E-journals
An e-journal is a journal which is published electronically. Journals sometimes exist only in electronic format or in parallel electronic and print editions.
E-journals that the Library subscribes to are collected in different databases on the Internet. Some databases collect journals on a certain subject, while others are general. They have different search interfaces and offer different search facilities.
You can often search for articles in two ways:
- by finding a certain journal in the database and browsing its articles
- by searching for articles in a certain subject among all the journals in the database
The most common full text formats are PDF (Portable Document Format) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Articles in HTML look like regular text on a web site, whereas PDF gives the article’s original layout complete with pictures and diagrams. To be able to open PDF-files on your computer you need the program Acrobat Reader from Adobe which can be downloaded free of charge.
How do I find the Library’s e-journals?
On the library web site > Information resources > Electronic journals you can see the different e-journal collections that the Library subscribes to.
In LIBRIS you can see which e-journals the Library subscribes to. You use the extended search form and enter “library code” Bth and “publication type” periodicals.
The easiest way to access the Library’s e-journals is by using Summon@BTH, where most of the titles are searchable. Thus, instead of searching each of the journal collections separately you can make one search in Summon@BTH. There can also be some advantages to searching one particular collection directly. You often get better search facilities if you search directly in the e-journal database, or you might prefer a certain search interface to Summon@BTH. There might also be some collections that are particularly good for your subject field.
Free e-journals
There is an international movement that works for “Open access”, i.e. free access for research results. Many university libraries have started their own archives on the Internet where scientists can publish their results, for example the BTH Electronic research archive.
The background for this is the recent extreme rise in subscription rates for journals. Libraries around the world can no longer afford subscriptions for necessary journals, which counteract the idea that research should be available at no cost and easy to access.
Research is often publicly financed. Researchers who get their salaries from universities and colleges publish their results in journals without getting any payment from the commercial publishers. Mostly, the scientist also gives the publisher the copyright of the article. Other scientists contribute as editors or work with peer-review, sometimes without economic compensation. Then libraries at universities and colleges who are most often publicly financed buy the journals at a very high cost. For researchers it is important to get their articles published in prestigious journals, because it is a way of improving their qualifications.
Some examples of free e-resources are PubMed Central, DOAJ Directory of open access journals and Highwire.
You will find links for free e-resources at the Library web site > Information resources.
Jenny Gunnarsson
2011-03-02
