E-Journal Usage and Scholarly Communication using Transaction Log Analysis: A Case Study of E- Journal (Full Text) Download Patterns of NAL Scientists and Engineers

Abstract

Most scientists today have access to full-text e-journals. In most cases, this facility is provided right at the desktop. In this paper, we present a case study of full-text e-journal patterns amongst the scientists and engineers at the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), a constituent of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The facility at NAL is provided right to the desktop through the NAL-CSIR-NISCAIR e-conglomerate. Today, National Institute of Science Communication and Information Research (NISCAIR) provides e-access to more than 4042 world-class e-journals to all S&T personnel of the CSIR fraternity. This CSIR-NISCAIR initiative allows any scientist in any CSIR Laboratory to access this electronic information to keep abreast of the latest technological developments in his area of specialization. The analysis of data on the full-text e-journal patterns is presented for the period 2005 to 2007. The major findings that we would like to highlight in this paper are: (a) the mean number (per-month) of full-text downloads for the above three years was found to be different through Kruskal Wallis test of ‘One Way Analysis of Variance’ at 1% level of significance and (b) Chi-Square test was applied to test whether there is independence between the years and the publishers. The calculated value of Chi- Square was found to be 510.6, which is highly significant. Hence we conclude that for the full-text downloads data, the years and the publishers are not independent. This Chi-Square test was carried out for only those publishers (4 in number) for which the data was available for all the three years (2005-2007).