O uso de revistas eletrónicas por docentes/investigadores em dois departamentos da FEUP

Nowadays, due to the exponential development of the information and communication technologies, scientific journals in electronic format are an information channel increasingly used by researchers on a global scale. Considering the potential of these journals it stands out the quick access to information, an international comparison of results and knowledge and a decrease of the cycle and the time of publication. n this context, this study was mainly focused on the study of the use of electronic journals by teachers / researchers from the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP), more particularly the needs and practices in the context of two departments (Department of Chemical Engineering (DEQ) and Department of Informatics Engineering (DEI)) that have distinct characteristics in terms of the use and publication in journals. To address this problem it has been taken into account aspects related to information behavior and scientific communication, as well as a characterization of electronic journals, with regard to their evolution, advantages/disadvantages and the underpinning main models. Thus, we carried out a study on the use of electronic journals by the community of teachers / researchers of the two mentioned departments based on interviews conducted with their respective directors. The results analysis has shown that there are differences between departments, with the DEQ showing clear advantage in terms of use of this information channel over the DEI. However, both directors reported that electronic journals meet the information needs of its users. According to the perception of the director of DEI there is recently an increasing use of electronic journals by the members of DEI which probably will soon reduce the differences found between the studied departments