OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS AND ITS USE PATTERNS AMONG THE AEROSPACE SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS OF BANGALORE

Abstract:  It is absolutely clear that the use of electronic media to support scholarly scientific communication has undoubtedly been one of the paradigm shifts in the practice of science in this era. In fact, the arrival of e- journals has greatly affected the way a scientist or an engineer seeks this information, acquires it and then uses it effectively. Scientists and engineers in aerospace organizations are currently working on projects which are of strategic importance to this country. These scientists largely depend on rapid collection of information from various ‘electronic information resources’. A research survey was undertaken to ascertain the ‘Use Patterns of Open Access Journals’ amongst the aerospace scientists and engineers of 16 aerospace organizations of Bangalore. The major findings of this study are: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied for testing the significant difference among the 16 mean scores attained from the scientists and engineers of the aerospace organizations for ‘Frequency of Access and Usage of Open Access Journals’. It is observed that all the 16 aerospace organizations show a significant difference (P < 0.05) in their mean scores for, ‘ICAST, NAL Gateway of Free Journals’, ‘Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)’, ‘General Science’, ‘Technology and Engineering’, ‘Earth and Environmental Sciences’ and ‘Physics and Astronomy’.