Impact of the consumption of electronic contents on research productivity in some Portuguese and Spanish Universities

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the link between the use of electronic resources and the academic output of researchers in 10 universities of Portugal and Spain in the period 2007 to 2012. As for Portuguese institutions, data are analyzed from Universities of Minho, Porto, Aveiro, Beira Interior and Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro. As for Spanish institutions data are taken into account from Universities of Burgos, Leon, Salamanca, Valladolid and Vigo. The analysis of the consumption of contents distributed to the mentioned universities will be undertaken from downloads of four suppliers whose materials are widely used: IEEEXplore, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink and Wiley. In investigating academic output, the databases Web of Science (WoS) from Thomson Reuters and Scopus from Elsevier will be taken into account. From previous studies we know that the consumption of electronic academic contents shows an upward trend since the Big Deals were hired by the consortia B-on in Portugal and BUCLE and Bugalicia in Spain. We want to check if this upward trend is also a reality in the academic output. The paper main aim is to investigate the connection between the access to a wider range of journals and a higher international academic output. The analysis will differentiate disciplines, compare the situation of Portugal and Spain and study the research collaboration between both countries.