Abstract:

There have been few independent empirical and comparative researches on knowledge dissemination effectiveness of different electronic academic journal databases until now. By applying two DEA models of CCR and BBC, this paper analyzed the knowledge dissemination effectiveness of 23 popular academic journal databases used by Chinese universities. Based on the former studies, another two indicators were added into evaluation system: the number of outbound backlinks and the global ranking of the databases' official websites. Then it used multivariate regression analysis to explore whether and how the inputs and outputs influenced databases' knowledge dissemination effectiveness. The study found that 30.43% foreign academic journal databases' knowledge dissemination efficiency is below the average level, which needs to be improved. Thus there is a need  to improve it in the future. The main impact factors includ the official websites' daily average PV, daily average IP, the number of outbound backlinks, the global ranking, and the average values of JCR influencing factors. In order to enhance the efficiency of knowledge dissemination, it is suggested that foreign language databases should pay more attention to improving the online communication efficiency of knowledge. It is not only necessary to expand the quantity of online distribution of resources, but also improve the quality of journals in the databases and improve the distribution quality.

Key words: Foreign electronic academic journal, Database, Knowledge dissemination, Dissemination efficiency, Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA)