Factors impacting the usage of academic journal articles by PhD students in India

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to underline the factors impacting the usage of academic journal articles by PhD students in Indian universities. Design/methodology/approach Following a detailed literature review, the paper bases itself on a grounded theory and provides insights drawn from structured interviews conducted via email with 134 PhD students who were based in public and private universities in India. Findings The paper underlines that there are five factors (institutional; task complexity; relevance and application; information quality; and technical) that are responsible for impacting the usage of academic journal articles by PhD students in their scholarly work. Such factors are linked with resource constraints faced by universities, lack of motivation on the part of teachers and students, non-availability of an electronic library, etc. Originality/value The present study is a major contribution to the extant literature on the usage of academic journal articles for pursuing scholarly activities.

Utilization of Scholarly Journal Articles in the Teaching and Learning of Teacher Education Courses

“…Accordingly, students perceived scholarly journal articles as difficult to use. This confirmed the previous findings that the factors impacting the usage of academic journal articles in Indian universities among PhD students were linked to the motivation of students (Saxena, 2018). These instructors shared that:…”

“…Studies that involved students include the utilization of journal publications or e-journals (Bamidele et al, 2013;Acheampong, Boakye & Agyekum, 2019;Faizul & Naushad, 2013) and underutilization of these resources (Azam, Shaheen, Shaikh, Sheikh, Siddiqui, Zafar & Nismat, 2018), access to e-journals (Acheampong et al, 2019), patterns on the use of print and electronic journals (Gupta, 2011), awareness towards the use of ejournals (Faizul et al, 2018), teaching students to read the primary literature (Murray, 2013), factors that influence the usage of academic journals (Saxena, 2018), and the impact of field specialization on internet resource usage (Sriram, 2014).…”

Investigating the impact of usage factors on satisfaction and intention to use e-resources

“…Practically, e-resources help students by saving their time as the information is just a click away (Hiller, 2002;Tahir et al, 2010). However, users want to acquire specific and relevant data from e-resources quickly to fulfill their information needs (Kim et al, 2017;Saxena, 2018) and if these needs are not fulfilled, then they get dissatisfied (Pant, 2015). Moreover, students anticipate becoming more productive and efficient by using e-resources (Hiller, 2002;Joo and Lee, 2011;Rafi et al, 2019).…”

“…On one side, there is pressure on libraries to have variety of e-resources and on the other, to keep these e-resources well-arranged. Therefore, libraries need to strike a balance between quantity and quality of e-resources because students want both e-resource collections and sorted information (Wu and Chen, 2012;Saxena, 2018). Moreover, e-resources must be functional whenever a student needs them because frequent breakdowns may also result in dissatisfaction (Deng, 2010;Olle and Borrego, 2010).…”

Assessment of information literacy skills and knowledge-based competencies in using electronic resources among medical students

“…However, the students need to possess adequate knowledge on Information Literacy Skills (ILS) on various technological tools to overcome risk factors, self-care capabilities and promote decision making process (Sahak and Masrek, 2014; Yoon and Kim, 2014; Azami et al , 2016; Saxena, 2018; Dastani et al , 2019; Kalankesh et al , 2019). Health literacy has received widespread attention to take important decisions in health-related issues (Egbert and Nanna, 2009; Zang et al , 2016).…”