This paper introduces a new bibliometric tool, the journal diffusion factor. An argument is presented that the bibliometric indicators commonly used to measure the quality of research (journal impact factor, immediacy index and cited half‐life) offer little insight into the transdisciplinary...

This paper provides a high‐level overview of some of the main research themes and preoccupations that are reported in this special ciber issue of Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives. The research activities of ciber are drawn together in the quest for a better understanding of the...

Purpose – This paper offers a practical insight into the application of Lotka's law of author productivity to the question of how likely it is that an author will return to a particular publisher (rather than make another contribution to a subject literature, which is its usual application)....

Purpose – This paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate about the potential of open access publishing and institutional repositories to reform the scholarly communication system. It presents the views of senior authors on these issues and contextualises them within...

Purpose – The aim of this short communication is to contribute to a growing debate about how we can measure the “quality” of journals. More specifically, the paper argues the need for a new range of standardized indicators based on reader (rather than author‐facing) metrics....

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to report on a large‐scale survey that was carried out to assess academic users' awareness, perceptions and existing levels of use of e‐books. The survey also seeks to find out about the purposes to which electronic books were put, and to obtain an...

Purpose – This article aims to focus on usage data in respect to full‐text downloads of journal articles, which is considered an important usage (satisfaction) metric by librarians and publishers. The purpose is to evaluate the evidence regarding full‐text viewing by pooling together data...

Purpose – This article is an edited version of a report commissioned by the British Library and JISC to identify how the specialist researchers of the future (those born after 1993) are likely to access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years' time. The purpose is to...

Purpose – This JISC funded UK National E‐Books Observatory study is a benchmarking survey of e‐book usage and perceptions in more than 120 participating universities. The paper aims to present the results that investigated: use of e‐books in general (methods of obtaining e‐books,...

Purpose – This study, a part of JISC‐funded UK National E‐Books Observatory, aims to find out about the perspective of students and academics, the main e‐book users, on e‐books. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides an analysis of two open‐ended questions about...