Access to Journals: Paper,
Electronic, or both?
More than 65% of respondents indicate they
Table 3 — Percent Agreeing or Strongly Agreeing With Positive Journal Statements
access ASA journals via personal subscrip-
tion. Presumably, this is owing to regular
membership that includes free online access
Statement JASA TAS JBES JCGS JABES TECH SBR
to JASA, JBES, and TAS. One would think
this rate would be higher. A very low num-
Articles are
well written
79.2 92.3 79.2 72.4 81.8 82.0 75.0 ber of respondents (2%) do not access jour-
nals at all, and these are chiefly ASA mem-
Content
bers. While respondents use a mix of access
is timely
71.0 76.0 68.8 65.5 75.0 71.0 71.9
channels, a generous proportion accesses
via online (42%) or printed (22%) library
Material is subscriptions. The bulk of these individuals
informative
83.7 89.3 77.1 76.8 77.3 73.8 84.9
are academic/nonstudent readers.
An overwhelming majority (79%) of
Information
respondents access ASA journals online,
well organized
65.2 82.5 66.7 56.1 76.2 72.1 63.6
and do so a few times a year (42%),
although a good percentage (37%) access
Always
more frequently. More than 80% of former
something 51.2 65.4 56.3 51.7 42.9 54.1 72.7
members still access online. Approximately
of interest
56% of respondents subscribe to the print
version of the major journals (JASA, TAS,
Covers a
JBES), and 70% of those will continue to
wide variety 78.5 80.2 60.4 66.7 59.1 59.0 65.6
subscribe to the print versions, even after
of topics
these journals are available fully online.
Overall
Among current journal subscribers, 66%
experience 84.2 88.4 75.0 79.3 71.4 75.0 81.3
indicated they would continue to subscribe
favorable
to the printed versions.
When asked about the importance of
Average 73.3 82.0 69.0 66.9 69.1 69.6 73.6
full-text online access to journals, more
than 80% responded that they agreed or
strongly agreed it is important and influ-
ences their membership decision. This did
not vary significantly across individuals who
preferred different journals. Clearly, readers
100
like having online access.
That said, almost 50% would prefer
82.0
to receive their preferred journals in both
80
73.6 73.3
print and online fashion, with a healthy
69.6 69.1
69.0
66.9
proportion (39%) preferring only online;
just 5% would prefer the print version
only. About 75% of those who prefer print
60
only will continue to subscribe to print,
while 61% of those who prefer print and
online will continue to subscribe to print.
40
Only 50% of those who prefer print—with
online or not—are nonstudent academics.
Apparently, access to printed matter still has
20 merit for many.
Other Useful Features
0
and Non-ASA Journals
TAS SBR JASA TECH JABES JBES JCGS
The survey probed several potential areas
of journal improvement to determine
Figure 1. Sorted order of journals by average % agreeing or strongly agreeing with positive how useful they might be. Table 4 and
journal statements Figure 2 display responses across preferred
6 AMSTAT NEWS AUGUST 2008
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