Web citation behaviour in scholarly electronic journals in the field of library and information science

Webology, Volume 5, Number 2, June, 2008

Web citation behaviour in scholarly electronic journals in the field of library and information science

Smt. Veena R. Bhat
Asst Librarian and Documentation Services, International Institute of Information Technology, P-14, Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park, Hinjewadi, Pune, INDIA. E-mail: veenarbhat (at) rediffmail.com

B. T. Sampath Kumar
Lecturer, Dept. of Library and Information Science, Kuvempu University, Shivamogga, Karnataka, INDIA. E-mail: sampathbt_2001 (at) rediffmail.com

Received January 24, 2008; Accepted June 10, 2008

Abstract

The modern era is facing a radical change in the way people find and use information resources. Although the information gathering and use pattern in the traditional print environment have been studied for many years, the electronic media presents a new and relatively unexplored area for such study. In this context, this article describes a citation analysis of research articles from scholarly electronic journals published in 2000-2006. The analysis focused on the extent to which scholars are using web-based sources in scholarly electronic journals. Results of the study shows that 81.49% of articles published in selected 9 electronic journals during 2000-2006 have web references. Out of 25,730 references 56.54 % of references are print journal references and 43.52% of them are web references. The majority of articles having web references are found in ARIADANE (93.24%) which ranks first, followed by Cybermetrics: International Journal of Scientometrics, Informetrics, and Bibliometrics (89.47%) and D-LIB Magazine (89.19%). It can be observed from the study that comparatively more number of articles (81.05%) published during the years 2000-2006 have web references.

Keywords

Internet; Electronic Journals; Web based sources; Web references; Citation analysis; Library and Information Science

Introduction

The growing web-based sources and emerging network technologies have been revolutionizing society by making information available to the people in new ways. In the mean time, it is convenient for the people to get access to web-based sources. These two forces are leading to radical changes in scholarly communications. As a consequence of such an electronic reform, web-based sources are growing steadily. This is evident as a growing number of electronic journals, magazines and newsletters are available on the Web. There is also a continuous growth rate in the publications created on and for the Internet and the explosive growth is still accelerating. In addition, there are many self-publications, preprints and conference proceedings being made available on the Web.

Zhang (1998) identified that compared with the impact of print sources, the impact of e-sources on formal scholarly communication in LIS is small, as measured by e-sources cited, and does not increase significantly by year even though there is observable growth of the impact across the years. The study of Germain (2000) checks the accessibility of sixty-four URLs cited in thirty-one academic journal articles and results of this longitudinal study found an increasing decline in the availability of URL citations. But in 2001 Zhang provides empirical evidence that e-sources are increasingly used among scholars. The longitudinal analysis of e-source citations shows that there has been a notable increase in the number and proportion of authors who cite e-sources in their research articles over the 8-year period.

Lawrence et al. (2001) evaluated citation to web located resources in computer science articles concluding that citation to web located resources had increased dramatically over a 7 year period. Herring (2002) Results also indicate a growing reliance on electronic resources by scholars, a high occurrence of non-traditional types of resources, and a relatively high use of interdisciplinary references. The use of web located references in scholarly law articles was examined by Rumsey (2002) who found that such citations increased significantly between 1995 trough to 2000. He reported that the average number of web located citations per article increased from 1.9 to 10.45 over a 6 year period.

Davis (2002) shows that the total number of bibliographic citations continued to grow from a median of ten in 1996 to thirteen in 2000. Casserly and Bird (2003) found that more than half (56.4%) web references were permanent, 81.4 percent were available on the Web, and searching the Internet Archive increased the availability rate to 89.2 percent. Sellitto (2004) found that 48.1% (1041) of all citations used in the papers referred to a Web-located resource. A significant number of references to URLs were found to be missing (45.8%) and an evaluation of these Web located citations allowed the average half-life (4.8 years) for these missing resources to be determined.

The above studies clearly show that there is continuous growth in the use of web-based sources in the scholarly journals. However to what extent web-based sources as a whole have been accepted and used as alternatives and/or additions to traditional means in the formal scholarly communications system is still unclear. In this context, the present case study in the field of Library and Information Science for the years 2000 to 2006, is trying to investigate the extent to which web-based sources have been used in citations in formal scholarly communications.

Objectives of the Study

The main objectives of the study are:

To identify the extent of use of web-based sources by scholarly researchers for their research;
To know the overall impact of web-based sources on formal communication in the field of Library and Information Science during 2000 to 2006;
To assess either e-journal articles more likely to cite web based sources than print journal articles or not; and
To identify which e-journal has more number of web references.

Methodology

The data for this study were drawn from a selective sample of free e-journals available through the Web without subscription or registration. A total nine e-journals were selected in the area of Library and Information Science. All articles published in these nine journals during 2000 to 2006 were examined among which all research articles that included reference citations were selected. A total of 1277 articles were found out of which 1035 article had web references.

The references listed for each article were examined and duplicate references in each individual list were removed. Data concerning total number of articles, total number of articles with web references, total number of references, total number of web references and total number of print journal references were recorded. The data collected for the study has been analysed and is presented in the form of tables and graphs in the following:

1. Selected E-Journals for the Study

The selected e-journals and their web addresses are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. E-Journals and their web addresses

Symbol	Name of the e-journal	Web address (URL)
EJ1	D-LIB Magazine	http://www.dlib.org/
EJ2	E-JASL (Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship)	http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/
EJ3	Information Research- An International Electronic Journal	http://informationr.net/ir/
EJ4	Journal of Digital Information	http://journals.tdl.org/jodi
EJ5	ARIADANE	http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/
EJ6	Library Philosophy and Practice	http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~mbolin/lpp.htm
EJ7	Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship	http://www.istl.org/
EJ8	Cybermetrics: International Journal of Scientometrics, Informetrics, and Bibliometrics	http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/cybermetrics.html
EJ9	School Library Media Research	http://www.ala.org/aaslslmrTemplate.cfm ?Section=slmrb&CFID=84071722&CFTOKEN=83426299

Analysis

1. D-LIB Magazine

Table 2 clearly shows the percentage of articles having web references from the year 2000 to 2006. Total 333 articles were published in D-LIB Magazine during these years out of which 89.19% of articles had web references. In 2006, the number of web references was 97.78%. Table also illustrates the percentage of web references and print journal references in the D-LIB Magazine. It is clear from the table that a total of 5,634 references are found out of which 71.16% are web references and only 28.84% of references are print journal references.

Table 2. Percentage of articles having web references in D-Lib Magazine by year

Year	Total number of articles	Total number of articles with web references	Total number of references	Total number of web references	Total number of print journal references
2000	48	36 (75.00)	595	425 (71.42)	170 (28.57)
2001	45	43 (95.56)	693	459 (66.23)	234 (33.76)
2002	49	47 (95.91)	973	679 (69.78)	294 (30.22)
2003	52	44 (84.61)	926	606 (65.44)	320 (34.55)
2004	40	38 (95.00)	689	509 (73.88)	180 (26.12)
2005	54	45 (83.33)	1034	780 (75.43)	254 (24.56)
2006	45	44 (97.78)	724	551 (76.10)	173 (23.89)
Total	333	297 (89.19)	5634	4009 (71.16)	1625 (28.84)