What Do We Know about Scientists’ Use of Information? Carol Tenopir Donald W. King

Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King. Towards Electronic Journals: Realities for Scientists, Librarians, and Publishers. Washington, D.C.: Special Libraries Association, 2000.

Data From: 14,000 scientists All fields of science University and non-university settings Over 100 organizations

Audiences Scientists/Researchers Publishers Librarians Funders

Lesson 1: Scientists use multiple means of communication

Work Initiated Reports of Preliminary Findings Work Completed Copies of Convention Presentation National/International Conference Personal Correspondence Information Progress Research in Progress Listings Informal Discussions Oral reports Formal Progress Report Patent Manuscript Started Manuscript Submitted Articles Revised Local Colloquia Special Group Meetings Colloquia Outside Own Institution Small Informal Conference Invited Conference State/ Regional Conference Final Technical Report Manuscript Distribution Patent Office Gazette Journal Publication Preprint Distribution Journal Publication Reprint Distribution Book Publication Current Contents Other A&I Publications Reviews NTIS Data Base Thesis Dissertation Abstracts Published Convention Program Adapted from Garvey, Lin and Nelson 1970, Lin, Garvey, and Nelson 1970, and Garvey and Griffith 1972 ORAL REPORTS Secondary Publications and Listings WRITTEN REPORTS Communication Means

Written Reports Personal correspondence Reports of Preliminary Findings Formal progress report Patent Patent Office Gazette Copies of Convention Presentation Published Convention Program

Written Reports (cont.) Manuscript Final Technical Report Thesis Preprint Journal publication Book publication Reprint

Written Reports (cont.) NTIS database Dissertation Abstracts Current Contents Other A&I publications Reviews

Oral Reports Informal Discussions Local Colloquia Special Group Meetings Colloquia Outside Own Institution Small Informal Conference State/Regional Conference National/International Conference Invited Conference

Professionals’ Communication Cycle INFORMATION OUTPUT/SENDING AUDIENCE/READERS EXTERNAL INTERNAL Quantities WORK ACTIVITIES: RESEARCH, ADMINISTRATION, MARKETING, ETC. INFORMATION INPUT/RECEIVING Effort QuantitiesEffort

Informal Discussions 166 hours Consulting or Giving Advice hours Preparing and Making Presentations hours Writing hours Attending Meetings hours Reading hours Reading hours Electronic Communication Conveying What They Have Learned Learning Preparing hours Annual hours averaged across all R& D professionals in non-academic organizations Time spent communicating

Factors That Affect Channel Use Availability of alternatives Time and effort required Personal Factors Situational Factors Channel Attributes

Channel attributes Price Availability Accessibility Quality of Content

Differences between scientists and engineers Scientists use the published literature much more than engineers Engineers use interpersonal sources more than written materials Engineers rely more on sources found in their own organization

Lesson 2: More scientists mean more literature

Facts Behind the Numbers Growth of journal literature is correlated with the number of scientists 1 article per 10 scientists

Mayur Amin & Michael Mabe 2000, SSP 22nd Annual Meeting May 31-June 2, 2000 R&D workers, journals and articles

Readings 70% of all readings are done by non- academicians Also many readings by students and others

Lesson 3: Scientists read a lot and find it essential

Average Number of Scholarly Article Readings Per Year

Scholarly Article Readings by Work Field Engineers ~ 72 articles per year Physicists ~ 204 articles per year Chemists ~ 276 articles per year University medical faculty ~ 322 articles per year

Time Spent Reading

Time Spent Reading by Work Field

Time spent reading per article University Medical Faculty22 minutes per article ORNL Chemists43 minutes per article ORNL Physicists45 minutes per article ORNL Engineers81 minutes per article

Aspects of Journal Readings Scientists read from an increasing number of journals each year – 18 in 1995; 26 in 2001 Half are read less than five times Only one of 26 have over 25 readings

What Scientists Are Reading Approx. 50% of readings contain information that is new to the reader Over 35% of readings are of articles older than one year Older articles tend to be more valuable to scientists’ work

Usefulness and Value of Article Content Considerable savings result Improved productivity, quality, and timeliness of work Achievers read more than others Users are “willing to pay” for information in time Many purposes of reading Journals are important compared with other resources

Lesson 4: Readers are price sensitive

Average Annual Price Increase (%) in Scientific Journals

Average Price Per Title: Science Journals Source: Library Journal, April 15, 2000

Average Number of Personal Subscriptions to Scholarly Journals

Lesson 5: Scientists use a variety of ways to get journal articles

Proportion of Readings of Scholarly Scientific Articles

Sources of readings by medical faculty

Lesson 6: Separate copies are becoming more prevalent

Number of Separate Copies of Articles Received by Scientists ILL/Document Delivery 4 million>40 million Other39 million>60 million 43 million>100 million

Sources of reading- ORNL scientists

LANL arXiv.org Connections reached 200,000 per day in May ,000 new papers expected in 2001 Each article gets an average of 300 downloads per year

Preprint Use at ORNL Electronic preprints accounted for 3.6% of all reading (ORNL 2000) 1/3 of ORNL scientists were aware of LANL’s arXiv.org 1/4 were aware of DOE PrePrint Network

WWW Impact: PubMed A month of searches in PubMed equaled a year of fee-based MEDLINE searches (about 7.6 million) 90% of all Medline searches are in PubMed Today, the number of PubMed searches ranges from 500,000 to over one million per day

Reasons for Reading in More Titles and More 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

Lesson 7: Electronic journals are adopted when it is easier

Electronic Journal Reading in 2000 (ORNL) 35% 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%)

Electronic journal use by medical faculty 1/5 of all article readings were from electronic sources. Amount of time spent reading electronic articles similar to paper-based articles Identifying and locating electronic resources takes more time than print.

Fields With High Use of Electronic Journals High energy physics Medical sciences Biological sciences

Impacts of electronic publishing Electronic journals use is increasing Students prefer electronic Differences between work fields Peer review important to many Much e-reading in new titles Non-core readers price sensitive