Scientists’ Use of Journals: Differences (and Similarities) Between Print and Electronic Carol Tenopir Donald W. King, Randy Hoffman, Elizabeth McSween, Christopher Ryland, Erin Smith

ORNL Surveys 1984 survey of sample of scientists journal information seeking and reading pre-electronic 2000 replicated 1984 survey journal information seeking and reading print vs. electronic awareness of e-print services

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Established in 1943 in Oak Ridge, TN, for wartime weaponry research Employs 1,500 scientists and engineers for energy, environment, and other R&D Largest energy program among Dept. of Energy Labs

Study Methods 1984 random sample from ORNL, Rocky Flats, and Rockwell 68.5% return rate (137 out of 200) 2000 random sample from ORNL 25.3% return rate (76 out of 300)

Distribution of Respondents by Scientific Field: ORNL 2000 The predominant sciences at ORNL are those found by others to be most likely to use electronic journals.

Amount of Reading 1984 averaged reading 99 articles per year 2000 averaged reading 113 articles per year engineers ~ 6 per month physicists ~ 17 per month chemists ~ 23 per month

Age of Last Article Read

Proportion of Sources Used to Obtain Articles--Percent

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

Some Causes for Increase in Range of Journal Titles and Amount of Readings from 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

Electronic Journal Reading in % of all readings Over ½ of these from browsing library electronic subscriptions (16%) also from free web sites (2.7%) Personal electronic subscriptions (1.3%)

Time Spent Electronic Browsing: 13.3 min Locating: 17.7 min Reading (from the screen): 20 min Print Browsing: 6.5 min Locating: 8.2 min Reading (downloaded/ print): 62 min

Preprints Electronic preprints accounted for 3.6% of total readings 1/3 of ORNL scientists were aware of LANL’s arXiv.org and 1/4 were aware of the DOE PrePrint Network.

Eprint Usage 3/4 of those aware of arXiv.org had read 7.9 articles per person in the past year, but only 14% had ever submitted papers to the service. 1/2 of those aware of the DOE PrePrint Network read an average of 6 preprints from the service in the past year

Conclusions ORNL scientists are reading more Differences by work field Rely more on separate copies and less on subscriptions Read from more journal titles 1/3 of readings are electronic ORNL scientists don’t use preprint servers much