Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 22 Issue 4

“scientific research is defined as relentless and incremental scholarly progress published in academic journals” in their article “Increasing Importance of Research Metrics: Journal Impact.” Therefore, academic journals are still perceived as an essential role in the academic activities of undergraduates. Therefore, it is necessary to study the use of journals by Aesthetics studies undergraduates during the preparation of final year research reports at Swami Vipulananda Institute of Aesthetic Studies. II. S ignificance of the S tudy With the emergence of a research environment seeking information from journals has become an essential tool to effectively implement all undergraduates’ research processes. Higher Education Institutions are expected undergraduates to have sound knowledge and skill in seeking information from journals. Therefore, it is vital to study the journal usage of a different kind of user group from different angles. Presently there is no in-depth data about journal usage during the preparation of projects reports at Swami Vipulananda Institute of Aesthetic Studies, Eastern University Sri Lanka. The identification of perceptions and attitudes toward the usage of journals will be helpful for the institute to develop effective research activities. Moreover, to become a skillful, knowledgeable, and demand-driven graduate higher education institution students must be able to identify and access current information. As well as information found in research journals which are contemporary studies. Thus, this study may be helpful to undergraduates to become and archive the above capability. The undergraduate research students are a significant group in a Higher Education Institution. Their information needs, views, and suggestions are vital for improving research activities. Furthermore, this study is helpful to understand the weaknesses/ barriers of the undergraduate’s in seeking information from research journals. III. T he O bjective of the S tudy The objective of the study is to evaluate the journals usage trends of the aesthetic Studies undergraduates during the preparation of the final year research reports and to identify the challenges faced in the use of journals by the undergraduates. IV. R eview of L iterature The Council of biological editors described twenty steps to writing research articles or thesis. Based on these steps, Fischer and Michael (n.d) mentioned in their study that if twenty steps are too many to manage and introduce thirteen steps based on the Council of biological editor’s decision. In that thirteen steps, they highlight “Select journal” as an essential step for writing research articles. Although Miholic and Juznic (2016) conducted a study on the impact of better access to Scientific journals on the quality of research work by evaluating records access to scholarly journals in three International publisher databases (Science Direct, Springer link and Wiley online) cited by University of Primorska has gradually increased every year, ranging 13.5% in 2010 up to 24.8% in 2014. In the study done by Yusufand and Iwn (2010), one of the reasons for the study was to evaluate the use of academic libraries. The finding showed that most of the faculty members visited the Library to read journals both online and print. Angammana and Jayatissa (2015) conducted a research study titled “A bibliometric Study of Postgraduate Theses in Library Information Science.” The main objective of this study was to find out the valuable features of postgraduate theses in the field. The results showed that usage journals are one of the heights used (out of total citation books used, 39.2% followed by journals, 34%) resources for thesis writing. Sunil (2017) examines the use of Electronic Information Resources by Arts undergraduates during final year Dissertations. Based on the findings, the final year undergraduates depend on printed journals and search engines to find information. A cross-sectional study was conducted among undergraduate medical students of a government medical college in Puducherry, India. In this study, they analyzed the use of journals by the students such as frequency purpose preferred mode and type of journals. The result of this study, thirty-seven percent of the students used journals. Among them, the majority of the students (58.4%) used journals for project/ assignment activities. When this study considered their preferred mode of using journals 63.7% preferred the online version. Furthermore, Velmurugan, C.V. (2013) has carried out a study on awareness and usage of Electronic Journals among Undergraduate Studies in Engineering College, Chennai. Found that the majority of the respondents were well aware of e-journals usage. A higher percentage of respondents were using the electronic version, while a certain number of them used print and electronic versions for academic activities. V. R esearch P roblem Academic journals promote active reading provoke deep thinking and offer wealth of knowledge (APIAR, 2017). Therefore, academic journals play a vital role in the research activities and provide more advances in preparing the research reports. However, researchers are not uniquely followed, especially undergraduates’ researchers have a different usage trend in the research report writing. Therefore, this study is set to find out the usage trends of the academic Volume XXII Issue IV Version I 58 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 © 2022 Global Journals G Journal Usage among Aesthetic Studies Undergraduates during the Preparation of Projects Reports