Donald W. King

Measuring value and return on investment of academic libraries

The value of an academic library to its parent institution is difficult, but important, to measure. Many different methods have been used to measure value, including return on investment (ROI), contingent valuation, and other explicit and implicit measures. In a recent study we looked at the value and ROI of the library e-journal collections in the grants process in eight universities in eight countries.The results show that library-provided access to scholarly journals supports faculty productivity and that faculty members value and use electronic resources to support their research, grant and publishing activities.

A publicação de revistas eletrônicas: economia da produção, distribuição e uso

This paper analyses economic aspects of the scientific scholarly journal publishing, based on production costs and use data. It compares the production of traditional journals with electronic journals, discussing price policies for subscriptions and providing a guide to assess breakeven points, helping libraries to face the option of subscribing to journals or obtaining separate copies through interlibrary borrowing or document delivery.

Perceived Value of Scholarly Articles

When faced with an abundance of articles, readers must weigh the relative importance of various characteristics to select which articles to read. Over 400 researchers in 12 countries responded to a questionnaire that asked them to rank seven article characteristics and rate 16 article profiles. After article topic, the next most highly ranked characteristics were online accessibility and source of article. Conjoint analysis revealed the highest rated profiles to be (i) article written by a top‐tier author, in a top peer‐reviewed journal, available online at no personal cost to the reader; and (ii) article written by a top‐tier author, in a peer‐reviewed journal not in the top tier, available online at no personal cost to the reader. There were significant differences in characteristic rankings by discipline and geographic location.

Scholarly article seeking, reading, and use: a continuing evolution from print to electronic in the sciences and social sciences

Electronic journals are now the norm for accessing and reading scholarly articles. This article examines scholarly article reading patterns by faculty in five US universities in 2012. Selected findings are also compared to some general trends from studies conducted periodically since 1977. In the 2012 survey, over three‐quarters (76%) of the scholarly readings were obtained through electronic means and just over half (51%) of readings were read on a screen rather than from a print source or being printed out. Readings from library sources are overwhelmingly from e‐sources. The average number of articles read per month was 20.66, with most articles read by the medical and other sciences, and on average each article was read for 32 minutes.

Information Output by Engineers

This chapter explores the facets of output and communicating information. The two major aspects in this chapter are writing and presentations. We explore trends in how engineers communicate information in writing, verbally, in conferences or presentations, or in formal education settings, such as classrooms. We provide estimates of the amount of communication (e.g., presentations made, proposals written, etc.) and the time spent communicating.

The Engineering Scholarly Journal Channel

Because of the importance of engineering journals and the changes due to electronic publishing this channel is devoted to the engineering journal channel. We examine the trends in authorship, reading, information seeking patterns, and publishing of engineering scholarly journals. We also present specific readership data: How articles are identified and where they are obtained. In particular, we present survey results for engineers reading patterns before and after electronic journals became available.