Measuring the Quality of Electronic Journals in University Library: Based on Five Year Impact Factor Data in the Journal Citation Reports

2.0 Literature Review

Using of high quality electronic journals is a necessity in the academic and scholarly world. This section summarizes the evolution of printed journal up to present electronic journals along with discussions of high quality electronic journals usage and the availability of high impact factor journals. All information collects for this study consists from variety sources which comprise of electronic journals, search engines, online database, and books. Literature reviews are useful for synthesizing what has been done so far, and for identifying what needs to be done.

2.1 Electronic Journal Development

Electronic resources represent a large portion of many libraries’s information resources. Libraries no longer operate in a purely physical, but more often in a hybrid environment with print and electronic information resources available side by side. With the development of the Internet and the wealth of electronic resources, large portions of libraries' collections are no longer kept on shelves, but are available electronically.

The first experiment with a true scholarly journal with editorial standards and refereeing procedures was conducted with a journal on mental workload within the Electronic Information Exchange System beginning in 1979 (Turoff & Hiltz, 1982). Later, in 1980, the British Library awarded a grant to Loughborough University to establish an experimental online journal in the area of computer human factors (Shackel, 1991).

In the early 1990s, publishers and universities explored ways of creating electronic journals that could be retrieved on the users’ desktop. There was a significant growth in the number of electronic journals in these days. The 7th edition (1997) of The ARL Dir...

... middle of paper ...

...s: A preliminary checklist to assist. Library Review, 45 (1), 39-53. Accessed 22 October 2010: http://www.emeraldinsight .com/0024-2535.htm

Starbuck, W. H. (2005). How much better are the most-prestigious journals? The statistics of academic publication. Accessed 28 September 2010: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-132680004/much-better-most-prestigious.html

Thomas Reuters (2010). Impact Factor. Accessed 28 October 2010: http://www.thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/impact_factor/

Tiers for the Australian Ranking of Journals. Accessed 30 September 2010: http://www.arc.gov.au/era/tiers_ranking.htm

Tsakonas, G. & Papatheodorou, C. (2006). Analyzing and evaluating usefulness and usability in electronic information services. Journal of Information Science, 32 (5), 400-419. Accessed 22 October 2010: http://www.emeraldinsight.com