This chapter discussed in detail electronic journals (e-journals), their advantages and disadvantages, and need for subscription. In selection of e-journals, identification of e-journals, their evaluation and purpose for subscription are important considerations for selection of more relevant resources for patrons. The authors also discuss cost benefit analysis of e-journals and elaborate cost involved in subscription of print and electronic journals and provide their cost benefit analysis.
TopElectronic Journals
The introduction of electronic resources can be traced to the 1960s with the development of machine readable files such as ERIC and an early version of the National Library of Medicine online database. In the 1970s OCLC and third party online database vendors, such as Dialog, BRS, and Orbit, became standard sources. The 1980s saw the arrival of personal computers, online public accesses catalogue (OPACs) to replace the card catalogue and databases on CD-ROMs housed on standalone workstations. The early 1990s saw the arrival of local area networks (LAN) to replace standalone workstations. The mid 1990s brought the latest changes are operating system with graphic user interface, Windows, and the Internet. By the late 1990s many OPACs and CD-ROM based databases became available in Web-based systems, and many services became available via remote access to patrons outside the library. The increased reliance on electronic resources was accelerated by decisions to cancel subscriptions to the print formats of sources that became available electronically and the increase of technical to access them.
Any journal available over the Internet can be called ‘Electronic Journal’ or ‘e-journal’. In many cases e-journals are counterparts to familiar print publications, although an increasing number of titles exist only in electronic format. Frequently e-journals appear on the screen exactly as they do in print with similar page design and typeface. These are ‘Portable Document Format’ (PDF) images of print pages.
Gail Mc Millan defines, “any serial produced, published and distributed via e-networks such as Internet, e-journals may be defined very broadly as any journals, magazines, e-zine, newsletter or type of e-serial publications, which is available over the Internet.”
According to Wikepedia (2009) electronic journals, also known as e-journals, and electronic serials, are scholarly journals or intellectual magazines that can be accessed via electronic transmission. In practice, this means that they are usually published on the Web.
According to the Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science by Reitz (2004), e-resources are materials consisting of data and/or computer program(s) encoded for reading and manipulation by a computer or by using a peripheral device directly connected to the computer, such as a CD-ROM drive, or remotely via a network, such as the Internet. The category includes software applications, electronic texts, bibliographic databases, institutional repositories, Web sites, e-books, collections of e-journals, etc. Electronic resources not publicly available free of charge usually require licensing and authentication.