Report from #ecil2014 - Academics' Use of Scholarly E-Journals

I'm in one of the final sessions of the European Conference on Information Literacy, held in Dubrovnik. Alia Arshad presented on her doctoral work, on Academics' Use of Scholarly E-Journals: A Case of University of the Punjab. "Use" included scanning, downloading, accessing types of use. The speaker referred to the wider literature about use of e-resources (although few looked at reasons for non use); there were very few studies undertaken in Pakistan. Research questions included factors influencing use, and barriers to use. The population in this quantitative study includes full-time time staff in specific departments on two campuses of the University of the Punjab. A questionnaire has been used for data collection.
There was a pilot study. 86% used search engines more frequently to identify scholarly articles, 79% used discussion with peers more frequently and 50% used e-journal articles more frequently. The majority accessed e-journal articles through Google Scholar (86%). Respondents used title words (79%) most. Top barrier to using e-journals was having to pay (71%) with 50% identifying lack of training as a barrier. The fact that the subscribed journal databases could only be accessed on campus was also a barrier (as e.g. many did work at night, at home, and they could not access e-journals then.
Photo by Sheila Webber: cat, Dubrovnik