Online access and productivity in research publication – A case study

The emergence of information portal systems in the past few years has led to a greatly enhanced web-based environment for users’ seeking information online. The Scientific world is rapidly changing day by day. The e-journals access is delivering R&D information, whenever required, to the users’ desktop, wherever that may be. Eight reputed publishers/providers of online access to scholarly journals and services formed the basis of the study at the Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC) of the National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), Jamshedpur. The user groups are Scientists, Technical officers, Research scholars, Project investigators/Assistance and Visiting Trainees. Through the CSIR e-journal consortium, KRC have access to a good number of e-journals and databases in various disciplines related to Minerals, Metals and Materials Science. The subscribed electronic resources are highly beneficial to the R&D users of the library as evidenced by the increasing order of qualitative research publications compare to earlier trends. Further, the paper also presents the results of a user evaluation study exploring the usefulness of online access to scientific journals and services with regard to the information behaviour of scientists.