Electronic Access to Agricultural Journals: An Agronomy Case Study

Abstract

This study examines the electronic availability of agronomy journals at eight ARL (Association of Research Libraries) member institutions with doctoral programs in agronomy. Of the forty-seven journals examined, twelve were not available electronically at any of the institutions. On average, institutions provided access to thirty of the titles, with twenty-seven of these being unembargoed. In terms of depth of access, much of the older literature which is important to the agricultural sciences was not available electronically. Librarians can use these results to communicate to researchers the importance of not relying solely on electronically available research materials.