SuperJournal Annual Report to eLib

Year 2: August 1996-July 1997

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary

SuperJournal is one of the electronic journal projects in the eLib Programme. It is a collaborative research project involving many participants (see Appendix 1):

• The SuperJournal Consortium of Publishers (lead partner)
• Manchester Computing at University of Manchester
• HUSAT Research Institute at Loughborough University
• Eight university test sites.

SuperJournal is exploring the success factors for electronic journals from the point of view of authors, readers, and the other stakeholders in the publishing process. In this 3-year project, each year maps onto a different phase:

• Year 1: Planning and Design
• Year 2: Implementation
• Year 3: Delivering results and stimulating change

This Annual Report describes the activities in the Year 2 implementation phase that position the project to deliver results in Year 3. This includes some significant achievements in that we have been able to:

• Develop a real working electronic journal application that provides access to clusters of journals in three subject areas, containing over 2,400 articles from over 30 journals.
• Successfully launch the three journal clusters at participating test sites
• Implement a successful programme of user awareness and promotion at the test sites resulting in 440 registered users and 1,400 user sessions in the time period December 1996-July 1997.
• Perform baseline studies at the user test sites, gathering essential data on how readers use printed journals and their expectations of electronic journals.
• Implement a framework for collecting usage data, where key events are recorded and reports are generate to identify patterns of use.
• Initiate the strand of research on academic authors, and the role that multimedia will play in differentiating electronic journals from print.
• Develop a production process that now handles some 1,500 files per month, and transforms heterogeneous files from multiple sources into the homogeneous environment of the electronic journal application.
• Perform the development work for the application, production, user registration, data collection, etc in a professional yet cost-effective way, ensuring that systems are reliable, efficient, flexible, scalable, and maintainable, and will be useful both during the life of the project and after it ends.

These activities are achievements in themselves, but all the more so in that they were performed in a project framework involving the collaboration of some 30 different institutions. In the 20 months since the project start, the project partners have worked well together motivated by the desire to understand the role that electronic journals will play and the benefits they will deliver to academic researchers. There have been some problems, and some tasks have been difficult, but the systems and structures we have put in place have allowed us to persevere and achieve results.

This Annual Report describes the activities performed in the past year, some interim evaluation results, and what we are learning, both from the research and the process of innovation. The scale of the research is such that it would not be possible to document the results fully here; results will documented in separate reports. The timing of results is such that only very preliminary results and a few early trends can be reported; proper analysis is needed, and waiting for this to be done would delay the report.

Lastly the Report looks forward to Year 3. At the end of Year 2 the project is now at an exciting stage. The basic implementation framework is in place, so we can now focus on the results coming in. The planning is in place for sharing results, building scenarios electronic journal information at different levels, and initiating change to capitalise on what we learn. The project partners are learning from SuperJournal individually and as stakeholder groups. We can now focus on an integrated approach to learning, where stakeholders learn from each other and plan the future together.

Table of Contents

1. Activities and Progress

1.1 Objectives and Targets
1.2 Major Activities
1.3 Effects of Change
1.4 Particular Successes

2. Learning from the Process of Implementation

2.1 Difficulties and Unanticipated Outcomes
2.2 Changes to Plan in Light of Experience
2.3 Learning from the Experience of Innovation
2.4 Perceptions of the Destination
2.5 Influence of eLib Programme and Other Projects

3. Interim Evaluation Results

3.1 Patterns of Use for Printed Journals
3.2 User Expectations for Electronic Journals
3.3 Uptake at User Sites
3.4 Comments on the Research So Far: Emerging Trends
3.5 Scholarly Practice

4. Future Development

4.1 Objectives for Year 3
4.2 Changes in Direction
4.3 Beyond the Project Timeframe

Appendix 1 Project Participants
Appendix 2 SuperJournal Clusters
Appendix 3 Project Outputs

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Last modified: September 09, 1997