Desired Affordances of Scholarly E-Articles: Views from Scholars Based on Open-Ended Answers

Abstract

E-journals are constantly evolving and adding new features, however, scholars’ views of desired features of scholarly e-articles have not received much attention. Scholars’ opinions were studied as part of two scholarly reading surveys conducted in Finland in 2016 and internationally in 2018. Respondents were asked “What features would you like to see in e-scholarly articles in the future” and “How have your reading practices changed in the last few years and how do you expect them to change”. A qualitative thematic analysis of 588 open-ended comments to these questions was performed. Themes discussed in open ended comments concern availability and accessibility; readability, searchability, findability, and discoverability; sharing and collaboration affordances; and seamlessness between reading and writing. Respondents also discussed affordances such as more visual materials, more interactivity, easier export of references, links to original research data, open commenting, open peer review, possibility to update articles, links to authors’ social media sites, and templates for secondary and meta-analysis. Users’ discussion of affordances for finding, discovering, sharing, and handling information provide insights to publishers, libraries, and web designers.