Chapter Three: Literature review
3.3 Methodologies employed in the literature
There are a great number of publications dealing with the future development of scholarly communication. Most of them can be described as scenarios or forecasts of individuals presenting their own ideas of the future to their peers. (Halliday 2001 : 661)
A study of note is the one by Henry Barschall and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. In December 1986, Henry Barschall, University of Wisconsin-Madison published a brief article in Physics Today in which he looked at the costs of a small sample of physics journals (20 titles), as well as an even smaller number of philosophy and mathematics journals. Barschall compared the cost per 1000 characters across journals – a methodology previously used by the American Mathematical Society and others. His conclusion quoted by Case (1998 : 3) is:
While one would expect journals published for not-for-profit publishers to be less expensive than those published by commercial publishers, the cost-per-character ratio of over 40 between the most expensive commercial and least expensive not-for- profit publication is larger than one might have expected.
Two years later, Barschall conducted another study with a much larger sample of over 200 physics journals. In addition to expanding the sample, Barschall added the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) impact factor to his analysis. The ISI impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year.
The data indicate cost effectiveness in two ways: cost per quantity of content and cost as related to value apparently placed on the publication by others in the field. (Case 1998 : 3)
Barschall drew some important conclusions from this study. He found that, for example, the cost per 1000 characters did not vary greatly for journals published by the same publisher.
He concluded that all publishers whose journals have low average costs per character or low ratios of cost to impact are scientific societies or associations, while the publishers whose journals have high costs per character or high ratios of cost to impact are commercial firms.
One other conclusion he arrived at was the need to perform comparisons, as much as possible, within comparable sets of journals. These studies indicated that there was a discrepancy in cost effectiveness between not-for-profit and commercially published journals.
Not-for-profit journals were lower in cost. (Case 1998 : 4) He examined price in the context of a journal‟s content.
More recently the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries have updated Barschall‟s studies using the same methodology. The basic method for collecting data was the journal cost-per- use data. The data gathering method was that all journal issues and volumes were bar-coded. As items were re-shelved, after-use counts were made by scanning the data.
The purpose was to identify low-use journals and to provide an alternative to the Faculty in
the form of speedy document delivery and electronic versions of journals. Staff were asked if this was an acceptable alternative to the Library holding the journal. This study revealed that cost alone should not be the sole means of assessing a journal. The measurable differences between journal costs and usage are huge. The study confirmed that the high costs journals cancelled were so rarely used and marginally significant in their impact. (Case 1998 : 4) This approach examined value in the context of use of the journal. The University of Wisconsin- Madison Library has used this analysis to make journal cancellation decisions since 1995.
The objective of the study done at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) reported by Newell in 1992 was first to identify the preferred method to locate journal information and secondly to assess the perceived level of demand for current journals and back issues and finally to evaluate the success of QUT collections and document supply services. To do this, she conducted a survey on the four campuses. The Faculties of Arts, Built Environment, Engineering, Business, Education, Health, Information Technology, Law and Science were targeted. The user groups were the undergraduates, postgraduates and staff. Survey forms were distributed to those who actually entered the Library. These forms were made available at the issue desk on all campuses. A systematic distribution was intended to capture
academic staff with a random mail-out. In addition, class groups were targeted through liaison with academic staff in order to capture both library and non-library users. The results of the survey were analysed by running SPSS software. (Newell 1992 : 49) Her findings revealed that traditional serial suppliers are branching into document supply services and that there had been increased regional cooperation with the libraries in the Queensland area. The survey revealed that the users resisted the cancellation of print journals but would use the full-text CD-ROM databases as well, indicating that they would like both. (Newell 1992 : 67)
The methodology used in the Commercial and Free Electronic Journals User Study (Café Jus) project was a detailed study of users‟ reactions to e-journals at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. The study was funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre. Its main aim was to examine what problems readers with differing subject and computing backgrounds experienced when using e-journals. The study concentrated primarily on students taking Masters courses. A structured questionnaire was developed to be used in conjunction with access to an e-journal. The questions were arranged under three headings : journal content; journal appearance; and facilities offered by the journal. The
questionnaire was tested with volunteers in four departments, namely Computer Studies, Information and Library Studies, Physical Education and Sports Science. The students were introduced to the e-journals in groups, which met in the computer-based laboratories. An initial presentation on the project together with documentation was provided, then each student accessed an e-journal, noting down responses to the questionnaire as their reading progressed. Dealing with the students in groups made it possible to provide advice and help in real time and also ensured completion of the questionnaire.
The pilot study indicated that the planned organization of the investigation was acceptable, but that there were minor ambiguities in some of the questions. After some modifications to the questionnaire, it was launched on the following years‟ Masters students. For comparison, it was decided to obtain feedback on e-journal usage from research students and academic staff. The method of obtaining data was via a log sheet on which respondents were asked to keep a record of their usage. Volunteers were sought mainly via e-mail inviting participation, but this proved to be less effective as a recruiting tool than the group approach. (Halliday 2001 : 2; Woodward 1997 : 145-146) The survey results revealed that low-level technical problems are still a deterrent to use of e-journals and that commercial publishers tend to follow the lead of technology rather than consider the convenience of their users.
In 2000 and 2001 Tenopir and King conducted a series of surveys to measure specifically how much scientists are using e-journals and other electronic sources of articles. They surveyed a sample of scientists and engineers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, US and the academic and research staff at the University of Tennessee. In their survey they asked questions about the scientist‟s relative use of print and electronic sources of journal articles. They concluded that scholarly journals are well read and that they are extremely useful, whether it be for teaching, research, administration or other activities.
Furthermore, the value of the information provided is clearly established, whether measured by what users are willing to pay for it (purchase value) or by the benefits derived from its use (use value). Scientists in all disciplines and different places of work are reading more articles than books and a higher percentage of current articles are mostly electronic. Scientists use many sources for e-journals, including institutional subscriptions, authors‟ Websites and e-print archives, such as PubScience, but they continue to rely on traditional journals in both print and electronic formats. Finally, information-seeking and use patterns vary dramatically
among journals, articles within a journal, user groups and channels of dissemination.
(Tenopir 2002a : 25; Tenopir and King 2002b : 261- 265) For these reasons, this study of two particular groups of users, the postgraduate students and academic staff in the Faculty of Science at UND Libraries, has a contribution to make.
At Drexel University in the United States, a comprehensive analysis of a readership survey covering the number of reading outcomes from reading and reading patterns following implementation of the nearly exclusive e-journal collection was undertaken. The readership survey of the staff and doctoral students was based on a questionnaire design that has been applied since 1977. It was a paper based questionnaire. The self-administered questionnaire was distributed to the entire academic staff. The key component of the questionnaire dealt with a critical incident : the most recent reading of a scholarly article. Critical incident questions included : the form of the article read; time spent reading; how the respondent found out about the article; and the source of the article. The critical incident method proved not only a means of observing reading from non-library sources, but also from three library collection services, that is, e-journals, current journals and bound journal volumes.
(Montgomery 2002 : 2)
The critical incident observation method is potentially biased since the population now sampled is the readings done and no longer of the people sampled. Each sampled, critical incident reading has a different probability of selection, that is, the most recent reading of a respondent who reads a great deal has a higher probability of entering the sample than the last reading of someone who reads little. (Montgomery 2000 : 2) Key findings of the readership survey were that the amount of reading remains high, and only 42% of faculty reading is from library-provided articles because they still rely on readings from personal subscriptions. Most of the library-provided readings are from electronic articles and less time is spent locating and obtaining these articles.
Journal use studies were conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chemistry Library in 1988, 1993 and 1996. The purpose of the survey was to determine use and cost-use ratio of a large and expensive serial collection in order to cancel subscriptions and balance the budget on quantitative data.
The same simple method for measuring use of journal subscriptions was employed in three separate use studies. Use was recorded by title as journals were re-shelved, returned from interlibrary loans or a two-hour loan period. An alphabetical list of journals was kept to tally those used manually for three months and six months in the most recent study (1996). Each use study relied upon student and staff to conduct and complete the data collection. Very little environmental change took place during the eight years of the study periods. There was no dramatic rise in the number of students, staff or faculty members. (Chrzastowski 1997 : 1) The journal use data confirmed the 80/20 rule, that is that 84% of use was generated by the top 100 journals in 1996, approximately 20% of the collection. Approximately 40% of all use in 1996 was generated by the top ten titles.
However, in a study of the usage of e-journals done at Texas A & M University, US, Gyeszly (2001 : 6) found that usage of e-journals by their patrons was not enough to warrant or justify canceling the print for titles carried in both electronic and print formats. She compared the annual subscription prices and the percentage increases of the 203 core printed journals with their electronic counterparts in the disciplines of political science and economics during the 1998 – 2000 academic years. The complete list of electronically available titles were identified and priced and the titles costing more than $500 were separated. The electronic use statistics were examined for the expensive serials, based upon the numbers of hits cumulated by users‟ requests via the Website of the University. The data indicated that the subscription price of the 203 core journals increased by 11 percent during the study period.
No use data of print journals were collected. (Gyeszly 2001 : 6)
Regardless of the method used, it is common cause that all researchers have agreed that a journals value cannot be assessed by content evaluation alone, the journals value must be placed in the context of the amount of content it offers and the users it potentially serves.
From the point of view of a scientist, librarian or publisher it is of great importance to have an idea of which developments and trends will dominate the journal system during the next ten years.