How Scientists Use Journals: Electronic and Print Carol Tenopir Donald W. King

Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King. Towards Electronic Journals: Realities for Scientists, Librarians, and Publishers. Washington, D.C.: Special Libraries Association, 2000.

Studies from 2000 to the Present ORNL engineers, chemists, and physicists University of Tennessee medical faculty University of Tennessee social science, engineering, and science faculty American Astronomical Society (AAS) members

Data From: 15,000 scientists All fields of science University and non-university settings Over 100 organizations

Audiences Scientists/Researchers Publishers Librarians Funders

Lesson 1: More scientists mean more literature and more options

Facts Behind the Numbers Growth of journal literature is correlated with the number of scientists 1 article per 10 scientists

Mayur Amin & Michael Mabe 2000, SSP 22nd Annual Meeting May 31-June 2, 2000 R&D workers, journals and articles

Growth in Size of Journals The number of journal titles is going down a bit The number of journal articles per title is going up dramatically The number of pages per article is going down

Periodicals Total number of periodicals ~ Number of refereed scholarly periodicals Number of online refereed scholarly periodicals 10195

Lesson 2: Scientists read a lot

Facts Behind the Numbers Citation counts and authorship underestimates readings 70% of all readings are done by non- academicians Also many readings by students and others

Average Number of Scholarly Article Readings Per Year

Scholarly Article Readings by Work Field Engineers ~ 72 articles per year Physicists ~ 204 articles per year Astronomers ~231 articles per year Chemists ~ 276 articles per year University medical faculty ~ 322 articles per year

Time Spent Reading

Time Spent Reading by Work Field

Time spent reading per article University Medical Faculty 22 minutes per article Chemists43 minutes per article Physicists45 minutes per article Engineers81 minutes per article Astronomers28 minutes per article

Lesson 3: The Information in Journal Articles is Essential

Facts Behind the Numbers Approx. 50% of readings contain information that is new to the reader Over 35% of readings are of articles older than one year Older articles tend to be more valuable to scientists’ work

Age of Digital Articles Read

Usefulness of Article Content Achievers read more than others Many purposes of reading Journals are important compared with other resources

Value of Article Content Considerable savings result Improved productivity, quality, and timeliness of work Users are “willing to pay” for information in time

Lesson 4: Readers are price sensitive

Average Annual Price Increase (%) in Scientific Journals

Average Price Per Title: Science Journals Source: Library Journal, April 15, 2000

Average Number of Personal Subscriptions to Scholarly Journals

Lesson 5: Scientists use a variety of ways to get journal articles

Proportion of Readings of Scholarly Scientific Articles

Electronic Articles Reading E-journals E-prints Other Total AAS 52.7% 21.6% 5.3% 79.6% ORNL 17.3% 3.6% 14% 34.9% UTK 15% ~15% 5% ~35%

Preferred Formats (AAS)

Sources of reading- ORNL scientists

Lesson 6: The Journal Model is Important for Core Journals

Sources of Readings Scientists appear to be reading from more journals—at least one article per year from approximately 23 journals, up from 13 in the late 1970s and 18 in the mid-1990s. % and amount of readings from separate copies use of personal subscriptions

Sources of readings by medical faculty

Number of Separate Copies of Articles Received by Scientists ILL/Document Delivery 4 million>40 million Other39 million>60 million 43 million>100 million

Aspects of Journal Readings Scientists read from an increasing number of journals each year Half are read less than five times Only one of 26 have over 25 readings High reading titles form a core in the discipline (varies, but generally 2-6 titles)

arXiv.org Connections reached 61,000 per day in February ,000 new papers expected in 2001 Each article gets an average of 300 downloads per year

E-print Use at ORNL E-prints accounted for 3.6% of all reading (ORNL 2000) 1/3 of ORNL scientists were aware of LANL’s arXiv.org 1/4 were aware of DOE PrePrint Network

E-print Use by Astronomers E-prints account for 21.6% of all reading 85% of AAS members are aware of arXiv.org or the subset astro-ph 4.7% aware of DOE PrePrint Network

Bibliographic Database Impact A strong, linked db leads to journal use 90% of all Medline searches are in PubMed Today, the number of PubMed searches ranges from 1/2 to over one million per day 96.5% of astronomers know and use ADS Half of them read 6 or more articles per month as a result of ADS use

Reasons for Reading in More Titles and More Separates Increase in readings 7.5% in 1984 identified by 13.3% in 2000 online searches Increase in readings 8.6% in 1984 identified by 24.0% in 2000 other persons

Lesson 7: Electronic journals are adopted when it is easier

Impacts of Electronic Journals: Conclusions More reading in all workfields in not much more time. More reading of current articles Users prefer convenience and familiarity

Conclusions (cont.) Journal titles for core sources (print or electronic) Separates for additional sources complete journals and databases of separates will coexist in electronic form Print and electronic resources likely will be used in combination for the immediate future.

Multiple Co-existing Alternatives Print journals E-journals with many links Articles databases E-print servers Authors’ web sites