"The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis," a refereed article by Stephen P. Harter of the University of Indiana, appeared in the Public-Access Computer Systems Review, (Vol. 7, No. 5), and is available. It "reports hard empirical data on the impact of the first wave of e-journals on the scholarly communities they serve. It assesses the extent to which scholars and researchers are aware of, are influenced by, and build their own work upon research published in e-journals. It does this by examining the artifacts of scholarly communication--the journal article and the references it makes." The study, based on citation data collected in February 1996, concludes that "the great majority of scholarly, peer-reviewed e-journals have had essentially no impact on scholarly communication in their respective fields. Only eight of the 39 e-journals studied have been cited ten or more times over their lifetimes. Given that eleven of the e-journals have print counterparts, these findings are especially telling."
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