Library and Information Science

This study assesses attitudes towards electronic media and examines the current level of use of these media by academic economists in Japan, through the interview and the mail survey. The questionnaire includes questions on demographic characteristics, usage of computers in research process, and that of electronic mail, mailing list, electronic journal, and WWW. These questionnaires were distributed to 1,161 faculty members in departments of economics, and 323 completed questionnaires were returned. The results suggest that E-mail is the most popular electronic medium (93%), and that over 55% of economists use mailing lists. For information search, the use of WWW showed the highest rate. Although the actual number of academics using electronic journals at present may be low (31.4%), academics expect that this new medium is of high value (74.2%). But a large majority of academic economists surveyed still relies greatly on the refereed journal to publish their research results.