E-journals: their use, value and impact

"The new RIN report E-journals: their use, value and impact looks into how researchers use e-journals and the impact this has on provision of library and information services. The findings reveal some staggering figures for the amount of e-journals being used by researchers. A lot of money, time and energy is spent on producing journals but we still do not have any practical evidence about how they are actually used. Many surveys have been done in the past on how much researchers welcome online access to journals but none have demonstrated how users actually behave and use e-journals in practice. Until now, there has been no joined-up, evidence-based study to give a detailed portrait of the information seeking behaviour of UK researchers, of how they make use of online journals and of the benefits that might come from this use, the RIN report seeks to address this"