Members Weigh in on HFES Publications

Observations and Conclusions
The finding that some publications are valuable to 50% or fewer members raises a variety of questions concerning the level of Society resources that should be devoted to niche publi-cations versus those that appear to serve the broader member-ship base. This issue will continue to be examined by the Scientific Communications and Publications Domain and the Publications Committee.

The survey results suggest that the Society has followed the trend of migration toward digital interactions. A much larger proportion of the membership uses electronic journals as the primary source of information now than the number reported in the 2001 membership survey (59% vs. 40%). The finding that Google is the search method of choice, even for searching the scientific literature, may reflect a tendency to use Google as a “wide net” that can then lead to the use of specific digital inter-faces, although the survey did not address that level of detail. Ca-pabilities such as full-text downloading of specific articles and a desire for a “related articles” function represent design enhance-ments that can be proposed to SAGE and Ingenta.

The HFES Digital Library-Archive appears to be a resource that provides value to members’ work, but its usability could be significantly enhanced. Many comments suggested that we ap-ply our own analysis and design methods to improve the site and pointed to the ACM portal as a favorable design model. Given the significantly increased use of digital resources in our work processes, this area warrants further attention.