A survey on the use of electronic databases and electronic journals accessed through the web by the academic staff of Israeli universities

A Survey on the Use of Electronic Databases and Electronic Journals Accessed through the Web by the Academic Staff of Israeli Universities by Judit Bar-Ilan, Bluma C. Peritz, and Yecheskel Wolman

The results of an extensive survey of the senior academic staff of the Israeli universities on their use of electronic journals and databases are presented. The major findings are that the use of electronic sources is already widespread among the respondents and more than 50% found the electronic services indispensable. Disparities were found between the usage patterns in the different disciplines.

School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ⬍{judit,bluer}@cc.huji.ac.il⬎, ⬍[email protected]⬎

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his paper presents the results of a survey of senior academic staff of the Israeli universities, conducted at the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001. Its purpose was to examine usage patterns, acceptance, perceived importance, and satisfaction with electronic databases and electronic journals; and to study the influences of academic field, age, gender, and rank and on the results. The main source of access to electronic databases and e-journals is the MALMAD (Israel Center for Digital Information Services) Consortium. MALMAD provides access to a large number of electronic data sources (a list of these sources can be found at the MALMAD site, http:// libnet.ac.il/⬃libnet/malmad-services-subject.htm). Access to all these services is through the Web. The members of MALMAD are (in alphabetical order): Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Open University of Israel, The Technion, Tel-Aviv University, University of Haifa, and The Weizmann Institute of Science. The consortium was founded in 1998.1,2 Our initial purpose was to examine the use by the senior academic staff of the above-mentioned institutions of the databases and e-journals licensed through MALMAD. However, we realized that individual institutions and libraries sometimes give access to additional data sources, which are also accessible through the Web. A few examples: members of the Hebrew University have access to ISI’s Journal Citation Report; the Hebrew University’s Mathematics and Computer Science library gives access to the ACM

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Digital Library to members of the Institute of Mathematics and of the School of Engineering; the Library of the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at the Hebrew University gives access to its users to the Journal of Documentation, since the print subscription automatically entitles access to the electronic version. There are also some freely accessible databases (for example, PubMed in medicine and life sciences, ResearchIndex in computer science, http://www.researchindex.com/) and e-journals (for example, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, http://www.cs.washington.edu/ research/jair/; Cybermetrics, http://www. cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/) on the Web. Since we could not expect the faculty members to be able to differentiate between sources licensed through MALMAD or by other sources, the survey included all databases and e-journals accessible through the World Wide Web. MALMAD collects and receives from the service providers and publishers statistics on the usage of electronic data services (for example, number of sessions, number of downloads, length of sessions, breakdown per university). Results of this survey supplement the statistics, since they provide first-hand data not only on frequency of use, but also about the perceived importance and satisfaction/dissatisfaction with various aspects of existing services. The users were also asked to name databases/e-journals needed but currently missing from the list provided by MALMAD and the universities. The results of this survey are supposed to serve as inputs for MALMAD’s future policy decisions.

An additional objective was to gain a better understanding of the influences of demographic factors on usage. Most studies so far showed that age (and sometimes academic rank) has a negative effect on adoption of the electronic media, but existing findings are not unanimous on this point. An additional variable which may influence usage patterns is academic discipline, previous results show that academics from the sciences and medicine use these services the most, while researchers from the humanities use these services much less. Would the results of the current study support or refute these findings? An additional variable that may have influence on these findings is the period of time since the electronic services and e-journals were introduced at the specific institutions. Previous studies showed that as time passes the usage of the electronic services and ejournals increased. Would the results of this survey show that this trend continues? The survey was administered at a single point in time; however we can compare our findings with findings of other studies. Existing studies also showed that access to the Web influences usage, thus we also wanted to learn about the ways faculty members access the Web, whether they were satisfied with their connectivity, and whether they needed frontal or distance instruction in order to better utilize the services. A final objective of this work was to set a benchmark for further studies on the usage of electronic data services by Israeli academics. Note that in the context of this paper by “e-journal” we mean a peer-reviewed scholarly publication that most often has a printed counterpart and is published by a well-known publisher or by a scientific society. Our definition is only slightly stricter than the one used by Tomney and Burton:3 “An electronic journal is defined as one which (1) publishes original scholarly writings, (2) is peer reviewed or edited, and (3) is available (although not necessarily exclusively) in electronic form.” Other wider definitions prevail, for example the one provided by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries:4 “Electronic serials may be defined very broadly as any journal, magazine, e-zine, webzine, newsletter or type of electronic serial publication which is available over the Internet.”

Literature Review A number of surveys on the use of electronic resources in academic libraries have been carried out during the last ten years. Although all of these surveys included faculty members among their participants, in many cases, these surveys examined the use of e-mail, word processors, and so forth, and only a few of them were targeted towards faculty as well as graduate students and their awareness to the availability and use of the library’s electronic resources. Time seems to be a very important factor, thus we arranged our review in chronological order. As a baseline for our survey, we mention a study carried out by Bancroft et al.,5 who examined the use of library services at the Washington State University Libraries in 1996. The questionnaire was distributed to all faculty members and graduate students (more than 2000 in all). Response rate was over 62% for both categories. Over 70% over the respondents chose the “never used/no opinion” option for online full text journals; however, nearly 50% gave high appreciation to the ability to download fulltext articles in the future. It seems that already in 1996 academics realized the value of e-journals even without actually using them. One of the early surveys dealt with the usage and attitude of the faculty at the University of Strathclyde.3 The study examined attitudes towards electronic journals by both users and non-users. The survey was administered in late 1996 and early 1997 to 150 academics from five faculties. The response rate was 51%. At that time, only 21% of the respondents used e-journals, with the lower ranked faculty members using e-journals most. Members of the History and Education departments had not used e-journals at all, while the heaviest users came from Business, Science and Engineering. The main reason for not using e-journals was that the scientists were not aware of the existence of any relevant e-journals. The main advantage of e-journals stated both by users and non-users, was accessibility. Perceived disadvantages included: “the electronic publication was not a ‘real’ publication” and the “potential for text alteration.” These disadvantages show that even though the authors gave a definition of e-journals similar to our definition, the faculty members probably applied the wider definition of any type of electronic serial publication which is available over the Internet.

A Japanese study examined the usage of electronic resources by a specific academic community in Japan—academic economists.6 Our review is based on the abstract of the article published in Japanese. Only about 31% of the respondents used electronic journals at the time the survey was carried out (presumably in 1997), but about 75% of the respondents perceived this medium is of “high value.” In a survey conducted in 1998 at the Texas A&M University,7 awareness of e-journals differed highly with the faculty the academic was affiliated with. The survey covered 350 faculty members. The return rate was 56%. The highest results were from the Sciences, followed by Medicine, but only about 37% of the respondents actually made use of e-journals, with respondents from the Liberal Arts reporting the lowest use level. 61% of the respondents preferred printed journals over e-journals, and even 40% of the e-journal users the preferred the printed format. However, the large majority of the respondents were positive about the place of e-journals in scientific research. Advantages of e-journals identified by the respondents were availability and home access, while concerns included permanence and graphics. Awareness of the faculty and administrators toward electronic resources8 was studied at the University of Utah. The concern of the authors of this paper was that since electronic databases and journals are not displayed on the libraries’ shelves, it may be the case that the faculty members and administrators are not aware of the existence of these services. Indeed, the findings showed greater need for publicity and training. The questionnaires were distributed to all faculty and administrators (856 individuals). The return rate was 49.8%. The questionnaire contained a list of 55 databases available to the faculty and administrators. For each database, each respondent was asked to check whether he/she was aware of the existence of the database. For each database the respondent used, he was asked to rank its ease of use. Only 54% accessed the databases remotely, the rest of the respondents accessed them from the library. A longitudinal survey of the faculty and graduate students of the usage of electronic journals, printed journals, and electronic databases was conducted at Ohio State University (OSU) during the years 1998-2000.9 The surveys were administered three times (once a year), al-

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lowing the researcher to gain insight into the changes of attitudes and adoption over time of electronic services. A random sample of about 300 graduate students and 300 faculty members was created each year. The survey was implemented through telephone interviewing. In 2000, email was utilized as well. The findings of the surveys showed that since 1998 there has been a significant progress in the acceptance and usage of electronic journals at OSU—in 1998, only 200 e-journals were available, while in 2000, the number of available e-journals increased to more than 3,000. In 1998, 19% of the respondents used e-journals at least once a week, while in 2000, the percentage increased to 36%. At the same time, the at least weekly usage of printed journals decreased from 45% in 1998 to 34% in 2000. The at least weekly usage of electronic databases remained at approximately the same level, around 58%. They found little or no correlation between age and frequency of use. Open-ended questions were asked in 1998 about the advantages and disadvantages of electronic data sources. Availability and ease of information location were seen as advantages and lack of connectivity and lack of hard copy were seen as disadvantages. In early 1999, The Max-Plank Institute conducted a wide-scale online survey10 on the use and acceptance of e-journals. The Max-Plank Institute provided test installations of journals of major scientific publishers in electronic format. The response rate was 11%. The findings of the survey indicated a major shift in research information use from printed to electronic. Most respondents used e-journals between every two weeks and once a month. The major advantages of e-journals were perceived to be accessibility, currency, ease of downloading, and improved searchability, while the major disadvantages stated were concerns about archiving, incomplete issues, and lack of back issues. The respondents were presented with a list of possible advantages/ disadvantages and were asked to rate each of them. Electronic journals were found to be indispensable by 78% of the respondents. Some respondents asked for more support mainly in the form of help brochures. At the end of 2000 an online survey was administered at the University of Patras.11 The response rate of the academic staff was 17.5%. Among these respondents, 42.5% used e-journals daily, and an additional 43.5% used them

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weekly. This extremely high usage may be explained by the fact that the survey was an online survey reachable from the e-journal service Website, which we may assume quite safely, is visited mostly by e-journal users. The academic respondents use e-journals mostly for writing up publications (97.4%) and for teaching (66.7%). They access e-journals almost exclusively from their offices (access from home was not an option). The preferred format for reading an article was electronic in more than 66% of the cases, but for the age Group 55-64, the percentage decreased to 40%. The main reasons for preferring the electronic format were ease of use, access, and searchability and the capability to save and print the information. Reasons for preferring the printed format included familiarity and readability. The main reasons that would discourage users from accessing e-journals (chosen from a list prepared by the authors) were not enough relevant material and lack of back issues. In spring of 2001 a large-scale online survey was administered to the whole faculty and a sample of graduate students at the University of Maryland.12 Email messages were sent to all the participants (more than 3500) inviting them to fill out the online survey. The response rate was 39% for the faculty members. About half of the faculty members reported using electronic formats of printed journals at least once a month, while 31% reported never using electronic formats of printed journals, mainly because of personal subscriptions and unfamiliarity with accessing the resource. Only 29% used at least once a month electronic journals that have noprinted counterparts. Preference between printed and electronic formats was given both for core journals and non-core journals (core journals were defined as journals most important in the respondent’s field). The large majority (70%) wanted core journals to be available in both formats, while for non-core journals, 70% preferred electronic access only. Advantages of the electronic format were identified as ease of access, search capabilities, and hyperlinks to outside content (the list of advantages was presented in a closed question). The main concerns about moving to electronic only were image quality and access to the full content of the journal. The results of a survey conducted in Nigeria13 in August 2001 are in sharp contrast to the findings on the high usage and acceptance of electronic resources.

Over 64% of the respondents had computers at their disposal, and slightly over 50% had access to the Internet. Most of the users paid themselves for accessing the Internet, but the costs were very heavy for most of them. Out of the respondents having Internet access, nearly 60% used electronic bibliographic databases and 58% used e-journals at least once a month. Even among the non-users, 84% believed that the Internet will become indispensable for their research in the future. One of the largest projects to date was the Stanford E-journal study (eJUSt), a two-year project which begun in Fall 2000, funded by the Mellon Foundation and carried out by the Stanford University Libraries.14 The data for the project were collected through interviews and surveys. Three surveys were conducted within the framework of the project. The first survey investigated how life scientists perceive online journals with regard to their impact on research quality and productivity as well as attitudes towards online journal usage. The invitation to participate was sent out in May 2001 to more than 100,000 scientists in the fields of biology, life sciences, and agriculture by email; about 12,000 responses were received (13.5% return rate). The findings of this survey15,16 show that over 75% of the respondents prefer e-journals to their printed counterparts. Limited content (lack of back issues) was seen as a factor for disfavoring the use of e-journals. About 34% strongly agreed that the electronic format provides additional features. The second survey17 focused on finding out what online features improve or enrich journal usage and probed attitudes of current active users of this technology. This survey was sent out at the end of 2001 to about 80,000 individuals, and the return rate was similar to the first survey. The results of the second survey again showed that the lack of back issues is a major problem for electronic journals, and slow downloading is perceived only as a minor problem. The most popular onlinespecific features were hypertext links to cited articles. More than 75% of the respondents utilized these links and found them useful. More than 50% of the respondents read full-text articles from the screen, a rather surprising finding because one of the main disadvantages of e-journals identified in other studies was that it was difficult and tiring to read from the screen. Most respondents18 start searching for journal articles at PubMed (recall

that the respondents came from the life and medical sciences), followed by other multi-journal search Website (for example, OVID, ScienceDirect). The third one, a follow-up survey, examined changes in perception and attitudes of scientists towards e-journal usage over one year and the impact of e-journals on their research. This survey was sent out in May 2002 to the respondents of the first survey who released their email address (about 10,000 individuals), this time the response rate was about 50%. Almost all of the respondents of the third survey use e-journals regularly and frequently19—not so surprising, since the respondents of this questionnaire were a subset of those who participated in the first survey (most of them users of e-journals). Most respondents will continue to have printed versions delivered—portability and ease of browsing were seen as useful qualities of printed journals. More than 75% of the respondents started their searches with a multi-journal Website (for example, PubMed, Ovid, or ScienceDirect) and only 8% started their searches at citation indexes (for example, Web of Science or BIOSIS). Note that BIOSIS is not a citation index, but a bibliographical database (also called indexing and abstracting service), the above-mentioned terminology was used by the members of the eJust project. More than two thirds of the respondents print out the electronic articles (this finding contradicts the findings of the second survey, where most respondents read the articles from the computer screen). Two previous studies examined the use of electronic resources of Israeli academics. Shoham20 conducted a survey in 1994 and 1995 among faculty members of two Israeli universities in order to study changes in scholarly communication in the wake of technological changes. She found that 48% of the respondents used computerized databases as a channel for accessing information for research purposes. The survey conducted by Lazinger et al.,21 of the faculty members of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem provided data on Internet access as of 1995. The results showed higher usage by the members of the faculties of Science, Medicine, and Agriculture than the members of the faculties of Social Sciences and Humanities. In an extensive review of end-users in academia Herman22 concludes: “a perusal of the literature does indeed prove beyond any possible doubt that overall academia

has been gradually moving to the electronic information era,” a trend we have seen in our literature review as well. Tenopir and King23 devoted a whole book discussing and presenting studies related to the different issues concerning electronic journals.

METHODOLOGY An official request was made through MALMAD to each of the member institutions to provide printed lists of names, ranks and affiliation (department) of the senior academic staff (lecturer and above) of each institution. The Bar-Ilan University refused to provide the data on the grounds that exposing this information violates information privacy; thus, its members were excluded from the survey. The study was supported by MALMAD and the Yad Ora Foundation. The questionnaire included 20 questions: closed, both multiple choice and Likert scale, partially open, and open questions (see Appendix). The questions were designed to study the following groups of variables: 1. Demographical data, access to the Web, and Web literacy. 2. Awareness, use, importance, purpose of use (for example, teaching/research) of indexing and abstracting services and e-journals. 3. Satisfaction with content, coverage, and access to the electronic data services. 4. Preference between printed and electronic services. 5. Ways of getting updated and need for training/instructions. 6. Advantages and disadvantages of the electronic services (an open-ended question). For each of the participating seven institutions, every third faculty member in each rank was selected for the sample. Envelopes containing the questionnaire, a cover letter, and an addressed and stamped envelope for returning the questionnaire were sent out by regular mail between the 14th and 31st December 2000. A follow-up was sent out, again by regular mail between the 14th and 31st January 2001. Another reminder was sent out by email to the participants whose email we were able to locate (85% of the population) on the 6th and 7th March 2001. The respondents were asked to state the department or the faculty they be-

longed to. Based on these data, we created a new variable, called field group, which enabled us to gain better insight into the answers we received. The categories for the field group were: ● ● ●

●

●

Humanities (hum) Social sciences, social work, law (soc)—includes education Sciences (sci) - math, physics, chemistry, earth sciences, teaching science education, applied sciences Life sciences, medicine, and agriculture (lma)— biology, medicine, dental medicine, pharmacy, nursing, agriculture, agricultural engineering Engineering (eng)— computer science, engineering, architecture

We aimed at defining broad categories in order to get meaningful results—not just answers for each category. The abbreviations in parenthesis after the name of the field group are used in the analysis to designate each category. The returned surveys were coded and the data were recorded in a specially built Access database. The data were analyzed with Microsoft Access and Excel and with SPSS 9.0 for Windows. Population and Response Rate Altogether, 1331 questionnaires were sent out and 595 answers were received (44.7% response rate). In the initial round, 301 questionnaires were returned; after the follow-up by regular mail, an additional 233 questionnaires were received, and following the email reminders, we received another 49. We do not present breakdowns according to the participating institutions, since the institutions are not comparable and each one emphasizes different disciplines: the Technion is technologically oriented; the Weizmann Institute does not teach undergraduates and covers sciences and life sciences; at the University of Haifa, there are almost no science departments; and the remaining three universities cover a large number of disciplines in the sciences, in the life sciences, in engineering, in the social sciences, and in the humanities. Out of the 595 responses, 583 were coded. The remaining 12 answers were not coded, since they were either filled out by assistants of the faculty members or were refusals to fill out the questionnaire (2 cases), or simply messages that the faculty member was on sabbatical. Thus, the rest of the analysis is based on the 583 coded questionnaires.

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Fig. 1 Breakdown of responses by field group

old; 26.8% between 40 and 49; 8.1% between 30 and 39; and 3.1% did not specify their age. The data correspond more or less with the data we have for the Hebrew University (only one of seven participating institutions)26 for the academic year 1998-1999. From the additional demographic data provided by the respondents, we see that 75.8% of them were male, 22.3% were female, and the rest (1.9%) had given no answer to the question. The comparable data we have for the Hebrew University26 from 1998-99 show that only 17.9% of the senior academic staff of the Hebrew University were female. To summarize, comparison of the demographical data of our respondents with the data from the Council of Higher Education and from the Hebrew University shows that the respondents constitute a representative sample of academics in Israel. Connecting to the System

In surveys of academics, the response rate is usually rather low. In the eJUSt project, the response rate was 13.14% (12,465 out of 94,871 invitations to fill out the survey).24 Shoham reported a 20% response rate for the faculty members of two universities;20 Akasawa and Ueda6 27.8%; Dillon and Kahn,12 39%. Some studies reported similar or slightly higher response rates: Weingart and Anderson,8 49.8%; Tomney and Burton,3 51%; Lazinger et al.,21 59.4%.

“In surveys of academics, the response rate is usually rather low.”

RESULTS

AND

DISCUSSION

The subsections in this section are enumerated according to the variable groups enlisted in the Methodology section.

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1. Demographical Data, Access to the Web, and Web Literacy Demographical Data Figure 1 displays the breakdown of the responses by field group. The groups are approximately of equal size, the largest group being the lma group (life sciences, medicine, and agriculture). The respondents were asked about their academic rank: 37.9% of them were full professors; 24.7% associate professors; 20.2% senior lecturers; and 15.4% lecturers (1.7% had not answered the question). Comparing these data to the official data of the Council for Higher Education25 for the academic year 19992000, we see that full professors are slightly over-represented in our sample (31.4% versus 37.9% for professors), associate professors are represented adequately (24.8% versus 24.7% for associate professors), and the senior lecturers and lecturers are slightly under-represented (27.7% versus 20.2% for senior lecturers and 17.4% versus 15.4% for lecturers). The distribution of respondents by age is as follows: 24.5% were age 60 or above; 37.6% between 50 and 59 years

We asked the faculty members to specify how they connect to the Web. The respondents were asked to mark all the relevant options. We received 459 answers to this question. Almost all the respondents (92.2%) have access to the Web from their office. We see considerable difference between the connectivity of the members of the hum group from their offices (63.6% only) and the members of the other groups (more than 96%). A large number of the faculty members (69.7%) have access from their homes. We were surprised to see that the most connected group from their homes was the hum group (77.9%), while the least connected group from home was the lma group (only 63.6%), even though the lma group was the heaviest user of the electronic services. Perhaps because they make heavy use of these services from their offices, they feel that it is not necessary for them to be connected from their homes. We also inquired about access from a computer lab or the library, but only a small number of respondents marked these options. More than half of the respondents (54.9%) have access both from their office and home. Note that in the study of Nigerian scientists,13 only 50% had access to the Web, and in the study of the University of Patras,11 connecting from home was not even mentioned as an option. In the 1995 survey of the faculty members of the Hebrew University,21 connectivity mainly of the members of the faculties of Social

Sciences and Humanities seemed to be a concern. The current study seems to indicate that connectivity is not a problem anymore, even though members of the hum group still have the lowest connectivity from their offices, but this is slightly compensated by their ability to access the Web from their homes. Web Literacy Two closed questions inquired about the level of Web expertise, including searching in the databases. Out of the 458 respondents, 390 (85.2%) feel that they were either perfectly competent (199 answers) or they manage more or less with a little bit of help from time to time. Only 7 respondents (1.5%) disclosed that they ask others to search for information on the Web. Again, when we look at the breakdown according to the field groups, we see that only 63.8% of the respondents from the hum group feel that they manage either perfectly or with a bit of help. This time, the eng group was most confident (93.7%). The answers provided to these questions indicate that the perceived level of Web literacy of the Israeli academics is adequate. In spite of this, most of the respondents are interested in some form of training, as we show in a later section of this article.

“390 (85.2%) feel that they were either perfectly competent (199 answers) [in using the Web] or they manage with a little bit of help from time to time.”

Table 1 Use of E-Journals by Field Groups (Percentages Out of Total for Category) hum Often Sometimes Not used Not used, but relevant Total

● ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Web of Science - ISI Citation Indexes OCLC Firstsearch (Worldcat, ArticleFirst, Netfirst) INSPEC (Science Abstracts) PCI - Periodical Contents Index Historical Abstracts ABI/INFORM and Proquest Research Library LEXIS/NEXIS - Academic Universe

sci

lma

eng

Total

21

31

65

92

43

18.3%

29.0%

54.6%

63.9%

43.9%

43.2%

13

27

24

14

21

99

11.3%

25.2%

20.2%

21.4%

17.0%

73

42

24

36

31

63.5%

39.3%

20.2%

25.0%

31.6%

9.7%

8

7

6

2

3

7.0%

6.5%

5.0%

1.4%

3.1%

115

107

Dissertation Abstracts Other databases (e.g., Medline, MLA, Sociological Abstracts, ERIC, Agricola, MathSciNet, INFOTRAC)

The category “Other databases” sought to cover those databases accessed through the Web to which there is either free access (for example, the PubMed version of Medline) or access was not licensed through MALMAD at the time the questionnaire was sent out (MathSciNet and INFOTRAC are currently licensed through MALMAD), but by the institution the faculty member is affiliated with (e.g., members of the Hebrew University have access to ERIC, MLA, and Sociological Abstracts through Silver Platter’s E-library). Today, the list of available databases is not the same as it was at the time the survey was conducted: the list of databases licensed through MALMAD is

2. Awareness, Use, Importance, Purpose of Use of Electronic Services Use and Perceived Importance of Databases and E-Journals Next we examined the use of specific databases and of e-journals in general. The list of specified databases contained:

soc

119

144

98

252

206 35.3% 26 4.5% 583

continually extended and updated (for a full list of currently available databases consult http://libnet.ac.il/⬃libnet/malmad-services-subject.htm). For each item in the above list, the respondent was asked to leave the row empty if the service was unknown to him, answer 1 if he/she used the service often, 2 if he/she used the service sometimes, and 3 if the respondent did not use the service but thought that it could be relevant to the respondent’s field. The same question, with the same instructions, was asked about the use of e-journals in general, without details of the specific e-journal. Tables 1 and 2 display the results for the use of e-journals and databases by the entire population and by field group, respectively. Note the relatively low use by the hum group and the high use by the lma group. For all groups, the percentage of non-use

Table 2 Use of Databases by Field Groups (Percentages Out of Total for Category) hum Often Sometimes Not used Not used, but relevant Total

soc

sci

lma 115

eng 48

Total

41

59

79

35.7%

55.1%

66.4%

79.9%

49.0%

58.7%

10

19

83

19.4%

14.2%

16

22

16

13.9%

20.6%

13.4%

51

25

21

18

26

44.3%

23.4%

17.6%

12.5%

26.5%

6.9%

7

1

3

1

5

6.1%

0.9%

2.5%

0.7%

5.1%

115

107

119

144

98

342

141 24.2% 17 2.9% 583

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Table 3 Usage of Specific Databases Rank by use

Databases

% of Respondents Using the Database (out of total - 583)

% of Respondents Finding Database Indispensable (out of total - 583)

1

Web of Science

47.3%

52.3%

2

Other databases

39.3%

39.6%

3

INSPEC

16.1%

21.3%

4

Dissertation Abstracts

13.4%

19.2%

5

PCI

11.5%

13.2%

6–7

ABI/INFORM

10.3%

12.2%

6–7

OCLC Firstsearch

10.3%

11.8%

8

LEXIS/NEXIS

8.1%

11.3%

9

Historical Abstracts

5.8%

8.1%

10

Patrologia Latinia

2.2%

4.5%

of electronic databases is lower than the non-use of electronic journals. One reason for this could be that electronic databases (on CD-ROMs) have been around much longer than electronic versions of scientific journals. The findings of the 3-year project at the OSU9 support this explanation, where adoption of e-journals increased over time, while usage levels of the bibliographical databases remained approximately the same. In addition, electronic journal articles at present are usually available also in printed format; whereas bibliographical databases less commonly exist in both formats, the subscription to most bibliographical databases is in electronic format only. We also examined the use of the databases that specifically appeared in the list. The results, in descending order, appear in Table 3. Here, the term used is defined as the sum of the percentages in the categories often used and sometimes used. In this table, we also display the percentage of respondents who found the specific database essential. Interesting to see the close relation between usage and perceived importance of a service. The category “Other databases” includes the freely accessible databases (for example, PubMed/MEDLINE) and those databases that the individual institutions have subscriptions to. ISI’s Web of Science is the most popular service, which is not surprising since it is a multidisciplinary tool with a relatively large coverage. Note that one of the findings of the eJust project18 was that multi-journal

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search sites (for example, PubMed) are used far more often than the citation indexes. Our findings clearly contradict the findings of the eJust project, even if we only consider the lma group: out of the 144 respondents in this group, 70 designated themselves as heavy users, while another 21 used the service sometimes; thus, overall, 63% use Web of Science. “Other databases” (the category which included PubMed) were used similarly in the lma group: 80 respondents were heavy users, and another 10 used these databases sometimes.

“Our findings clearly contradict the findings of the eJust project” Similar questions were asked about the use and importance of e-journals in general. Out of the 583 respondents, 60.2% use e-journals, and 58.1% of the respondents find them essential. Again, it is illuminating to examine the breakdowm according to the different groups: only 29.6% of the members of the hum group use e-journals (either heavily or occasionally), 54.2% of soc, 65.3% of eng, 73.6% of lma, and 74.8% of sci are users of electronic journals, according to the responses to question c, (see also Table 1, with often and sometimes combined). We can compare these data with the data for electronic database use (the responses for the specific databases are combined):

49.6% of hum, 68.4% of eng, 75.7% of soc, 79.8% of sci, and 86.8% of lma are users of databases of some kind. Overall, 72.9% of the respondents use some kind of database compared to the 60.2% that use e-journals at this point of time. Time seems to be an important factor (according to our chronological view of literature, and according to the OSU longitudinal surveys9); thus it will be interesting to see whether these percentages change over time and whether the gap between the humanities and the rest of the groups closes over time. Use of electronic databases and e-journals is also influenced by the age of the respondent. Respondents in their thirties were heavy users of both electronic databases (80%) and e-journals (75.4%); the percentage of respondents in their forties using electronic databases was even higher (82.1%) but there were fewer users of e-journals in this group (68%). The use of e-journals decreases with age, with only 48% of the respondents above 60 making use of e-journals. Note that 66.4% of them use electronic databases. The differences were much less pronounced considering the influence of rank on database and e-journal usage. Gender seems to influence usage: among the women, 66.2% and 46.2% were users of databases and e-journals, respectively, while for the men, the corresponding percentages were 75.3% and 64.5%, respectively. Electronic databases and e-journals were used by 72.9% and 60.2% of the respondents, respectively. In a 1996 study,8 only 21% of the respondents used e-journals; in a 1997 study of Japanese economists,6 31% were users; in 1998, the study at the Texas A&M University7 reported that e-journal users constituted 37% of the respondents; from 19982000,9 usage of e-journals increased from about 53% to 75% over the years, while, usage of electronic databases remained at approximately the same level (about 90%) all through the years; and in the 2001 study at the University of Maryland,12 about 69% of the respondents were e-journal users (of journals appearing in printed format as well). The numbers reported by us are similar (slightly lower) than the more current studies from Ohio State University and from the University of Maryland. Thus, MALMAD and the libraries of the participating universities libraries should be satisfied with the level of penetration of electronic services at the Israeli universities. Out of the 351 respondents who used

Fig. 2 Perceived importance of journals and bibliographic databases

e-journals, 305 (86.7%) found them essential; the rest simply had not answered the question. None of the e-journal users considered e-journals redundant. Fifteen out of the 23 respondents who use e-journals, but gave no information on the importance of the services, sent short answers (not the full questionnaire) by e-mail, and have not indicated the perceived importance of any of the services. Eighteen respondents found e-journals essential, even though they themselves did not make use of them. The respondents were asked about their opinion about the importance of printed and electronic databases and journals (question g in the Appendix). A sixpoint scale was used: indispensable, very important, medium importance, small importance, not important, and no opinion. We received an average of 486 answers (out of 583) for these questions. For each question, the percentages are out of the total number of respondents who chose to answer the specific question. The results appear in Figure 2. Note that all types of services except for printed bibliographies were considered indispensable by more than 50% of the respondents. Only 31.5% of them considered printed bibliographies as indispensable; however, a closer look reveals

that 57.0% of the respondents in the hum group found printed bibliographies indispensable. More than 14% of the respondents categorized printed bibliographies as not important (if we leave out members of the hum group, this percentage increases to 17%). A possible reason for the relatively low importance assigned to printed bibliographies outside the humanities, could be that printed bibliographies are rather cumbersome to use, and electronic bibliographic databases have already been in use for quite a number of years (not necessarily through the Web), and they succeeded in replacing printed bibliographic databases. Electronic bibliographic databases had the highest perceived importance. In general, 68.6% of the respondents marked them as indispensable; the percentage was as high as 84.4% for the lma group and only 51.1% for the hum group. The percentages for the other groups were 65.0% for eng, 66.6% for sci, and 72.7% for soc. Electronic journals are a later development, but the percentage of faculty members who found them indispensable was higher (61.4%) than the percentage of faculty members who found printed journals indispensable (54.3%). Again, as can be expected, we see differences between the hum and lma groups for the perceived

importance of e-journals, only 31.5% of the hum group consider e-journals indispensable, while the percentage was 75.8% of the lma group (this percentage is considerably higher than the percentages for the sci, eng, and soc groups (68.6%, 62.5%, and 60.9%, respectively). There is a slight discrepancy between the answer to this question versus the answer on whether the specific databases and e-journals were essential (question d). There, 58.1% of respondents found e-journals essential, while as an answer to question g, 61.4% of those who responded to the question found that e-journals were indispensable. In question d, the faculty members were asked to mark each service—and e-journals in general—as either essential or unnecessary, while in question g, they were given a six-point scale. Comparing the respective answers to both questions, we see that 95% of those who marked e-journals essential for question d marked them either as indispensable or as very important on the sixpoint scale; thus, essential was interpreted most of the time either as very important or as indispensable. In the study carried out at the Max-Plank Institute,10 78% of the respondents found e-journals indispensable, a much higher percentage than in our study. A reason for

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Fig. 3 Frequency of use of bibliographic databases, journals and the Web

the difference could be that the large majority of the respondents in the Max-Plank study came from biomedical or chemicalphysical sciences, with only a small minority (12.9%) from the humanities. The question on the frequency of use of the different services supports the data on the perceived importance. More than 67% of the respondents use printed journals or electronic bibliographical databases or electronic journals at least once a week. Only 26.0% use printed bibliographic databases at least once a week. Again, the lma group turned out to be the heaviest users of electronic information: 40.5% of the respondents in this group use these databases every day, and 88.8% use them at least once a week; 36.7% in this group use e-journals every day, and 87.2% use them at least once a week. As a comparison, we also asked about the frequency of use of the Web, 92.9% of the respondents use the Web at least once a week; 69% use it every day. We received only 354 answers (60.7%) on the use of the Web. Perhaps the faculty members considered this question non-relevant. The lowest response rate was in the hum group: only 45 members of the hum group (39.1%) answered this question. Figure 3 displays the data on the frequency of use of the different services.

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Purpose of Use Most of the respondents, 69.2% out of 477, utilize the bibliographic databases and journals both for teaching and research; 23.9% use them for research only (note that at the Weizmann Institute, faculty members teach only on a voluntary basis). Three respondents (0.6%) use these services for teaching only. Thirty respondents mentioned additional uses; among them 11 stated personal needs (for example, medical information, hobbies, curiosity), and 5 respondents stated administrative duties (for example, promotion committees). An additional question examined the concrete purpose of use and retrieval from both bibliographic databases and e-journals (question j). Multiple choices were allowed for this question. We received 462 responses. More than 90% use these services to search for new bibliographic information. About 75% use these services as a means of getting the full text of articles and to locate previously seen bibliographic information. A slightly lower percentage (72.7%) access abstracts of papers, while only 60.4% access tables of contents of journals. The most popular answer was all of the above uses (36.1%, 167 respondents).

3. Satisfaction with Content, Coverage, and Access to the Electronic Data Services Only 422 respondents answered the question on satisfaction with the existing databases and e-journals (72.4% of the total). Of these, 91.7% were satisfied. We also asked the faculty members whether anything was missing in their opinion from the currently available services. More than 40% thought that there were missing services. On the question of what was missing, we received 162 answers: 64 faculty members complained about the coverage of e-journals; 38 missed various electronic databases; 40 members were not sure what was missing; and a few missed databases on patents and on conferences. The survey was conducted in December 2000; since then, the Consortium considerably expanded its e-journal coverage (by adding the journals of Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Extended coverage of Kluwer e-journals, BioOne, and Nature). Five respondents specifically missed the online version of Nature. There were eight specific requests for IEEE journals— even at the time of writing, there is no access to these journals through MALMAD; only members of the Tel-Aviv University have electronic access. Seven requests were made for SciFinder (Chemical Abstracts); how-

ever, SciFinder is currently not licensed through MALMAD. Note that out of seven institutions, three have access to SciFinder, two have no chemistry departments, and thus the seven requests came from members of only two institutions. For an updated list of the number of electronic databases and e-journals licensed through MALMAD, consult http://libnet. ac.il/⬃libnet/malmad-services-subject.htm. Two thirds of the respondents were satisfied with the access and the communication speed. 4. Preference Between Printed and Electronic Services We asked which format is preferred: electronic or printed. Out of the 454 responses, 48.9% preferred the electronic version, 28.2% preferred the printed version; and 22.9% had no preference for one of the formats. Again, we found considerable differences between the groups. Preference for electronic versions was 20.3% for the hum group, 45.2% for the soc group, 50.0% for the eng group, 51.1% for the sci group, and 64.6% for the lma group. Preference for printed version was 56.5% for the hum group, 33.3% for the soc group, 21.1% for the eng group, 21,4% for the sci group, and 18.9% for the lma group. The rest of the respondents in each group had no clear preference. Preference for the electronic format decreases with age: 66.6%, 55.6%, 50.3%, and 28.7% of the respondents in their thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, respectively, prefer the electronic format over the printed one. Differences in preference are again much less pronounced when considering academic rank instead of age. As for the differences between men and women, 50% of the women and 48.5% of the men expressed their preference towards the electronic format. Discipline and age have major effect on the preference of electronic format over the printed one.

Table 4 Content Analysis of the Advantages of the Electronic Services in Absolute Numbers and in Percentages No. Responses

% of Responses Out of Total Comments on Advantages (197)

114

57.9%

Searching capabilities

70

35.5%

Accessibility from office or home, no need to go to the library

55

27.9%

Downloading/printing/copying

43

21.8%

Access to large quantities of information/ information not available from the library

42

21.3%

Fast update

24

12.2%

Added value (e.g. print quality, personal bibliographies, user profiles, easily transferred for teaching)

19

9.6%

Obvious

13

6.6%

Other

11

5.6%

Content Category Speed and ease of access

Israeli universities are slightly more conservative in their preferences. 5. Means of Getting Updated and Need for Training/Instructions We received 452 answers on the question of how the respondent is getting updated about changes/additions to the existing services (question o). The faculty members were allowed to mark several possibilities. Some (13.3%) do not get updated at all. Almost half of the respondents (44.7%) receive updates through e-

Table 5 Content Analysis of the Disadvantages of the Electronic Services in Absolute Numbers and in Percentages Content Category

“Preference for the electronic format decreases with age.” 14

The eJUST study reported that 75% of the respondents preferred e-journals to their printed counterpart, and 70% of the respondents from the University of Maryland study 12 preferred the electronic format for non-core journals, while for core journals, they wanted to have both formats. It seems that faculty members of the

mail or newsletters. Around 30% receive information from the library or from the library homepage or from colleagues and friends. Some additional means of getting updated that were mentioned are through discussion groups, professional organizations, and students. Rather interestingly, only 224 faculty members (45% of the respondents to question s) thought that they did not need any instruction, even though 85.2% stated that they were competent Web users. The rest of the 497 respondents to this ques-

No. Responses

% of Responses Out of Total Comments on Disadvantages (166)

Slow access/no access/difficult access

36

21.7%

Not enough coverage

34

20.5%

Reading text from computer screen/advantages of print

33

19.9%

Complicated/confusing to use/bad interface

17

10.2%

Non efficient searching

15

9.0%

Problem with back issues

12

7.2%

Personal incapabilities/lack of knowledge

10

6.0%

4

2.4%

39

23.5%

Not updated quickly enough Other

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tion,23 were interested in some kind of instruction: more than half of them (62.3%) wanted to learn at their individual time and pace using some courseware, and only 45.1% were interested in frontal instruction. Some respondents20 wanted to take both a frontal and a distance course. The breakdown for the field groups shows that members of the hum group are most interested in some kind of instruction (75.7% of those who answered this question and belong to the hum group), followed by the soc group (60.7%), the lma group (59.4%), the sci Group (39.4%), and the eng group (36.9%). Note that in spite of the fact that members of the lma group are the heaviest users of electronic services, more than half of them are interested in receiving instruction, possibly, to be able to make better use of the available services.

“Only 45% of the respondents thought that they did not need any instruction, even though 85.2% stated that they were competent Web users.”

spite of the fact that a significant number of the respondents25 found that not having to visit the library is an advantage, we received four comments on the contrary. One respondent commented that the electronic services deserve all financial support; they reach not only faculty members but also students. Note that accessibility is seen as a major advantage, while lack of access as a major disadvantage. These two seem to contradict each other, but this contradiction can be easily settled: those with access are impressed, and those without complain. The coded lists of advantages and disadvantages correspond closely with similar lists in previous studies,7,8,9 even though our questions were open-ended. Some previous studies used a similar approach,3,9 while others11,12,14 asked the respondents to mark or rank choices from lists suggested by them. In the eJust study14 one of the major advantages of the electronic format was the existence of hypertext links in scientific articles to the full text of the cited articles. This advantage was mentioned only by a very few respondents in our study (included under the added value category in Table 4).

SUMMARY 6. Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Services The last part of the questionnaire consisted of two open questions about the advantages and the disadvantages of the electronic databases and e-journals (questions t and u). Additional space was left on the questionnaires for general comments (question v). We received 197 answers on the advantages, 166 answers on the disadvantages, and 89 other comments. We carried out a content analysis of the answers to these open questions. The results for the advantages and disadvantages appear in Tables 4 and 5, respectively. The main advantages as seen by the faculty members are availability, search capabilities, and increased accessibility without the need to visit the library. On the negative side, they mentioned slowness/lack of access, insufficient coverage, and problems with reading texts from the computer screen. Among the general comments, a few respondents10 expressed their satisfaction with the services, seven respondents noted that they became aware of these services through the questionnaire they received, and some of them had already started using them. In

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AND

●

CONCLUSIONS

Let us consider how the study answered our research questions: ●

●

Meanings and implications for the MALMAD Consortium. Out of the 583 respondents, 447 (76.6%) already make use of either electronic databases or ejournals. Naturally, we cannot conclude anything about the non-respondents (the response rate for the survey was 44.7%). It is customary to assume that the rate of non-users among the nonrespondents is higher than that among the respondents. It seems reasonable to assume that about 50% of the faculty members already make use of the electronic information services. Thus, we can say that electronic information services have already been well adopted at Israeli academic institutions. An overwhelming amount of the respondents (91.7%) were satisfied with the services provided, even though about 40% feel the need for further developments and improvements. To summarize, adoptation level is good, users are satisfied, and MALMAD should try to take into account the users’ specific requests. Influence of demographical characteristics. Discipline and age have major in-

●

fluence on usage patterns and preferences. Age has a negative effect: the older the faculty member is, the less he or she uses electronic services and the less he or she prefers the electronic format over the printed one. As for discipline, faculty members from the humanities use and prefer electronic services the least, while in most cases, academics from the life and medical sciences are the heaviest users and advocates of electronic services, closely followed by the academic staff from the sciences. Gender and academic rank have minor influence only. This research supports the general trend seen in our literature review, showing that as time passes electronic services are being increasingly adopted. Connectivity and perceived Web literacy levels are satisfactory. Connectivity of the faculty members from the areas of humanities is still lower than in the other disciplines. It would be interesting to follow-up on this question in the future. A very significant number of the respondents (85.2%) feel that they master the use of electronic information services either completely or reasonably well. In spite of this, 62.3% are interested in further education on the use of these services. Most respondents prefer some kind of a distance education format, allowing them to learn at their own pace and time. The academic libraries have already developed or are in the process of developing tutorials on the use of specific services. Since only about 30% of the respondents get updated through the libraries, some better ways should be found to inform the members of the academic staff about the different training options. A detailed benchmark for further surveys has been established.

The advantages and disadvantages of electronic services identified by the Israeli academics are very similar to those in other studies. Speed, accessibility, and searchability were seen as the main advantages, while the main disadvantages were lack of access, lack of coverage, and low readability. Let us conclude with two quotes (the first translated from Hebrew): “As a person who ‘grew up’ on Index Medicus and Current Contents, my life changed unrecognizably with the accessibility of Medline and the e-journals”; and “Keep up the good work.”

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NOTES

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REFERENCES

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