Abstract

Policies on institutional subscription to major international publishing platforms are discussed. It seems a contradiction, but in Spain the expansion of open access is consolidating and increasing its foreign economic dependence. The cost of access to specific articles in various publications is reviewed, and the need to negotiate better terms for pay-per-view systems is argued.

Abstract

The aim of the study is to test a methodology to investigate the correlation between the models of electronic information usage and the scientific communication preferences reflected in two databases: Web of Science (WoS) from Thomson Reuters, and Scopus from Elsevier. The study is focused on the University of Vigo. Downloads of the articles distributed by ScienceDirect, SpringerLink and Wiley were analyzed at the University of Vigo (Spain) in the period 2006 to 2011. There is an ascending curve for the consumption of electronic scientific content and a preference for titles distributed by ScienceDirect. The study confirms that experimental and health sciences researchers are the most devoted users, to judge by the number of articles downloaded. Increase in scientific production was also analyzed by discipline. There was a direct correlation between the most productive disciplines and those in which higher numbers of journal articles were downloaded. Nevertheless, no direct correlation was observed between the titles preferred for scientific communication and the titles receiving greater use in the multidisciplinary platforms studied.

Abstract

An analysis evaluating electronic journals published by Spanish universities was performed, taking into account both formal aspects and cybermetric indicators. The aim of this study was to analyse the impact and visibility of these web-based publications. The number of publications, their formal and content-related characteristics, and their use of features and tools provided by the electronic medium were all considered. The results fall below expectations, due to formal problems in the structure and contents of the journals' websites, resulting in low visibility and, therefore, low impact.

Abstract

The evolution of the use of electronic scientific journals in the 2007-2018 period by the academic communities of the public universities of Castilla and Leon, members the Bucle consortium, is studied. Downloads of articles distributed by four broad-spectrum providers are analyzed: Emerald, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, and Wiley. Unexpectedly, in spite of the new ways of accessing content, this analysis shows that the number of downloads in public universities in Castile and Leon has increased. However, it has been found that despite the growth, a few journals concentrate most of the downloads and that a large number of titles are not used. It has been verified that the universities with a higher number of staff and greater diversity of knowledge areas use a wider range of titles and thus obtain a higher benefit from their contracts. All of the above leads us to question the system of contracting big deals, i.e., bundles of hundreds of multidisciplinary journals and other resources. In a moment of change promoted by Plan S, we consider it more necessary than ever to understand the situation of the provision of serial scientific publications and to find the best strategy to have access to them.