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April 7, 2006

Scientific and Medical Journals on the Web

Research and Markets (Tm) has just released a 230-page report on use of web-based STM journals, Scientific and Medical Journals on the Web. Based on a 33-question survey of more than 1,900 scientific and medical professionals, this report examines readers' expectations, preferences and needs as they relate to the use of Web-based journals. Specifically, it reveals trends in the ways online journals are found and accessed, the most acceptable ways to pay for access to online journals and why readers submit articles to specific journals. It also benchmarks readers' satisfaction with 5 leading journals in terms of types of content, information features and searching capabilities. To explore new developments, the report includes discussions of open access publishing from the author's perspective—including whether authors should be expected to pay a fee to publish their work, the effect of receiving payments on open access publishers' acceptance rates and copyright issues.
Report Highlights:

• Scientific and medical professionals typically learn about new online journals from citations in other journals (50%), searching bibliographic databases (46%) and entering keywords into a search engine (46%).
  
• More than half of the survey respondents make it a point to read or browse between two and five journals each month.
  
• Approximately one-quarter of the scientific and medical professionals surveyed believe that it is not at all important to receive the print edition of a journal if they have access to the online version.
  
• When asked about open access publishing, more than a quarter of the respondents indicated that they strongly believe that the general public should be allowed to download, copy, redistribute or view a given work without restrictions.
  
• 36% of survey respondents are not at all familiar with CrossRef, although many believe it would be useful in their research.
  
• Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Journal of Biological Chemistry and New England Journal of Medicine are the online journals most frequently read by scientific and medical professionals.

Note: the full report costs about $2500 and so will have limited availability.
Read more from Research & Markets. An executive summary is also available after you complete a free registration. Thanks to Knowledgespeak for the alert about this report.

Posted by Katie Newman at April 7, 2006 2:22 PM

 

For comments on this page contact: Kaite Newman