Information technologies, particularly the personal computer and the World Wide Web, are changing the ways that scientists communicate. The traditional print‐based system that relies on the refereed scientific journal as the key delivery mechanism for research findings is undergoing a transformation to a system much more reliant on electronic communication and storage media. This article offers a new paradigm for communication in science, and suggests how digital media might bring new roles and functionalities to participants. The argument is made that behavioral and organizational determinants are as important factors as technological capabilities in shaping the future.

This study examines the contributions of U.S. academic librarians to the peer-reviewed literature of library and information science (LIS). Compared to the authors’ study of thirty-two journals for 1993–1997, the present study finds that for 1998–2002, there were declines in the total number of refereed articles (almost 4%), number of refereed articles by academic librarians (almost 13%), proportion of refereed articles by academic librarians (just over 4%), proportion of academic librarian authors (almost 3%), and proportion of coauthored articles by academic librarians (almost 4%). Because different factors influence rates of authorship in a given set of journals and these rates tend to fluctuate in the short term, only further investigation can assess whether the declines are momentary or the start of a trend. Approximately 7 percent of academic librarians wrote three or more articles. The twenty most productive libraries published more than 10 percent of all refereed articles in the thirty-two journals and nearly one-third of the articles by academic librarians.

This study examined the contribution to the peer-reviewed literature of library and information science by practicing academic librarians in the United States. Data on authors were obtained from articles published from 1993 to 1997 in thirty-two journals. Of 3,624 peer-reviewed articles in these journals, 1,579 (43.6%) were authored by at least one practicing academic librarian. These librarians represented 386 institutions of higher educa tion. This study provides benchmark data for publication productivity of academic librarians and identifies a core list of peer-reviewed journals for them. Approximately six percent of these librarians wrote three or more articles in the five-year period. In nineteen journals one-third or more of the articles were authored by academic librarians. Libraries from Research I universities that were members of the Association for Research Libraries were the most productive. The contribution of practicing academic librar ians to the literature of their field is significant. he literature on publication pat terns in library and information science (LIS) usually focuses ei ther faculty in LIS schools or practicing academic librarians. Both groups have made significant contributions to scholarship within their discipline. Both groups come from an environment that val ues research and publication, but each tends to bring a different perspective. Practitio ners can make important contributions to the scholarly publications in a practicebased discipline. The degree to which prac ticing librarians contribute to the knowledge base of LIS is the focus of this investigation. To examine this question, the present study analyzed academic librarians' contributions to the peer-reviewed literature, documented their publication patterns, and compared these patterns with findings of earlier stud ies of publication patterns by academic li brarians and LIS faculty.Two recent studies have reviewed pub lication patterns of LIS faculty. Karen E.

Studies documenting the usage patterns of electronic journals have compared print and e-journal characteristics, surveyed faculty for their perceptions and expectations, and analyzed the impact on library practices. This study, a qualitative exploration of a wide array of issues related to the research and teaching habits of early adopters of e-journals in a research setting, was conducted in the spring of 2001 with faculty in the basic and health sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Open-ended questionnaires provided a framework to wide-ranging discussions of perceptions, expectations, and changing practices pertaining to e-journals and other electronic resources. The results were analyzed with a specific focus on shared behaviors and values, discipline-dependent variations, and changing research and teaching habits. Several challenges for library resources and services are identified and discussed.

Accounts in both the popular media and scientific literature attest to the increasingly interdisciplinary character of scientific research. The twentieth century has seen the emergence· of problem-centered and mission-oriented research in which discoveries and developments in one discipline are synthesized into the research of a very different field, often with dramatic and life-altering results. This paper uses techniques of citation analysis to examine information use by scientists in a university chemistry department and offers a measure of the interdisciplinarity of the research they publish. The chemists whose published research was examined were found to make use of many journals that class outside the discipline of chemistry; over 49 % of the journals cited in a sample of their recent publications are classed in other disciplines. This study will consider implications for university libraries attempting to provide information services to scientists engaged in interdisciplinary research .• niversities are organized according to the disciplines represented among their faculties and programs, and the academic department is the basic unit in the structure. The research libraries that serve universities frequently mirror this structure in their organization of materials and services. Thus, in the sciences librarians maintain chemistry or mathematics or physics libraries with focused collections intended to meet most of the needs of the faculty and students in the particular discipline. An alternative organizational structure is the centralized science library that may exist in lieu of or alongside departmental libraries and that serves some larger number of disciplines. A considerable body of literature argues the advantages and limitations of each of these types of organization, and a recent article by Leon Shkolnik analyzes both sides of this ongoing debate. 1During the twentieth century new fields such as biophysics, molecular biology, and the environmental sciences have emerged. In these fields scientists trained in diverse disciplines come together to work on problems or projects that demand a broad-based perspective or to apply techniques developed in one field to research in another. These research teams frequently share a missionoriented focus and may hope to solve important health-related problems or to develop new materials or procedures for some particular market. 284 College & Research Libraries parent disciplines whose research is more basic or theoretical in nature. Evidence of this trend is seen in the establishment of interdisciplinary units on university campuses with titles including "center," "committee," or "institute," as well as in increasing university alliances with profit-sector organizations either through collaborative activities or through grants from corporations in support of university-based research. The fact that universities now are establishing patent offices and sponsoring the development of research parks to aid in technology transfer also supports this observation.Universi...