Faculty Members’ Attitudes and Perceptions towards E-Publishing at the University of Jordan

Abstract

Electronic Publishing offers many opportunities to today’s users and scholars that were not available to their predecessors. Because of the multidimensional features of e-Journals, they are becoming the choice of academic as well as public library users. Technology, and particularly the Internet, has great potential for altering scholarly communication and research inhumanities, sciences, social sciences, and health sciences disciplines. Results of scholarly surveys show that there is a significant interest in e-Publication of research. Thus, this research paper investigates the attitudes and perceptions of faculty members at the University of Jordan (UJ) of current issues associated with the use of electronic publishing and perceived obstacles to their extended use for scholarly communication and publication. Specifically, the primary focus of this study is to examine and perceive how faculty members’ use of electronic publications might affect their interest in publishing their own research in electronic formats; as well as to determine the contribution of scholars towards publishing in e-Journals. In order to achieve the research objectives, a questionnaire method was adopted to elicit the opinions of the faculty members; whereas personal interviews were conducted to fill in the gaps. The results of the study reveal that the majority of the faculty members prefer to publish in electronic formats refereed journals, due to the advantages of publishing in e-Journals. Furthermore, the findings show that faculty members are also concerned about the disadvantages of e-Publishing. On the basis of the findings, some suggestions have been recommended to make publishing in e-Journals more acceptable to those scholars at UJ who still do not use it, as well as to maximize the use of e-Publishing because of the advantages that it may offer.