7.3.3 Use of electronic publishing technologies

Electronic publishing fora

Many early e-journals were distributed via email lists; Psyche still is. This question was specifically targeted at respondents' use of one-many computer-mediated communications fora rather than one-one email.

Table 7-15 shows the frequency distribution of the print respondents for the F-Subscribe variable split by Society. What is striking about this table is the preponderance of responses at the right-hand (or less frequent) end of the Likert scale. For each of the print subgroups, the combination of the Never and Seldom responses is always greater than 50%. As might be expected for a survey distributed via an email subscription list, the email survey respondents had a much higher frequency of usage with the majority of responses appearing towards the left-hand or more frequent end of the Likert scale. Nearly two-thirds of the email respondents subscribe to email lists frequently or regularly. For the print respondents, over half have never subscribed. Somewhat anomalously, 2% of the email respondents report never having subscribed to an email list (this of course includes the list used to distribute the survey instrument); perhaps they were subscribed by someone else?.

The difference between Society subgroups is significant (p = 0.0378). Not all of the cells in the contingency table contribute equally to this figure. Table 7-16shows the post-hoc cell contributions. The APA and APS respondents show significantly less frequency of use than the Email respondents, whereas the Email respondents have Never used an email list (or equivalent) significantly less than either the APA or APS respondents. The BPS respondents contribution is only significant for the Frequently cell.

FTP

FTP was another distribution (technically access rather than distribution, but never mind) mechanism used by early e-journals. It has largely been overtaken by delivery of e-journals over the Web, either from ftp archives using the ftp protocol with a Web front end or directly via the http protocol.

Table 7-17 shows the breakdown of responses to the question about use of FTP (File Transfer Protocol). The print responses have been aggregated because some of the expected value cells in the Society-Print contingency table for this question were less than 5. Not all the contingency table cells contribute significantly to this value. Table 7-18. shows the post hoc cell contributions. Cells that do not contribute at the 0.05 percent level are shown as un-bolded to allow the significant cells to stand out.

Reading these two tables together reveals that the print respondents make frequent, regular or occasional use of FTP less than expected in contrast to the email respondents.

Gopher

Gopher is now a relatively old technology, largely superseded by the Web. This transition was well under way when the email survey took place and had nearly completed by the time of the print survey. It is reasonable to assume that the email respondents were likely to be early adopters of new technologies and that their transition from Gopher to the Web (see next section) would have occurred earlier than the print respondents in any case. In other words, for the purposes of this question it would have been preferable if the surveys had been sequenced with the print survey first and email survey later.

Based on the actual data rather than the ideal data, there are still some useful things to say about the picture revealed in Table 7-19: Frequency distribution for F-Gopher split by Survey. The print responses have been aggregated on statistical grounds. The differences in responses between the print and email respondents are significant (p < 0.0001). The email respondents are using Gopher more than expected for responses of Frequently to Seldom and less than expected for Never. The print respondents are using Gopher less than expected, and not using it (the Never response) more than expected.

WWW

The Web has of course become most people's front-end to much of the Internet. Most respondents would probably use the Web for a range of uses unconnected to e-journals. While this question asked about the Web in an electronic publishing context, frequency of Web usage will naturally have been affected by these other uses. Nevertheless, the question does provide a good picture of the respondent's familiarity with a key electronic publishing technology.

The contingency table analysis for this combination of variables is valid as no expected cell has a value less than 5. The differences between the different Society subgroups are significant (p < 0.0001). The table of post-hoc cell contributions (Table 7-21) reveals that only some of the cells contribute significantly to this chi-square figure. The APA and BPS respondents show significantly less frequent or regular use of the Web than expected and significantly more non-use. A surprisingly high proportion of the print survey respondents (between 20 and 40%) have never used the Web. The email respondents show significantly more frequent or regular use and less non-use

CD-ROM

CD-ROM was also used as a delivery platform in the early days of e-journals, and some researchers were still arguing until recently that they are the best solution to quality problems with on-line delivery [Jasperse1996]. This question tries to identify frequency of use of CD-ROM to access materials (not further defined).

The contingency table analysis for this combination of variables is valid as no expected cell has a value less than 5. The differences between the different Society subgroups are significant (p < 0.0001). The table of post-hoc cell contributions (Table7-23) reveals that only some of the cells contribute significantly to this chi-square figure. The picture is not as clear cut as for some of the previous variables but some patterns can be discerned. The APA and APS respondents make less frequent use of CD-ROMs than expected while the BPS and Email respondents make more frequent use than expected. The BPS and Email respondents make no use of CD-ROMs less than expected and the APA and APS respondents make no use more than expected. As a general summary, for this variable the BPS and Email respondents show greater patterns of use than the APA and APS respondents.

E-journals

The previous questions in the Electronic Publishing section of the survey focused on the underlying technologies and the respondents' usage of these. The final three questions are more concerned with respondent's activities with respect to electronic publishing. This question asks about viewing electronic journals in general to try and get some baseline measure of activity in this area.

The contingency table analysis for this combination of variables is valid as no expected cell has a value less than 5. The differences between the different Society subgroups are significant (p < 0.0001). The table of post-hoc cell contributions (Table7-25) reveals that only some of the cells contribute significantly to this chi-square figure. In particular, the email respondents are much more likely than the APA or BPS respondents to view e-journals; over double the expected viewing rate in the case of Frequent or Regular usage. (The BPS post-hoc cell contributions are not statistically significant). The APA and APS respondents are much more likely than expected (nearly 60% of each population) to have never viewed an e-journal. This is a very clear-cut difference between the email and print survey populations

Psyche

This question was only included on the print survey and asked how often the respondents viewed a specific e-journal: Psyche . There was no point in asking this question in the email survey as one could reasonably assume that everyone was a frequent or regular user of the e-journal. This variable makes it possible to see how many Psyche readers there are in the print survey population, and if there is any significant difference in responses between Psyche readers and nonreaders in the print survey population.

Table 7-26 speaks for itself: the overwhelming majority of the print respondents have never viewed Psyche. Only 5.4% of respondents have ever viewed Psyche , and so the print and email survey populations can effectively be regarded as almost entirely disjoint. From the point of view of the research design this is a good outcome because it means that the print survey population can be compared directly with the email survey population without having to worry about the overlap set. Given these numbers, there is also little point in using this variable to break down the print survey responses. No statistics can be calculated for the print subgroups because of the small expected cell sizes.

Publish electronically

This variable was designed to find out how many of the survey population were actually publishing electronically themselves as opposed to reading other people's electronic publications. Clearly it is necessary for authors as well as readers to migrate to on-line electronic publishing in order for it to become a success.

Table 7-27: Frequency Distribution for F-Publishes, split by Survey reveals that the print respondents (aggregated on statistical grounds) publish electronically much less frequently than expected and also less than the email respondents. The differences are significant at p<0.0001. Two data points in particular are noteworthy. The overwhelming majority of the print respondents have never published electronically (less than 10% have ever done so). In contrast, nearly half of the email respondents (47%) have published electronically, and nearly 10% do so frequently or regularly.