E-Journals and their Usage Patterns Amongst the Indian Aerospace Scientists and Engineers in Bengaluru

Abstract

The coming of the World Wide Web has propelled vigorous growth of the electronic forms of communication which simply does not fit into the traditional publishing format. With the coming age of e-Journals, there has been total transformation in the way scholarly communication is disseminated throughout the world. The use of e-journals saw a big jump in later half of the 90s and is continuing to escalate. On an average, one-half to nearly 100 per cent of the scientists in a field use e-journals at least part of the time. A research survey was undertaken amongst the 16 prestigious aerospace organisations in Bengaluru. The sampling boundary is restricted to these selected 16 organisations. Out of the 650 questionnaires distributed, 612 were received back, and finally 583 questionnaires suitable for the study were selected. The analysis is based on the responses from the aerospace scientists and engineers. The major observations include: (i) aerospace engineering e-Journals are extremely important to aerospace scientists or engineers and are a major source of scientific and technical information, (ii) the use patterns of aerospace engineering e-Journals amongst the 16 aerospace organisations are not uniform and hence show a heterogeneous nature in their use patterns. Also, the most preferred aerospace engineering e-Journals in the order of priority and usage (from the responses received) by this ‘niche’ aerospace engineering community are: Aerospace Science and Technology; Progress in Aerospace Sciences; Journal of Aerospace Engineering; IEEE Transactions on Electronics and Aerospace Systems; Web of Science; Online Journals: Aerospace; Journal of Turbo and Jet Engines; The Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention (ASM International); European Space Bulletin–ESA; Informatics–J Gate; and International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking.

DOI: 10.14429/djlit.30.671