Scholarly Electronic Communication amongst the Aerospace Engineering Community and the Impact of Electronic Journals: A Review Study

This review paper highlights the very special „niche segment‟ to which the aerospace scientists and engineers belonging to different countries right across the globe occupy. Highlighting aviation as one of the most significant technological marvels of our times, the paper discusses in detail the various significant aspects related to what aerospace engineering is all about and how the electronic media has come in a big way to support scholarly communication within this „niche‟ aerospace engineering community. The paper also reviews the impact of Internet, the availability of high-speed networks which has enabled these scientists and engineers have access to electronic journals right at their desktops and also keep track of the global R&D happenings in their respective field of specialization. Various studies conducted (as indicated in this paper) illustrate how „electronic journals‟ are highly important to the aerospace scientists and engineers. Important studies in this connection have also proved that scientists are willing to pay a high price in their time to spend many hours reading electronic scientific literature. Many relevant studies also have revealed that the information that a scientist or engineer gets from refereed journals has greatly resulted in their improved performance. The review paper also touches upon key aspects like: (a) Distinguishing engineers from scientists, (b) Their differences in knowledge diffusion, (c) Their communication behaviours, (d) Their information seeking behaviour, (e) The aerospace engineering community in particular and the (g) the importance of scientific communication for advances in aerospace engineering and the need for electronic information resources.