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Online journal aggregators: Convenience, at a price

The emergence of electronic journals has changed the research paradigm in a number of important ways. With print journals, researchers find the abstract online or via a database printout. They then have to order the article, which they might receive in minutes, but often in hours or days. Now, the time from viewing the abstract to accessing the full text can be seconds. But only if the library has purchased the full text of the particular journal. So, though the new model has decreased the time interval between request and potential receipt of the journal, it has put a strain on medical libraries. They are under constant pressure to maintain good collections of electronic journals, and to link the full text articles to citation databases like Medline as well as to citations listed in electronic journal articles. In the print world, if a journal is not available locally, it can be ordered via interlibrary loan. In the online mode, if the librarian has to resort to getting a print edition from another library, the entire electronic research model falls apart. In order to meet users’ requirements for electronic journals, virtually all medical libraries have turned to electronic journal archives that provide sets of journals for a single subscription fee. These archives are basically of two kinds: