Perceived value of scholarly articles
Abstract
ABSTRACT When faced with an abundance of articles, readers must weigh the relative importance of various characteristics to select which articles to read. Over 400 researchers in 12 countries responded to a questionnaire that asked them to rank seven article characteristics and rate 16 article profiles. After article topic, the next most highly ranked characteristics were online accessibility and source of article. Conjoint analysis revealed the highest rated profiles to be (i) article written by a top‐tier author, in a top peer‐reviewed journal, available online at no personal cost to the reader; and (ii) article written by a top‐tier author, in a peer‐reviewed journal not in the top tier, available online at no personal cost to the reader. There were significant differences in characteristic rankings by discipline and geographic location.
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Tenopir et al. looked at factors that influence readers when deciding which articles to read.
“Tenopir et al. looked at factors that influence readers when deciding which articles to read [35].”
From Seeking, Reading, and Use of Scholarly Articles: An International Study of Perceptions and Behavior of Researchers (2019) · cites this paper as [35]
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Self-citationTenopir, C., Levine, K. J., Allard, S. L., Christian, L., Volentine, R., Boehm, R., Nichols, F. R., Nicholas, D., Jamali, H. R., Herman, E., et al. (2015) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.23598 · Cited by 76 · see citing works
“…2346 JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECH OLOGY—October 2016 DOI: 10.1002/asi Tenopir et al.’s studies of scholarly reading (Tenopir et al., 2010, 2011) have documented the reading behaviors of scientists and social scientists in the last three decades, with…”
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“Indeed, when researchers weigh the relative importance of various characteristics to select which articles to read, the second most highly ranked characteristic after topic is convenience in terms of online accessibility (Tenopir et al., 2011).”
BackgroundJamali, H. R., Nicholas, D., Watkinson, A., Herman, E., Tenopir, C., Levine, K., Allard, S., Christian, L., Volentine, R., Boehm, R., et al. (2014) · Library & Information Science Research · doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2014.08.002 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
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Self-citationNicholas, D., Jamali, H. R., Watkinson, A., Herman, E., Tenopir, C., Volentine, R., Allard, S. L., & Levine, K. J. (2015) · INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE CONTENT DEVELOPMENT & TECHNOLOGY · doi:10.5865/ijkct.2015.5.2.045 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
“In particular it has been found that for them ease of access is an important factor in determining choice (Tenopir et al., 2011; Catalano, 2013).”
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“…used in deciding what to read from the available literature and related document information elements providing most clues (Wang and Soergel, 1998; Tenopir et al., 2011) are a publication's topical relevance, scientific orientation/level and novelty (informed primarily by its title) and a…”
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“If we compare the rankings Tenopir et al. (2011) obtained through their conjoint analysis with the frequencies with which individual characteristics came up in our free text responses, we can see differences: while the respondents of Tenopir et al. (2011) put particular emphases on articles' topics…”
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“Tenopir et al. (2010; 2011) reported that the highest rated articles are those written by: (a) a top-tier author, in a peer reviewed journal, available online at no personal cost to the reader; (b) by a top-tier author, in a peer-reviewed journal not in the top tier, available online at no personal…”
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“Tenopir et al. (2011) identified characteristics that researchers of 12 countries prefer while selecting articles for reading.”
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- Authors
- TENOPIR, C., ALLARD, S., BATES, B. J., LEVINE, K. J., KING, D. W., BIRCH, B., MAYS, R., & CALDWELL, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
- Corresponding author
- TENOPIR, Carol
- ALLARD, Suzie
- BATES, Benjamin J.
- LEVINE, Kenneth J.
- KING, Donald W.
- BIRCH, Ben
- MAYS, Regina
- CALDWELL, Chris
- Venue
- Learned Publishing
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-04
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 123-132
- ISSN
- 0953-1513 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-4857
- OpenAlex
- W2065623431
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 12.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Learned Publishing (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Publishing Research Consortium
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Keywords
- article characteristics, article selection, web accessibility, open access, peer review, journal prestige, disciplinary differences, geographic differences
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