E-journal subscription

[Shyamal Ghosh]

"Demerit of E-journal subscription". Discussion need practically pinpointed area.

[Jayshree Dave]

Archiving and site licenses are the two major issues that most libraries have identified. Most of the electronic journals are not archived, therefore, libraries should be very careful about canceling printed subscriptions. Archiving becomes a critical issue for particular types of products, such as electronic journals and full-text databases. Also, libraries have learned that both storing large files of data and maintaining access to them have additional costs in terms of staff, time, and other resources. Libraries are often hesitant to rely on electronic copies of titles for fear that archival access will not be maintained.

 

• Difficulty reading computer screens :

The main disadvantages of digital information are the limitations of the computer monitor. This leads to problems with reading , particularly over four or five screens, annotation and portability. Although the ideal would be to read information from the screen, I think that with printing facilities, this ought not to be a huge constraint on the development of e-journals, because at the moment most people photocopy library copies of journals before taking them away anyway.

• Often not included in indexing and abstracting services
• Archiving

The main considerations for archiving of electronic journals are: (i) should the publishers or libraries archive the digital data? (ii) whose responsibility would it be to upgrade old data to newer formats? and (iii) if the publisher goes bust, or the editor of an independent journal gets bored or leaves their institution, what will happen to the archives? (Raney, 1998) Without satisfactory answers to these questions, the role of the scholarly journal as an archival record will be compromised.

• Perishable citation

Once printed, the details of a paper journal remain constant, thus finding them again is straightforward, however web sites change their URLs or frequently disappear altogether.  

• Authenticity

Clarke (1998) worries about the "malleability of content in electronic form" and Grenquist (1997) and Raney (1998) are concerned about establishing the source and authority of material in general, although I think that e-journals will only survive if they can convince readers of their credibility.

Search engines ignore PDF files, which is the format that a large proportion of e-journals use, particularly those which are direct copies of print versions