1. E-JOURNALS: A MEANS TO
RESEARCH POTENTIALITY IN
21ST
CENTURY
Dr. R N Mishra
Associate Professor
Dept. of Lib. & Inf. Science
Mizoram University, Aizawl
rabinarayan_mishra@rediffmail.com

2. Introduction
• Electronic journals represent a noteworthy and
growing part of the academic library’s
offerings.
• Retaining of both Print and electronic journal
• Publishers initiatives resulted to getting full
text scholarly articles in e-form in late 1990s.
• As of now, online articles are 96% especially
in Science, Technology, Medicine and 86% in
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

3. • e-journals substantiate the value oriented
information in research.
• e-journals are the format of choice due to:
 Unlimited resources;
 International hit;
 Cost effectiveness;
 Qualitative information;
 Easy accessibility;
 Enhanced Access to Journal articles;
 Convenient Desktop Access;
 Multiple accesses at one time
 24x7access (Round the clock access without
geographical boundary)
 Instant communication.

4. E-Journals- Genealogy
• Analogous terms of e-journals
e-zine, webzine, internet-based electronic
journals, internet based electronic serials, e-
serials, on-line journals
• e-journals came into existence especially in
1990s which were mostly delivered through e-
mail attachments while their back issues were
mounted on anonymous ftp sites

5. • Initially, LIC started accessing e-journal through a
site developed by University of Minnesota known
as Gopher site which is a menu based information
retrieval protocol
• It continued till 1997 due to advent of WWW
• According to Ulrichsweb, more than online
version includes over 300,000 active and current
periodicals are available
• According to STM Report i.e, International
Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical
Publishers, there are there were about 28,100
active scholarly peer-reviewed journals in August
2012

6. • CrossRef database included over 56 million
DOIs, of which 46 million refer to journal
articles
• Ulrich’s web directory listed 28,094 active,
peer-reviewed scholarly/academic journals on
3 August 2012
• The CrossRef database included 27,000
journals in March 2012
• Thomson Reuters’ Web of Knowledge
database covers some 10,675 journals, while
Scopus covers 18,500 peer-reviewed journals

7. Consortium- Its Relevance
• Consortium exemplify to an association of
institutions for extended association among the
partner institutions pertaining to economic,
literature, exchange of resources
• The concept is the outcome of inter-
institutional cooperation among a group of
colleges and universities
• The primary objectives of such consortia are to
provide mammoth of literature in shape of e-
books, e-journals and other e-resources to the
educators, researchers.

8. 1. Multipurpose
academic consortia
The Association for Consortium Leadership (ACL) has
identified 125 member consortia in the United States. The
Primary aim of such consortia is share the resources
among the members.
2 Technology-planning
consortia
It is a consortia primarily devoted for strategic technology
planning across entire regions. Members are the Colleges
of Worcester (Massachusetts) Consortium, the New
Hampshire College and University Council, including the
Consortium of Universities in the Washington
Metropolitan Area.
3 The Internet2 Project A consortium of more than 100 universities with a mission
for cooperative development, operation, and technology
transfer of advanced, network-based applications and
network services in its member universities as well as
internationally.
Type of Consortia prevailing in Higher Education

9. 4 Research and academic
library consortia
Research and academic libraries constitute
another significant growth area in consortia
development as library directors seek
mechanisms for meeting user demand in
gaining access to electronic databases and
other sources of information.
5 Scientific research and
development consortia
Consortia for the purpose of scientific
research and development bring together
universities, research centers, government
agencies, and multinational corporations
engaged in supercomputing, geo-science,
medical research, and other sophisticated
research projects.
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1881/
Consortia-in-Higher-Education. html#ixzz 30d8UXxWG

10. Publishers’ Initiatives
• Change of strategies from traditional to
electronic according to users’ need
• Marketing of information through e-journal
• Reaching to the users through website
• Placing themselves in consortium
• Tie-up with aggregators
• Promoting the e-journals through multiple
outlets

11. • Other associated with phenomena with e-journals
 More interactive;
 Speedy publication;
 Fostering online exchange of ideas through e-
mail;
 Determination of source through hyperlinks
 Retrieval of articles directly through links
from abstracting, indexing databases and
digital repositories;
 Reproduction, Modification of the contents
subject to permission from the publishers
leading thereby, copyright protection and
preserving authenticity

12. scholarly open access publishing and
found the questionable publishers
Year Number of Predatory
Publishers
2011 18
2012 23
2013 225
2014 477
Source:http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014

13. Role of Aggregators
• Aggregators obtain license from many
publishers and take the responsibility for
providing the access of the e-journal from their
site
• Act as intermediary agencies
• Aggregator as a control mechanism use to
provide access the library through IP address.

14. Issues Affecting the Librarians
• Budget constraints
• Multi-disciplinary research
• Changing information need of users
• Return of investment
• Obtaining of usage data
• Licensing with consortia provider
• Developing infrastructure like, computers,
hardware, software etc.

15. Users Privacy in using e-journals
• Privacy relates to both the data collected on the
individual users and data on libraries shared
within the consortia
• U.S. Federal Trade Commission has stipulated the
privacy policies
• Elsevier’s ScienceDirect product and its parent
organization Reed Elsevier alerts users subject to
giving the personal details, JSTOR insists for
identification of the activity of individual users.
• The International Coalition of Library Consortia
(ICLOC) spells out that, the statistical report must
not be released without prior permission of the
consortium and member libraries

16. Open Scholarly E-journals on Web
•Roes identified 39 peer-reviewed scholarly
electronic journals in 1994.
•In 1996 Harter and Kim found 77 journals
• Hitchcock, Carr, and Hall ascertained 115 journals.
•ARL's Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters,
and Academic Discussion Lists (7th Edition)
determined 1,002 peer-reviewed e-journals in 1997

17. Sl.No Subject URL No. of E-
journals/ Articles
1 Mathema
tics
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ 202991+23668
e-prints
2 Computer
Science
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ 77118+15835
e-prints
3 Nonlinear
Sciences
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ 14394+9057
e-prints
4 Physics http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ 670440+22110
e-prints
5 Quantitat
ive
Finance
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ 3038+1848
e-prints

18. 6 Statistic
s
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/11103+4266
e-prints
7 Physics http://de.physnet.net/Phys
Net/journals.html
75 journals
8 All
subjects
http://www.icaap.org/list_journal.php
?
action=view_all_journal
108 journals
9 All
subjects
http://er.lib.msu.edu/atoz.c
fm
10323 records
10 Theolog
ical
http://www.xmarks.com/si
te/
info.lib.uh.edu/wj/webjour
.html
32 journals

19. 11 Scientific http://www.xmarks.com/site/
info.lib.uh.edu/wj/webjour.html
1206 on-line
journals
12 Medical http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/ 4245 journals
13 All
subjects
http://www.uvm.edu/~bmaclenn/#ejo
ur
21 journals
14 Economics http://www.helsinki.fi/WebEc/journa
ls.html
390 journals
15 Scientific http://free-scientific-
journals.blogspot.in/2009/01/list-of-
online-and-free-access-
journals_02.html
16 All
subjects
http://doaj.org/ 9707 e-journals

20. Conclusion
• Proliferation of information web and
escalating price in print journals
• Inter-disciplinary research, opening of new
subjects in higher education, research in
science and technology, changing users’
information need are some of the important
components for enhancing the quality and
peer-reviewed e-journals

21. Thank You