SCHOLARLY JOURNALS ON THE NET - A READERS ASSESSMENT

THIS ARTICLE PRESENTS AN assessment of scholarly network journals from the reader's point of view. The author subscribed to seven journals that are published primarily on the Internet and reviewed the nature of the journals' contents, format, and policies. This review forms the basis of the author's assessment of the ease of use and usefulness of current network journals, While network journals present a number of problems, they have also begun to include features which offer readers an advantage over print journals. The article concludes with a brief discussion of requirements for future scholarly network journals. The discussion is based on current technology and industry trends and on preliminary results from focus group interviews conducted by the author and others with engineering faculty and students. Focus group participants discussed the nature of their journal use and their preferences for the networked digital library of journals that is currently being developed at the University of Illinois.