results - feedback on online journal use (Laura A. Sill) Stephen Clark 07 May 1998 17:55 UTC
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 12:26:55 -0500 From: "Laura A. Sill" <Laura.A.Jenny.1@ND.EDU> Subject: results - feedback on online journal use Thank you to everyone who responded to my quick and informal survey on online journal use. A compilation of the results are below. Laura Sill University of Notre Dame ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Question 1: For online journals in the Engineering, Chemistry and Mathematics fields, what are the presentation (i.e., non-content related) characteristics you find most helpful and why? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ ***1. Easily browsed list of all issues online, separate from issues with only TOCs. My users often have a specific reference, and need a quick and SIMPLE way to get to the correct article. A simple issue list is much easier for our users to comprehend and work with than a search form which works differently at each journals' site. 2. Links embedded in references to the abstracts of those articles. Highwire Press is doing this with its medical journals. The American Journal of Physiology is in a free trial period - check out any full-text article for examples: http://ajpcell.physiology.org/ 3. Publisher organizes site to provide computable URLs for individual articles. Our bibliographic database service can work with these publishers to provide links to individual articles at the citation level from a search result. Highwire Press has done this as well - look at the URL for any full-text article, and you'll see the volume, issue, and page numbers embedded in the URL. This makes it easier for our database provider. 4. Value-added features such as ability to take citation information in a form suitable for importing into bibliographic file management software programs such as End-Note or Reference Manager, or ability to register for automatic table-of-contents by e-mail.*** ***All the journals that I am familar with are web journals in the areas of Astronomy, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics. The presentation is to provide a replica of the print. The most likely reason, to reproduce the print, is the use of mathematical notation and the use of charts, graphs, and photos in the originals that are difficult to handle via html. So the differences of each journal are the navigation features that each publisher/vendor provide prior to getting to the article. One of the earliest providers of web journals is the Institute of Physics (IOP). The IOP site has some nice features such as allowing ND users to select an id & password so that they can access the journals from any networked computer in the world; providing a virtual file cabinet with that id & password so that the articles of interest follow the user; allowing the user to set up a journal issue availability notification system; links to the INSPEC database; and a site wide search engine. Other publishers provide some of the services that IOP provides but not all the services. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) when sending a email notifying you of a new issue will include the table of contents.*** ***Hypertext links within the document Hypertext links to other documents including other articles, database records, web sites, software, etc. Color Interactive models Unlimited length Why? All of these allow you to enrich the transfer of information between author and reader by allowing the author to encode more information into a "document" and by allowing the reader more ways to interact with the "docuemnt".*** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Question 2: For online journals in fields outside of Engineering, Chemistry and Mathematics, what are the presentation characteristics you find most helpful and why? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ ***I like the use of frames. The left frame has buttons to go to particular sections of the journal. The right frame includes brief summaries of the articles. I can do without significant graphics, e.g. photos, on the first page. Links to other sites and citations within the journal is always nice. ITS VERY IMPORTANT THAT EACH JOURNAL INCLUDE AN ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER ON OR NEAR THE TITLE PAGE.*** ***Basically the same as above. What will be linked, modeled etc. will be different, and the way the features are integrated may vary. I'm not suggesting that e-journals will be the same for all communities, but you are lumping so many communities together and ignoring so many other e-journal features like innovation in review, innovation in pricing, innovations in deliverty etc. that I can't comment meaningfully within the context you're presenting.*** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Question 3: What have you found to be the preferred format for delivery (e.g., pdf, html, etc.) of online information and why? By type of information (e.g., the text of an article vs. illustrations, etc.), do you have any further thoughts on delivery? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ ***I'm satisfied with most formats. I do like to have an option for viewing an image. Either a thumbnail or the option of a tiff for better quality (see CRL/LAMP Brazil project for this approach).*** ***HTML AND PDF are both important. We find people want to see the article on-screen as soon as possible, scroll a little to decide whether to print. So HTML presentation is important. Presentation by means of frames is irritating, especially as many of our users still operate in little 640x480 worlds. FOr a paper copy, though, PDF is much preferred. We have found little use of other formats like TeX or PostScript in medicine.*** ***At this point pdf is the preferred format for delivery of journal articles in Chemistry, Astronomy, Physics, and Mathematics. The last three areas also provide ps format and Math has a third format, dvi. The format that I have experience with is pdf. I do know that in Astronomy, Math, and Physics patrons will use the ps or dvi formats but I don't know anything about them. I like pdf (and users seem to like pdf) because it reproduces the original print better than a photocopy could do. You can also save the pdf to your hard disk or afs space instead of placing the copy in a file cabinet. The index or table of contents in all areas mentioned above are in html. Delivery is affected by equipment. A slow clock speed in the CPU and/or low RAM makes it very difficult to print an article. For instance a 486 with 16MB RAM takes about 120 seconds per page to print a pdf document, a Pentium 100 MHz with 32MB RAM takes about 90 seconds per page, a Pentium II 266 MHz with 64MB RAM takes about 15 seconds per page. In the Mac world, a Quadra 610 66Mhz with 24MB RAM takes about 90 seconds per page, and a G3 266Mhz with 64MB RAM takes about 10 seconds per page. A slow response time can really discourage a user from wanting to use the web journal. In addition to the clock speed, a low resolution monitor makes a pdf article almost impossible to read on the screen. Again this discourages the user from wanting to use a web journal.*** ***Preferred by who? I'm a librarian. I read journals in my field and browse some science journals, but I shouldn't be seen as a typical reader for most science journals. You have to ask them. Sure librarian's have opinions and some ground for professional judgement, but journals will live and die by their readers, not by us. However, for myself I prefer html because of the much greater flexibility and capability for incorporating the features I suggested above.*** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Question 4: For those online journals that have incorporated multimedia in their online versions (e.g., video clips, color graphics, etc.), have they been successful? If so, in what way? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ ***Sort of successful. The only special thing we encounter is color graphics. Some users hate this because their browser and printer setup turn these into black mud on printing - a black & white photocopy of a color photo from one of our library copiers is often better than what they can print out on their own cheapo inkjet. Surprise - a $3000 machine makes a better image than a $300 one. A very few journals have incorporated other more advanced multimedia components, and they have not been terribly popular with our users. There is one gentleman who enjoys listening to symposia via streaming audio, but most of our users want electronic journals to be pretty much like paper journals.*** ***Journal of Biological Chemistry has color graphics and color photos. The success of JBC is because most people have really good color monitors and the branches/departments do not have color copiers. Color printers are becoming more common so why have a color copier.*** ***Again, how are you judging success and successful for whom? Economically successful? Popular? High impact? A reader personally likes it? I see Science Online as successful. However, Science is successful by just about any measure so the online has a wonderful stature to build on and is basically successful by definition not by implementation. For most other e-journals it is way too early to start declaring success. Very few are out there incorporating the features you suggest - especially the majority of e-journals which are 1) versions of existing print journals and 2)limiting themselves to pdf of exact page images which doesn't support most of the features you suggest (only color so far). I am distressed by how often we want to talk about neato features but want to ignore the currently dominant (although hopefully transitionary) model of e-publishing which is simple page images of existing paper publications. Almost without exception the only journals that are realy exploring enhanced functionality are new journals and thus they are difficult to compare to the large body of existing, established journals. What do we mean by an electronic journal? This is not a trivial question at the moment. If the pfd of paper is an e-journal then we have to accept that this form is dominant and perhaps not transitional. If pdf of paper is not a "real" e-journal, then we have to acknowledge that e-journals are at best a tiny in niche in sci tech publishing and that their success has yet to be demonstrated (see the recent Harter article in JASIS for confirmation of this assertion).*** ***I don't see these journals in the social sciences, but there certainly is more and more reason to include them now that the technology is available. Above all, the user should have the option of viewing multimedia files.*** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ General comments: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ *The one and only thing I want in a periodical's web page is a decent, searchable archive. *I would say look particularly closely at the print capabilities of the online journals. My experience with JSTOR articles has shown me, paperless society notwithstanding, users still want to be able to print from the journals. This has implications for method of delivery, multimedia, etc. If you cannot print reliably from various locations, platforms, etc, the usefulness of the product is diminished. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------