Faculty members overwhelmingly prefer using online material to printed material, according to the results of a survey released this week by Ebrary, a company that provides electronic content and technology to libraries, publishers, and other businesses.
The survey shows that half of faculty members prefer electronic resources, and 18 percent prefer print. Another 32 percent said they had no preference.
Also, 77 percent of those surveyed said electronic journals “provide more effective access for most of my research” or “are easier to use for most of my research.”
The results were based on responses of 906 faculty members from 300 colleges and 38 countries. Ebrary sought respondents via its Web site....
Comments
It helps OA that faculty are accepting online digital texts as working texts. But it's not necessary for OA. For example, I myself prefer print for close study. When I really have to read something carefully, I make a printout and mark it up. All OA texts can be printed, even if not all printed texts can be OA. But even when I work from a printout, I take advantage of the OA edition for initial access, subsequent searching, cutting/pasting, linking/sharing, and new work presupposing that colleagues have access to the same text I do.
What really helps OA is the realization that online texts and journals are more accessible and easier to use. You may have to be a certain age to remember that promotion and tenure committees formerly looked askance at online scholarship, as if quality depended on medium. This prejudice is disappearing today but not gone. BTW, toll-access journal publishers are helping it disappear by launching online editions and discontinuing print editions. What's most heartening about the ebrary survey results is the evidence that this prejudice will soon be gone and soon after replaced by a preference for digital flexibility and online access.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/09/2007 09:36:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
