The Use and Value of Scholarly Journals

This paper summarized results of 13,591 readership survey responses of scientists and reviews of hundreds of other readership studies reported in a recent book: Towards Electronic Journals: Realities for Scientists, Librarians, and Publishers (Tenopir & King, 2000). In particular, survey results reveal amounts and trends of reading and information-seeking patterns, such as how readers identify articles that are read and where they obtain them. The survey results also demonstrate the usefulness and value of scientific scholarly journals. Past results suggest that electronic journals and digital full-text databases will play a major role in the future of scientific scholarly journals but not necessarily in the way predicted by many.