The changes in Japanese researchers' usage and perception of electronic resources: Result of SCREAL Survey 2011

Abstract

The Standing Committee for Research on Academic Libraries (SCREAL), in cooperation with 45 institutions in Japan, conducted a questionnaire survey from October to December 2011. As a result, 3,922 valid responses across various fields were collected. Following up this survey, we attempt here to clarify how usage and perception of e‐journals and scholarly articles among researchers and graduate students in Japan changed. The basic findings were as follows. 1) More than 90% of respondents in natural sciences, including pharmaceutical science, chemistry, biology, physics and medicine, reported that they used e‐journals at least once or twice a month. 2) E‐journals were not as heavily used in humanities and social sciences as in natural sciences, but the proportion of regular users turned out to be more than 4 times that of the 2001 survey. 3) This difference in e‐journals usage by discipline is strongly associated with the degree of dependence on domestic documents written in Japanese. The two groups of respondents, users of international documents and users of domestic documents, showed a statistically significant difference in answering the question concerning “Frequency of e‐journals use.” 4) Attitude to the necessity of printed version drastically transmuted. 62.3% of respondents in natural sciences and 53.6% in humanities and social sciences thought “printed journals are unnecessary when e‐journals are accessible.” 5) Use of digital devices for e‐books was not popular as yet, but the respondents expressed their high interest in the future use. Some preliminary discussion is made to identify the factors affecting the usage and/or perception of electronic resources by Japanese researchers.

Print or digital? Reading behavior and preferences in Japan

“…In the academic context, large-scale surveys on the use of e-journals conducted in 2011 in the United Kingdom (Tenopir, Volentine, & King, 2012) and Japan (Sato et al, 2012) showed that about 90% of researchers and graduate students had most recently read an e-journal. However, the percentage of these last readings that were done on-screen was 46% in the United Kingdom and 24% in Japan.…”

Academic scientists’ scholarly use of information resources in the digital environment

“…Life Scientists were much more likely to enter Science Direct through a gateway site than economists. Sato et al (2012) conducted a questionnaire survey with the assistance of 45 institutions across various fields in Japan. An overwhelming majority of the respondents in Natural Sciences, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry and Biology reported that they used e-journals once or twice a month.…”