How do readership patterns and usage statistics impact journal performance over time? Carol Tenopir, a professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the Director of Research for the College of Communication and Information, has been researching electronic academic readership patterns for the past 30 years, and for the last 14 with colleague Donald W. King. She gives Editors’ Update an insight into how readers’ online experiences are helping to shape current trends in journal usage.

“On average, subject experts are reading more,” Tenopir says. “The number of articles read by subject expert has been steadily increasing over the last 30 years.” Several factors contribute to this growth. First, more research is being published than ever before, and experts need to keep up with new developments in their field. Second, as more scientific information becomes available online, researchers have access to more information, thereby increasing overall readership and usage. Electronic access also means that readers who are not also authors – such as researchers in scientific corporations and governmental bodies – are accessing more information than ever before.

Conversely, as the total amount of time and material being read increases, the time spent per article decreases, as researchers and students have tools that help them access and review key articles and extract the specific data they are seeking more quickly. As researchers are more pressed for time and expect quick and easy electronic delivery, so, too, must journals adapt to these changing conditions.

Identifying the patterns
The availability of older journal issues through back files is also impacting journal readership trends. As libraries invest in back file purchases and expand their online databases, there has been an increase in the readership of articles after the first year of publication. In addition, readers are finding and reading articles from a wider variety of journal titles. This impacts a journal’s exposure and continued use.

New tools and resources are increasing those numbers even further. “Relevance rankings in search engines such as ScienceDirect mean that older articles are read more often,” Tenopir explains. ”This is contributing to a broadening of information used in scientific research.”

This broadening also has an impact on the quality and depth of new research, and will thereby strengthen a journal’s future publications with more substantial, well-researched contributions.

Cultural differences
Until 2000, most of Tenopir and King’s studies regarding electronic media were conducted using source material from North America. In the last eight years, however, that research has expanded to Australia, Finland, Japan and other countries where electronic media is now becoming an industry standard among scientific publications. “We limit our research to countries or regions that have good access to electronic media,” she says, “but the number of countries and regions is growing every year, and although our global work is not very systematic yet, I can envision a time when it will be.”

Furthermore, Tenopir believes that cultural and societal norms play a role in the size and scope of available electronic media. ”Even if the infrastructure controls remain constant, cultural differences might also influence our findings when it comes to usage and readership statistics, particularly in the humanities.” For now, the major differences we find have to do with the discipline of the subject experts. Physicians, for example, rely much more on peer-reviewed journal articles for current awareness than engineers do. Scientists read more journal articles per year for research than do humanities scholars.

Journals in the Internet age
Another key factor in determining the impact of electronic media on journal performance is researcher demographics, such as age and professional position. As one might expect, students and researchers under the age of 30 are much more likely to do their primary research and reading online.

While print is less popular among the under 30’s, a printed PDF is still more popular than onscreen, and print remains the predominant medium for core titles, Tenopir reports. “The convenience, browsability and ease of access of print publications are still hard to beat.”

At the moment, core readers still prefer print publications, especially in certain fields, including medicine. “An interesting case in point is pediatricians,” Tenopir elaborates, “who are often known to carry their journals around with them to read between appointments at various locations. However, we think this will change as the current generation of students take their electronic reading habits with them and as portable electronic devices get better at displaying redesigned articles.”

This means that, over time, as reading patterns move steadily toward an online environment, and as technology makes mobile access easier and less expensive, journal editors need to be aware that the choices they make in online publishing will have a direct impact on their journal’s overall performance in the future.

New ways of searching journal content
But how do trends like these translate into new responsibilities for editors? Tenopir explains. “In the electronic age, editors will need to continue to organize and present their information attractively. They will need to concentrate on the most salient facts in articles or papers when they register key words and search terms on electronic databases. We do know that purpose affects reading usage and that, ultimately, relevant information will be sought and utilized. At the same time, the combination of more articles being read and less dedicated reading time per article is obviously not a sustainable pattern over the long term. There is an increased need for tools, graphics and other visual readership aids that will help readers get to the most essential parts of the article most quickly.”

HTML coding in online articles also allows the opportunity for researchers to find information in a particular segment of a larger article or in a graph, photo or diagram. Editors need to be particularly aware of this new opportunity to make their journals as easily searchable as possible. “Until now, we haven’t focused on driving people from indexing towards more marked-up versions of articles, but this is changing. Visuals must be strongly contextual, and sometimes, even just a graph in the article can make the difference. These factors will contribute to de-aggregating the journal,” Tenopir reports.

That’s why abstracts and article summaries are more important than ever before, especially when it comes to electronic media. But the next step will be to move beyond abstracts and to improve quality filters as well. Tenopir predicts that the electronic quality filter will soon manifest itself in student course management systems.

Future focus
In her research, Tenopir discusses how both the implicit and explicit quality of a journal article has a direct impact on that journal’s perceived value. Therefore, high-quality presentation and delivery of information influences the perceived value the journal offers.

“Bringing together the strengths of print with the access to information of the PDA could be a potent combination in the future. From a reader’s perspective, core reading now favors print, with peripheral reading being more electronic. But this can easily change if the approach to electronic design and layout adapts to the changing readership needs and preferences. As electronic journals become more widely available to larger audiences – students, government experts, scientific corporations and academics – non-author subject experts are on the increase. Forward-thinking editors will bear this in mind as they plan and execute electronic strategies.”

To cite this article, please use: Toni Bellanca, "Readership trends: how they affect journal usage", Elsevier Editors' Update, Issue 21, February 2008.

Useful links:
  Carol Tenopir’s homepage

Please send responses to: EditorsUpdate@elsevier.com