Academics’ Use of Scholarly E-Journals: A Case of University of the Punjab

Abstract

AbstractThe emergence of electronic information resourceshas made a profound impacton academic scholars, libraries, publishers and information professionals. The use of e-journals has become common in the developed countries. The awareness and use of e-journals is also growing in the developing countries. University of the Punjab provides access to full text e-journals through University Library E-journal Resources (Higher Education Commission’s National Digital Library Programme) for faculty members, students and researchers. However, recent studies have also revealed that our researchers use general internet resources and free scholarly journals more than the subscribed high quality e-journals. This study aims to investigate the patterns of using scholarly e-journals and articles among academics of various disciplines. The study will also seek to determine the barriers academics face while consulting e-journals. This paper is based on an ongoing research project and the researcher will report the results of pre-testing. The design of the research study is ‘Quantitative’ and survey method has been adopted to accomplish the objectives of the study. Keeping in view the study’s findings, a strategy might be made to maximize the utilization of HEC e-journals and improved accessibility to academics.KeywordsScholarly communicatione-journalsinformation seekingdigital literacy