Australian Library Collections Task Force

Report on Physics Focus Group

Agenda item 10 of the Meeting held 9 February 2001


Electronic research material. Focus Group 1. Physics. Sydney University.

It is envisaged that focus groups will be held at several institutions, in a range of subject areas, to discuss issues concerning electronic research materials. At the September 2000 meeting of the Task Force Ross Coleman volunteered to assist by organising groups at Sydney University. The first group met on November 28 2000, and convened and facilitated by Ross. Five academic staff from the Physics Department attended.

A series of questions to guide discussions were developed by the National Library in consultation with the Sydney University library staff. The list of questions is included as Attachment 1.

Role of the library

All the academics at the meeting admitted they seldom visit the library in person, because so much of the literature is now available electronically. However, for monographs, conference proceedings and older journals a library visit is often necessary. Surprisingly, the importance of monographs was emphasised by several of the academics. Monographs draw together the research on a subject and present it in a coherent fashion. Conference proceedings are (and always have been) a problem area, because although more proceedings are now available online, many conferences are not published at all, either in print or online.

The academics felt they were generally kept well informed about library developments, but admitted they would usually take more notice of advice from colleagues about the usefulness of information sources. Some had attended a recent library colloquium about new information sources and had found this useful. They saw the role of the library in the future as assuring access and managing the administrative aspects of online resources.

The library staff mentioned that services such as Web of Science are providing valuable links from bibliographic sources to full text. This was appreciated, although it seems the academics themselves want to be able to teach students how to find information, and admitted that referring students to indexes in the past was often not done because it was not providing them with actual information.

When asked about training and support from the Library, the academics expressed a view that if an electronic resource so complex that training was required then it would probably not be used. In most cases they taught themselves about the electronic resources, although it was good to have a skilled librarian they could call on for advice if necessary.

Not all library services are better in electronic form. In the past academics could look a the new books display in the library, add their name to a slip in books they would like to see, and have them routed. An electronic version of a new books alerting service is not so convenient and is much less used.

If the e-journal links are reliable, and the major journals are available online, it is possible that maintenance of hardcopy subscriptions is unnecessary.

Access

When asked about access to items not licensed by Sydney University Library, the consensus was that this was avoided as much as possible. The academics were largely unaware of the conditions under which the journals are licensed.

The academics were asked about transactional vs full access. It was thought that this further restricted browsability. For accessing known items this method of subscription was satisfactory, but it would not work for the times when the user wanted to look through a whole issue.

Access from home into journal sets is achieved by login via the university rather than a public ISP. It is irritating to not have the same access to resources when overseas, for example.

It was stated by one of the academics, and generally agreed, that academics in Australia are quite well off in terms of access to online resources. Online availability of the library catalogue is routine here, but this is not the case in some overseas countries.

There was concern about the longevity and future accessibility of online journals and other services. For example, if the ADS (Astrophysics Data Service) was suddenly unavailable, there would be a significant impact on access to information.

Two of the academics noted that it is already relatively common to find that embedded links in articles or in the bibliographies at the end of articles point to sites or papers that are no longer accessible.

Advantages of electronic journals

Much physics research is image-based (optics, astronomy etc) and online articles offer the opportunity for colour images. Printing in colour is much more affordable and accessible than colour photocopying.

The Los Alamos pre-print server is well known and heavily used. It offers a daily alert service of new items added to the server. Articles being added to the service are not refereed, but this was not seen as a problem – many have been submitted for refereeing. The academics expect that in time there will be a range of peer-reviewed e-journals, with the same status as the present print peer-reviewed titles.

The inclusion of Quick-Time movies was useful in some areas. It is possible for the refereeing process to be shortened by electronic transmission of papers, and for publication to occur much more quickly. The great success of the preprint servers in Physics can be attributed largely to the elimination of delays between acceptance and availability of papers.

Some Physics journals are available in a consolidated form on CD-ROM, incorporating search software. This is seen as very useful, and also a good backup for the future.

TeX and LaTeX (typesetting formats) allows for complex articles to be transmitted by email.

Disadvantages of electronic journals

In astronomy complete backsets of many journals are available online, but in related areas which must be referred to occasionally this is not the case. The academics did notice that some publishers are slow to put articles up on the Web – Blackwells and Japanese journals in general were singled out here. (The problem with Blackwell journals appears to have been related to the U Syd subscription and now appears to have been resolved).

None of the academics routinely reads articles online – they print them off. This sometimes means much is printed that is later discarded as not useful, because it is difficult to scan articles online to determine if they are relevant. Titles/abstracts help somewhat, but the difficulty of browsing through issues and individual papers online to assess usefulness was mentioned several times. If known items are being sought, the online systems are generally very efficient.

Costs

There is at this stage little awareness among the academic staff of the costs of electronic journal access. For print journals they have become accustomed to seeing annual lists of journals with prices, as suggestions for cancellations were sought. This is not yet the case for e-journals.

Publishing

The practice of hardcopy preprint distribution, once routine, is disappearing fast. Academics no longer find it necessary to maintain copies of their papers for distribution in this way, but they routinely print out and file away copies of articles published in journals. They were not optimistic that the electronic versions of their papers would be accessible in the longer term, because of changes in hardware, software, and data migration practices. There is no general policy at the University for archiving of copies of staff papers.

The ARC’s emphasis on publication in refereed journals remains a key factor in determining where articles are submitted. Promotion, tenure and other academic processes also rely heavily on assessment of an academic’s track record by looking at both quantity of publications and the quality of the journals in which they are published.

In the future it is likely that basic texts for undergraduates will be the only commercially viable scholarly printed monographs. There was general agreement that commercial publishers are not good partners for scholarly publishing, and CSIRO Publishing is not generally interested in innovation.

Australian scientific societies are generally quite small. The Astronomy Society of Australia, which has its own journal, was mentioned. Academics in the field want to publish in overseas journals. This in itself introduces problems, because some of the major journals impose high page charges on authors, and finding this money can be difficult, It cannot, for example, be sought as part of an ARC grant.

The optimum situation would be immediate online availability of the top Physics journals as they are published.

General comments

Undergraduate students in general want and expect everything to be on the Web. The academics found the volume of information available electronically to be overwhelming.

It was mentioned that international data links are still relatively slow. The transmission of large files of data is quite slow. Maintenance and enhancement of international data links is vital, although mirroring of important sites in Australia is a useful way of overcoming the slowness of links. The Los Alamos archive is mirrored at the University of Adelaide. They were not at all sure about who pays/should pay for mirroring

Information about what is going on in other fields of Physics is gained from generalist journals such as Physics Today, or from colleagues. This has not changed over the last 20 years or more. It is possible to search databases, but to do this it is necessary to know the jargon of the unfamiliar field, so contacting colleagues is easier.

The academics were asked about the usefulness of the wide range of journals available in some sets. They believe there would be little use by physicists of the non-core titles. At this stage no purely electronic titles in Physics are "must see" titles. However, they admitted they would be more likely to access obscure titles if they are readily available online.

Discussion forums are important, as are opportunities for academics to present their ideas to the wider community. Face-to-face meetings will not be replaced by electronic communication.

Attachment 1

Focus Group on the use of electronic resources in Physics

Through the Focus Group meeting we are after feedback and comments on such issues as: the level and pattern of use of resources such as electronic journals and other sources (including pre-print servers), benefits, problems and restrictions on use, comparison with use of print journals, the impact and impressions of the shift from print to electronic, and even the perception of what the 'library' is or means in this context.

1) Use and patterns of use

To what extent are information needs now being met by electronic publications? Guesstimates of % of information needs now met by electronic resources?

What sources do you use – e-journals, pre-print servers, other sources

Has availability of e-resources changed your patterns of finding information over the last few years?

Has it changed your use of the library? What does ‘library’ now mean, and what role has it in this situation

Where do you access from?

Any comments on comparison with use of print journals ?

Does electronic access effect the use of or status of other print-only journals ?

Has availability of e-journals increased your use of journals overall?

Do you know if the e-resources you use are "born-digital" or are also available in print form?

How aware are you of licence or rights issues in use of e-resources

2) Shift to electronic by Library

Is the move to electronic one you've been happy about or one that's been imposed on you by library policies? (ie, cancellations of print in favour of electronic)

Any comments on the future of journals and publishers in Physics

3) Advantages / disadvantages of e-resources

Benefits of e-journals?

Drawbacks/problems with e-journals?

4) Means of locating accessing e resources

How do you find an article in an e-journal? Database / index searches? Current awareness services? Search engines? Browse publisher journal table of contents or publisher database

How do you go about locating information initially on a topic new to you?

5) Support & training

Who can/do you ask if you have problems with access to e-journals?

Is the hardware provided by the university adequate for all access to electronic resources? Do you encounter resources which require software or capacity you don't have?

Have you received any/adequate training in how to use electronic resources?

Attachment 2

Comments submitted by email by Gordon Robertson (Senior Lecturer, School of Physics), who was unable to attend the focus group session.

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