De Groote, SL; Barrett, FA. 2010. Impact of online journals on citation patterns of dentistry, nursing, and pharmacy faculty. JOURNAL OF THE MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 98 (4): 305-U28

[Eugene Garfield]

De Groote, SL; Barrett, FA. 2010. Impact of online journals on citation patterns 
of dentistry, nursing, and pharmacy faculty. JOURNAL OF THE MEDICAL LIBRARY 
ASSOCIATION 98 (4): 305-U28.

Author Full Name(s): De Groote, Sandra L.; Barrett, Felicia A.
Language: English
Document Type: Article
KeyWords Plus: ELECTRONIC JOURNALS; PRINT JOURNALS; DIGITAL-AGE; 
SERIALS

Addresses: [De Groote, Sandra L.] Univ Illinois, Univ Lib, Chicago, IL 60607 
USA; [Barrett, Felicia A.] Univ Illinois Chicago, Crawford Lib Hlth Sci Rockford, 
Rockford, IL 61107 USA

Reprint Address: De Groote, SL, Univ Illinois, Univ Lib, Chicago, IL 60607 USA.

E-mail Address: sgroote at uic.edu; fbarrett at uic.edu
ISSN: 1536-5050
DOI: 10.3163/1536-5050.98.4.008
fulltext: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2947137/



INTRO: 
The past decade has seen a major shift in the journal collections of academic 
health sciences libraries. Libraries gained access to vast numbers of journals as 
never before possible when they moved into licensing large electronic journal 
packages instead of the traditional title-by-title print journal selections. These 
changes have been a boon to researchers, who presumably no longer have to 
travel across campus or even down the hall to the library for articles. Instead, 
they retrieve articles with just a few clicks on their home or office computers.

Libraries are reducing their print collections due to decreased utilization and 
increased access to online journals [1–3]. The convenience of accessing the 
online collection remotely instead of having to walk into the library has been 
cited as a reason [4]. A previous study that examined the impact of online 
journals on the citation patterns of medical school faculty found that when 
medical faculty had access to a small print collection and a large online journal 
collection, the use of the print collection significantly decreased. However, 
when faculty had access to a large print collection in addition to a large online 
collection, the impact on the use of the existing print collection was minimal 
[5]. A 2006 study that surveyed health sciences librarians also found that 
researchers are still using print journals in this electronic age [6].

The purpose of this study is to determine how online journal collections are 
impacting the citation patterns of researchers in dentistry, nursing, and 
pharmacy. Journal citation patterns before and after the introduction of online 
journals will be examined to determine whether researchers are more likely to 
limit the journal articles they cite to those journals available online rather than 
those available only in print.