AWARENESS AND USE OF ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: A STUDY OF DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, AMU, ALIGARH

AWARENESS AND USE OF ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: A STUDY OF DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, AMU, ALIGARH


Syed Ahtisham Raza Naqvi
Librarian
INMANTEC Institutions
Ghaziabad.
sahtisham@gmail.com

+918506077676

ABSTRACT
In present information society information and communication technology (ICT) has changed the complete scenario of generating, preserving and delivering the information. The advent of ICT, paradigm shifts from print journals to e-journals have taken place in past one and half decade. Now e-journals play vital role in today’s information explosion environment. The study has been confined to the users of the e-journals at Department of Commerce, AMU, Aligarh.

About Aligarh Muslim University (AMU)
The AMU has a campus spread over 467.6 hectares of land. Aligarh Muslim University is a residential academic institution offering more than 280 Courses in traditional and modern branches of Education.
It has more than 30,000, students, about 1,400 teachers and some 6,000 non-teaching staff on its rolls, with 12 faculties in 95 departments, 5 institution and 13 centres. There are 18 halls of residence with 73 hostels. Prominent divisions include Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Dr. Ziauddin Dental College, Institute of Ophthalmology, Food Craft Institute, Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Centre of Advance Study in History, Centre of West Asian Studies, Centre of Wildlife, Academic Staff College, Women's College, Ajmal Khan Tibbiya College, University Polytechnic for boys and girls, separately and Computer Centre. The medium of instruction is primarily English. It has as many as five high schools including one for the visually handicapped, and two senior secondary schools for boys and girls.
About Department of Commerce (AMU)
The Department of Commerce is one of the premier departments of Aligarh Muslim University. It was established in 1946. The contribution of the Department in the advancement of Research has been significant. The department of Commerce is providing research facilities to both Indian as well as Foreign Nationals. More than 70 Indian as well as Foreign Nationals are pursuing Ph. D. Progammes in the Department. Further the Department has two specializations in the areas of International Business and Finance & Accounts.

 The department offers the following academic programmes:
 
1. Bachelor of Commerce B.Com. (Hons.)
2. Master of Commerce (M.Com.)
3. Master of Finance & Control (MFC)
4. Master of Tourism Administration (MTA)
5. PG Diploma in Business Finance (PGDBF)
6. PG Diploma in Banking, Risk & Insurance Management (BRIM)
7. Ph.D. in Commerce
 
Definition of E-Journals

Electronic journal may be defined broadly as any journal, magazine, e-zine, webzine, newsletter or type of electronic serial publication which is available over the Internet and can be accessed using different technologies such as World Wide Web (WWW), Gopher, ftp, telnet, e-mail or listserv.  The University of Glasgow defines the term ‘Electronic journal’ as “Any journal that is available over the Internet can be called an ‘electronic journal’. In some cases, print equivalents exist; in some cases, not.   Some electronic journals are freely available; other has charging mechanisms of different types.  Established publishers issue some; others are produced from an individual academic’s office.  As with print journals, the quality and relevance of e-journals can vary considerably”. In simple words it is said that the electronic journals are the one where the text is read on, and /or printed from, the end-user’s computer rather than as print-on-paper. In the online journal, the data is downloaded directly from the host computer rather than via an intermediate medium such as CD-ROM.

Objectives of the study
To ascertain awareness and acceptance of e-journals.
To explore the use of electronic journals.
To study the purpose of utilization of e-journals.
To ascertain the frequency of using e-journals.
To study the preferred format for using e-journals.
To study the satisfaction level of users.

Methodology
The scope of the study is to examine the awareness of e-journals among research scholar of the Department of Commerce, AMU.Keeping in view the scope and area of the study, a structured questionnaire was prepared to collect the data from the scholars accessing e-journals available online at Department of Commerce, AMU relating to various specialisation. The questionnaire contained relevant questions pertaining to awareness with respect to e-journals. For this purpose a total of 70 questionnaires were distributed among Ph.D. researchers. Out of those 70 questionnaires, 68 valid questionnaires were collected and then data was analyzed, tabulated, interpreted and graphically represented in this paper.

Results
Population Study
Table 1: Population studied
Gender
Number
Distributed
Received
Male
40 (57.14%)
40 (58.8%)
Female
30 (42.86%)
28 (41.2%)


The table shows the gender difference between the researchers studied.  58.8% male responses are studied and 41.2% of the total female responses are studied, who accessed e-journals available through the Internet.

Awareness about e-journals
Table 2: Awareness of e-journals
Gender
Aware
Not Aware
Male
37 (92.5%)
03(07.5%)
Female
22 (78.6%)
06 (21.4%)


Table 2 depicts the awareness relating to e-journals among the researches. 92.5% male researchers are aware about e-journals whereas only 78.6% female researchers are aware about e-journals. It is thus analyzed that male researchers are more aware than female researchers.

Preference level
The result reveals that 41.2% of researchers would like to access only the electronic version of the journals whereas 11.8% researchers prefers at reading the printed version of the journals. But 47% researchers are like to use both the electronic and printed versions of the journals.

Fig. 1: Preference level of users
Purpose of using e-journals
Table3: Using Purpose of e-Journal
Purpose
Number
Percentage*
For Research work
68
100
For Writing Paper
39
57.3
Updating Subject Knowledge
24
35.3
For Other Purpose
03
0.04

             * More than one responses were allowed to be made for the study

Table 3: shows that all the researchers use e-journals for their research work. 57.3% researchers use the e-journals also for the purpose of paper writing.  35.3% researchers use it for updating subject knowledge and a very few (0.04%) researchers use it for other purposes like exam’s, etc.

Frequency of use
It is observed from the analysis that four researchers (05.8%) access e-journals every day, 11.8% researchers access 2-3 times in a week, 51.5% researchers use it once a week. E-journals are occasionally accessed by 21 researchers (30.9%).


Fig. 2: Using frequency of researchers

Location for accessing e-journals
The study renders that only 07% researchers use the e-journals at the main library of the university. E-journals are accessed in the concerned department by 21% researchers. Majority of the researchers (60%) access e-journals in their hostel or home. 12% researchers make use of e-journals at other places like cyber cafe, etc.

Fig. 3: Using Place
Using Pattern of e-journals
The results shows that the maximum numbers of researchers (35.3%) store the relevant paper in their removable storage device. 33.8% users take printout of the electronic article for their study. While 30.9% researchers read it on their system’s screen.

Fig. 4: Using style of e-journals

Formats of e-journals
There are many formats available to present or publish research paper or article in electronic format. Mostly researchers (47%) prefer the Portable Document Format (PDF), because it is ready to print, easy to save, standard format, etc.  HTML format is also a popular style. 41.2% researchers like this format, because it is easy to read, dynamic in style & colours, ready to read (no downloading required), etc. The image format is also liked by 7.4% researchers. 4.4% researchers have no preference about the format of e-journal.

Fig. 5: Format preferences of e-journals

Satisfaction level
It was observed that majority of researchers are satisfied with the using, style, information presentation and searching style of e-journals. Out of it, 48.5% are highly satisfied and 45.6% are satisfied. Only four researchers (5.9%) are not satisfied with e-journals.


Fig 6: Satisfaction level of users


Conclusion
From the above study it has been observed that e-journals have become a vital part for providing information. E-journals have turned out as a vital knowledge base for our research community. Efficient management of time has been made possible through their usage. Thus the present scenario entails for spreading of awareness among the users and for development of proper infrastructure within the library system to achieve significant results.

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http://ss.amu.ac.in/about.html accessed on 8 October 2013
http://www.amu.ac.in/departmentpage.jsp?did=23 accessed on 8 October 2013
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