Researchers were also asked to indicate their age group and sex. Table | and figure 2 show th findings of sex and age distribution. OE The academic positions of the respondents show that most of the researchers who were involved in the survey were lecturers 18 (33.9%), followed by assistant lecturers 16 (30.2%). Other respondents were senior lecturers 10 (19%) and professors 9 (17%). The findings are presented on table 3. Table 5: List of journals identified by researchers Furthermore, the findings show that researchers are aware of journals published both within and outside their areas of specialization. Tanzania Journal of Science 39 (73.6%), Business Management Review 21 (39.6%), Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology 16 (30.25) and Papers in Education 13 (24.5%) were among the most identified journals. The findings further indicated that Tanzania Journal of Forest, University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal, Utafiti and Mulika were among the least listed journals. The high level of awareness of local journals among the researchers could probably be due to the fact that these journals are published within their institutions. ee ee eg, OS eee eee ee Despite the fact that there are different forms of access to information, including physical access, intellectual access and social access (Burnett and Jaeger, 2008), this study focuses only on physical access of journals. Respondents were asked to rate the level of access to local journals. The findings of the study show that the majority of the respondents are of the view that access to locally published journals is good 26 (49%), while 18 (34%) indicated that the level of access to local journals is moderate. Table 7 summaries the findings: Problems facing researchers when trying to access journals eel This study identified a number of problems that researchers encounter when accessing local journals. These problems include, missing journal articles and journals issues in the libraries 17 (32%), journals not regularly published 9 (17%) and invisibility of journals as some of them have not been indexed online 7 (13%). Other problems mentioned also include, journals not being freely available10 (19%), and 10 (19%) respondents saying they have no problem when accessing local journals. Table 8 shows the summary of the findings. It is clear from the findings that there are some variations in the use of locally published journals, whereby Tanzania Journal of Science and Technology 174 (25.8%), Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology 123 (18.4%), Tanzania Journal of Forest Conservation 70 (10.4%) and Utafiti 68 (10.1%), are among the heavily used journals. Generally, the usage patterns between indexed and non-indexed journals do not seem to vary greatly. The usage pattern by researchers broader areas of specialization show that the majority of the citations 218 (32.3%) were from natural and applied sciences articles, followed by engineering and technology 174 (25.8%), social sciences and humanities 104 (15,5%) and agriculture 52 (7.7%).
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