A study into the availability of and access to electronic journals for teaching and research by the academic staff at the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zimbabwe

Includes bibliographical references.Researchers have relied on journals as a source of current research information for more than 350 years. In sub-Saharan Africa, researchers and libraries complain about a lack of access to subscription electronic journals despite an increase in electronic journals access schemes for developing countries. Furthermore, African researchers lag behind in publishing their work when compared to their counterparts in the developed world. Research was carried out in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Zimbabwe, which sought to investigate electronic journal availability from the researchers’ perspectives; to discover how electronic journals are used for teaching and research; and how faculty use journals in their publications. To explore this multi-faceted objective, four key sub-objectives emanated from the main research objective. The first sub-objective was to determine to what extent the available electronic journal collections met faculty’s electronic journal teaching and research needs. The second was to establish journal usage through analysing journals cited in faculty research papers and reading lists given to graduate students. The third was to understand the problems if any, encountered in accessing electronic journals –establishing the nature and frequency of these problems. The last was to explore if academic staff desire and publish their research and in the process, to understand the obstacles they face. This study used methodological triangulation, and data was gathered through three main research methods. These were an electronic journal availability study, a 26 question- 7 survey, and a citation analysis. Each respective method addressed a respective sub-objective, with an overlap of methods for the fourth objective. The findings revealed that 85.5% of the required journals were available across the available electronic journals collections. Faculty members use electronic journals for their work; however, they need training to access and to be aware of what journal content is available. While faculty members aim to be published, evidence indicated that they use less recent journals in their published works. There was no evidence that suggested that access to electronic journals alone leads to increased publications