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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of reading in scholarly work among academics in Finland. This study analyzes readings from a variety of publication types including books, conference proceedings, research reports, magazines, newspapers, blogs, non-fiction and fiction.

An online survey was developed and distributed in Finland in 2016–2017 (n=528). Participants were asked their finding and use of scholarly information resources of all types.

Scholars read from a variety of publications. Different types of publications are read and used differently. Reading also varies between disciplines, ranks, work responsibilities and type of research performed.

The study was a nationwide study of researchers in Finland; therefore, all findings are within the context of researchers in a single country. All results are self-reported; therefore, the authors assume but cannot be sure that respondents accurately recollect the specifics of their use of scholarly information.

The results of this study are relevant to publishers, research librarians, editors and others who serve consumers of scholarly information resources, design information products and services for those scholars, and seek to better understand the information needs and use of a variety of types of scholarly publications.

This study replicates previous studies in a variety of countries and provides a more up-to-date and single-country contextualized overview of how researchers find and use scholarly information in their work.

The purpose of this paper is to ask: What is the value and outcome of scholarly reading for academic staff? How do academic library collections support research and teaching activities of academic staff? How do reading patterns of articles, books, and other materials differ? What is the role of the academic library collections in teaching and learning?

The paper provides insight into the values and outcomes of scholarly reading, identifies overall reading patterns, and illuminates issues academics address. Approximately 2,000 academic staff members from six UK universities completed a web‐based survey. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through the survey. The survey used the critical incident of last reading by academics to gather information on the purpose, outcomes, and values of scholarly readings and access to library collections. The survey concluded with open‐ended comments, which is the focus of this article.

The open‐ended comments focused on the importance of article readings to all work activities, in particular research. They also placed emphasis on the value of the library's e‐journal collections, but they had some issues with electronic access. The role of book reading was also discussed.

Open‐ended comments are only one way of measuring the value of scholarly reading and library collections. Ongoing studies and examinations of the findings from the other sections of this study will add to the overall findings of the value of the academic library.

This paper further illustrates the essential role of scholarly reading and the library's collections on the academic enterprise. This type of qualitative “story” helps libraries demonstrate their value and assess areas of concern.

This article explores recent developments in the production and delivery of scholarly journal articles in digital form. It identifies the key stakeholders as authors, publishers, librarians and end users. It explores their concerns with regard to the digital journal production and delivery chain. It also explores the interrelationships of different stakeholder groups and considers how their concerns accord or conflict. The paper goes on to review cost and pricing developments. There appears to be no relationship between production costs and subscription prices of scholarly journals. Journals are priced according to what the market will bear, but, at the same time, the market is inelastic. As a result, prices have consistently increased annually at a rate well above the general inflation rate for the last two decades. Digital publishing by publishers has done nothing to relieve this problem. The ‘serials crisis’ has been the impetus for a number of developments that aim to use digital technology to reduce costs for the HE sector. These include alternative models of journal production such as that proposed by Harnad, and initiatives that aim to influence the structure of the market for scholarly journals with a view to driving prices down such as SPARC and HighWire Press. These developments are reviewed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use patterns of scholarly e-journals by academics for teaching, research and keeping themselves up-to-date. The study also looks at differences in the use patterns across 12 disciplines.

A survey was conducted to explore academics’ use patterns of scholarly e-journals in 12 disciplines. The University of the Punjab was used for the sample population. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to all regular and contractual academics of Lahore campuses of the University. After follow up, 457 questionnaires were received with a response rate of 54 per cent. Descriptive statistics and non-parametric statistics were used to analyse data.

The results showed that the academics made more frequent use of e-journals, online reference sources and discussion with colleagues for scholarly activities. E-journals were used predominantly for research-related activities rather than for teaching and instruction. Academics obtained e-journal articles primarily from open access sources, i.e. general search engines and Google Scholar as compared to subscribed and other sources of e-journal articles. Disciplinary differences were also found in academics’ use patterns of e-journals. However, academics showed just satisfactory skills regarding use of advanced searching techniques and evaluation of the quality of e-journals.

Findings will be helpful for information professionals to review their policies and practices in relation to e-journal services for academic community. The needs for e-literacy skills to use e-journals will also be identified and findings will be significant for information professionals in arranging information literacy instruction programmes for targeted disciplines.

Most of e-journals use studies focused on specific disciplines – Sciences, Life Sciences, Engineering and Technology and Social Sciences. This research study is valuable that investigated use patterns of e-journals across 12 different disciplines at the University of the Punjab.

By tracking the information‐seeking and reading patterns of science, technology, medical and social science faculty members from 1977 to the present, this paper seeks to examine how faculty members locate, obtain, read, and use scholarly articles and how this has changed with the widespread availability of electronic journals and journal alternatives.

Data were gathered using questionnaire surveys of university faculty and other researchers periodically since 1977. Many questions used the critical incident of the last article reading to allow analysis of the characteristics of readings in addition to characteristics of readers.

The paper finds that the average number of readings per year per science faculty member continues to increase, while the average time spent per reading is decreasing. Electronic articles now account for the majority of readings, though most readings are still printed on paper for final reading. Scientists report reading a higher proportion of older articles from a wider range of journal titles and more articles from library e‐collections. Articles are read for many purposes and readings are valuable to those purposes.

The paper draws on data collected in a consistent way over 30 years. It provides a unique look at how electronic journals and other developments have influenced changes in reading behavior over three decades. The use of critical incidence provides evidence of the value of reading in addition to reading patterns.

Presents an annotated bibliography of journals and magazines useful to students and professors of German studies. The publications listed are suitable for academic and large public libraries.

This article explores the relationship between scholarly communication, an established research area receiving renewed interest, and digital libraries, a relatively new area of research. Scholarship is inherently a social process and it is embedded in a structure of relationships with other scholars, with scholarly societies, and with publishers and libraries. These stakeholders agree that the relationship has become unbalanced with the advent of electronic publishing, digital libraries, computer networks and associated changes in pricing, intellectual property policies and contracts, but they do not agree on solutions to redress the balance. Several problems worthy of research lie at the intersection of scholarly communication processes and digital libraries. These include the ability of digital libraries to support the cycle of information seeking, using and creating; the ‘social life’ of documents; and electronic publishing. Other interesting problems exist at the intersection of structures of scholarly communication and digital libraries. These include increased interdependency of scholarly documents, as links are embedded between documents, both within and between digital libraries; the indefinite preservation of digital documents; business models for electronic publishing and digital libraries; and conflicts between the physical and virtual aspects of libraries.

The article aims to explore the changes taking place over time in the scholarly communication process.

With the help of available literature, the traditional scholarly communication process is compared and contrasted with the open access driven scholarly communication process/model.

It has been observed that the Web 2.0 has affected the way knowledge is created and disseminated. New avenues of the peer review process are taking place, which is an integral part of the scholarly communication process. The article ends with some thoughts on the future of scholarly communication and the challenges ahead.

The present paper attempts to summarize the scholarly communication process from two different perspectives, i.e. traditional and open access driven.

This paper analyses the research in Library and Information Science (LIS) and reports on (1) the status of LIS research in 2015 and (2) on the evolution of LIS research longitudinally from 1965 to 2015.

The study employs a quantitative intellectual content analysis of articles published in 30+ scholarly LIS journals, following the design by Tuomaala et al. (2014). In the content analysis, we classify articles along eight dimensions covering topical content and methodology.

The topical findings indicate that the earlier strong LIS emphasis on L&I services has declined notably, while scientific and professional communication has become the most popular topic. Information storage and retrieval has given up its earlier strong position towards the end of the years analyzed. Individuals are increasingly the units of observation. End-user's and developer's viewpoints have strengthened at the cost of intermediaries' viewpoint. LIS research is methodologically increasingly scattered since survey, scientometric methods, experiment, case studies and qualitative studies have all gained in popularity. Consequently, LIS may have become more versatile in the analysis of its research objects during the years analyzed.

Among quantitative intellectual content analyses of LIS research, the study is unique in its scope: length of analysis period (50 years), width (8 dimensions covering topical content and methodology) and depth (the annual batch of 30+ scholarly journals).