International Survey of Research University Faculty: Use of Academic Journals

This 67-page study presents data from a survey of 512 academics from 55 research universities in the USA, Canada, Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The report gives its readers a good idea of how scholars feel about the need for perpetual access to journal titles in online formats, their preferences regarding print vs. online journal formats, their need for new journal titles, the extent to which their library collections satisfy their current needs and the degree to which scholars find the materials that they need in their library’s existing journal collection. The study also looks at the impact of Google Scholar on scholarly journal information use. Data in the report is broken out by more than 10 criteria including but not limited to: country of origin of faculty member (with separate data for the USA, Canada, UK/Ireland and Australia), age and gender of faculty member, academic field, size of university, academic title or position, world university ranking, and many other useful variables. Just a few of the report’s many findings are that: 55.63% of faculty aged 60-years-old or over preferred retaining journals in paper format even when an online version is available; only 33.65% of faculty in the 31-years-old to 39-years-old age range felt the same way. Business and Economics faculty report the greatest use of Google Scholar; reading journals on Google Scholar account for 41.03% of the time they spend reading online journals. 78.96% of Canadian respondents were able to find the needed research articles using their home library collection vs only 55.1% for scholars from the UK and 65.56% for scholars from the USA. Faculty from the following universities participated in the study: Australian National University, Brown University, Carleton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University. Drexel University, Emory University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Griffith University, Imperial College London, McGill University, Miami University, Monash University, Penn State - University Park, Penn State College of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Rice University, Rutgers University, Saint Louis University, Staffordshire University, Swinburne University of Technology, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, University of Michigan, University College Dublin, University Nottingham, University of Alberta, University of Birmingham, University of California at Davis, University of California Riverside, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Chicago, University of Connecticut, University of Idaho, University of Leeds, University of Maryland, University of Maryland College Park, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nottingham University of South Florida, University of Strathclyde, University of Technology Sydney, University of Toronto, University of Utah, University of Western Australia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Virginia Commonwealth University, Washington State University, Washington State University Tri-Cities, Western Michigan University and Yale University.