As more research journals pop up online, physics graduate student Wes Hitt says he still prefers traditional journals as he worries about credibility.
Even though many online journals are free and increasing in popularity, Hitt isn't ready to jump into cyberspace for his research information yet.
"When it's free, then I would instinctively think what mechanisms do they have in place to prevent unsatisfactory articles from getting in - to prevent science being printed that isn't so good," he said.
Students should put more trust in print journals and electronic versions rather than the free online journals, said Carole Armstrong, associate director of Collections and Human Resources at the MSU Main Library.
But with all types of research journal subscription costs rising each year and the availability of resources becoming an issue, electronic journal versions and free online journals are being made especially accessible, she said.
"It doesn't save us very much money to get subscriptions to electronic versions, but it does save us on space and processing and binding of things," Armstrong said.
"And also by having electronic versions, they're available to anyone - any faculty, staff or student - 24 hours a day so they aren't bound by the hours of the library," Armstrong said.
Armstrong said with medical print journal costs, specifically, increasing anywhere from 5-10 percent each year, electronic versions aren't a trend only at MSU, but all throughout Michigan.
"We're moving more and more toward that, with doctors and medical students in particular all across the state; this way they have access to resources even though they're not on campus," Armstrong said.
Many times scientific journals consist of more than just statistics written on pages, including special visual features, so the shipping and production costs of research are high, said John Coffey, a health science librarian who acts as a liaison to the College of Human Medicine.
"There are a lot of parts to a journal," Coffey said. "It's not the equivalent to Time magazine. There are lots of divisions, like some have color plates of MRI's."
Electronic versions of medical print journals reproduce charts as closely as possible, but sometimes the quality is just not as good as it would be if they were enclosed with print journals, he said.
As the medical library manager at Lansing's Sparrow Health System, Michael Simmons helps physicians access a variety of resources and research. Simmons said another issue of whether to opt for electronic versions of journals versus print versions is the ability to archive. Some journals don't keep previous volumes.
"I don't want a moving wall," Simmons said. "I don't want to lose archiving of previous years that I've purchased. When I can't access previous years or the publisher won't provide the older copies, I will buy it all in print."
Whether or not free online journals are current or accurate is always debatable, Simmons said.
"Yes, they're free, but that doesn't mean they're the most recent," Simmons said. "We are stressing excellence in medicine so we have to have the most current and accurate evidence-based research. If we were to only rely on free journals, we couldn't do that."
