Impact of online journals on citation patterns of dentistry, nursing, and pharmacy faculty

Abstract

The past decade has seen a major shift in the journal collections of academic health sciences libraries. Libraries gained access to vast numbers of journals as never before possible when they moved into licensing large electronic journal packages instead of the traditional title-by-title print journal selections. These changes have been a boon to researchers, who presumably no longer have to travel across campus or even down the hall to the library for articles. Instead, they retrieve articles with just a few clicks on their home or office computers. Libraries are reducing their print collections due to decreased utilization and increased access to online journals [1–3]. The convenience of accessing the online collection remotely instead of having to walk into the library has been cited as a reason [4]. A previous study that examined the impact of online journals on the citation patterns of medical school faculty found that when medical faculty had access to a small print collection and a large online journal collection, the use of the print collection significantly decreased. However, when faculty had access to a large print collection in addition to a large online collection, the impact on the use of the existing print collection was minimal [5]. A 2006 study that surveyed health sciences librarians also found that researchers are still using print journals in this electronic age [6]. The purpose of this study is to determine how online journal collections are impacting the citation patterns of researchers in dentistry, nursing, and pharmacy. Journal citation patterns before and after the introduction of online journals will be examined to determine whether researchers are more likely to limit the journal articles they cite to those journals available online rather than those available only in print.