Electronic publishing in Brazilian academic institutions : changes in formal communication, too?

Abstract

The use of electronic facilities for informal communication amongst academic researchers is a common place already. That is, according to a number of studies in different disciplines around the world, the adoption and use of electronic communication in the informal stages of the scholarly communication system is prevalent. Nevertheless, the same studies that testify such a ubiquity of the informal electronic communication in the academic world also show that the adoption of these media in the formal stages of the communication process, though occurring, has been slow and cautious. The reasons for that are many and have also been extensively discussed. In reality, these studies point out that the adoption and diffusion of electronic media for formal communication are in progress and therefore needs to be assessed in order to see to what extent, and in which way it has been occurring. The study discussed in this paper aims to provide a picture of the adoption and use of electronic facilities for scholarly publishing in Brazil within the academic environment. As an exploratory research, the study aims to see whether there have been electronic publications being produced by academic institutions - universities and learned societies- and, if so, which sort of publications have been mostly provided, what are their major features in terms of format, content, availability, accessibility, etc. and whether they can provide any basis for the identification of disciplinary differences in publication patterns. Since none of the sampling frames available from departments and institutes within the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology hierarchy, a number of procedures have been applied in order to define the sample. It actually consists of those academic institutions that have produced scholarly electronic publications - namely books, journals, serials, annual proceedings and secondary sources such as abstracts, reviews, etc. Some partial results show that so far, there has been electronic publications being produced by Brazilian academic institutions, but the adoption of pure electronic formal communication amongst academic researchers seems to be far from become ubiquitous, as can be observed in relation to the informal communication.