The Serials Librarian | 2019
Academic Social Scientists Use Patterns of Scholarly E-journals
Abstract
ABSTRACT The study aimed to investigate Social Science academics’ scholarly use of information sources with particular focus on use patterns of e-journals. In this quantitative study, a questionnaire was distributed to 228 faculty members of various disciplines, that include the faculty of Social Sciences, Economics and Management Sciences, Education, Law and Commerce in University of the Punjab, Lahore Pakistan. Out of 228 participants, 118 respondents returned the questionnaire and the response rate of the survey was 52%. The results of the study showed that most of the faculty from the Social Science disciplines used e-journals, online reference sources, e-reports and print information sources to meet their academic and research needs. The least used sources were e-books, online indexing and abstracting services and e-theses. They accessed articles through General search engines, Google Scholar and Open Access e-journal websites more than subscribed sources of e-journals. They identified e-journal articles through chaining, searching and browsing method. Previous researchers also conducted studies to examine the Social Science faculty scholarly use of information sources and information-seeking habits; however, there were few studies examining Social Scientists use patterns of e-journals. In this backdrop, this study fills the gap by examining Social Science faculty patterns of using e-journals in Pakistan.