/ABSENCE OF E-CITATIONS FOR IN-PRESS PAPERS

                              Frequency         Percentage

e-journal paper author            14                7.0
p-journal paper author           187               93.0
Total                            201              100.0

with e-citation                   65               32.3
without e-citation               136               67.7
Total                            201              100.0

Survey Instrument and Procedures

A survey questionnaire was designed to collect researchers' demographic information, frequency of use of various Internet tools and protocols, ways of accessing various Internet tools and applications, strategies of locating e-sources for research, opinions on citing such sources, evaluation of Internet-based sources for research, and suggestions for improving their use of e-sources for research.

A Web survey application was developed for this project in order to:

* generate personalized cover letters and questionnaires with hyperlinked e-citations where possible,

* collect survey data via the Web, and serve as a data entry interface for survey data received via U. S. mail or fax.

On February 20 and 21, 1998, an initial personalized invitation to participate in the survey was sent via e-mail to the 197 authors whose email addresses were available. At the same time, print copies of the survey were sent via U. S. mail to the six authors whose e-mail addresses were unavailable. In the following seven weeks, nineteen print copies were sent via U. S. mail or fax to authors who had been originally contacted by e-mail and who subsequently had requested a print copy

There were three follow-ups: the first was sent to the nonrespondents via e-mail on March 7, 1998; the second was also sent via e-mail on March 30; the third was sent via both e-mail and U. S. mail on April 30 and May 1, 1998.

Response Rate

By June 15, 1998, 125 usable replies were received via the Web and 31 via U. S. mail or fax. Twelve potential respondents declined to participate.(3) Eleven responded to the survey request, but their replies were either not received or were unusable.(4) In total, 179 researchers responded to the survey request; 156 completed replies were usable. With 201 potential respondents in total, the overall response rate was 89.1 percent (179/ 201), and the usable reply rate was 77.6 percent (156/201).