Accessing, Reading and Interacting with Scientific Literature as a Factor of Academic Role

This study was designed to examine the manner by which academic personnel including students, faculty, librarians and administrators, not only access and read scientific literature bust also interacts with it. In addition, the study examines whether there are differences in accessing, reading and interaction behavior between different groups in academia. Using an online survey, which was completed by 416 respondents worldwide, we found that PDF is the most common format for reading, downloading and saving. Despite the advances of technology, most participants prefer to print PDF pages and note, highlight and summarize them manually. Mobile devices such as E-readers, tablets and smart phones are not very popular as means of interaction with scientific literature.