Online access to scientific literature leads to new ways of evaluation. Next to the evaluated literature, new spaces for grey literature have been opened. The process of peer review can become clear and shared. For journals and articles, a new criterion of evaluation based on the number of “motivated” accesses can be made up. However, the pros and cons of these new methods have to be pointed out. This paper is my word in the debate on the objective value of online scholarly publications analysed from the point of view of the user. It is the product of a fruitful collaboration between two university librarians and a professor who has been working for many years in scientific national and international laboratories. They all manage the Biblioteca Digitale of La Sapienza in Rome. What is important is the need to choose sources addressed to users who learn and produce scientific material in a quantitatively and economically detailed way. The argumentation includes the general, but not all-embracing, field of the experimental sciences.
The starting point of this work is the need to verify the influence of the digital library on the IF. Did the digital library support or nullify the value of the IF as the evaluation paradigm in order to do better choices while buying? Considering the data, IF seems not enough to evaluate the value of a journal and it has to be implemented with the statistical analysis of the effective use of the journals.
In the end, we present schematically a few points and we give a couple of suggestions to the community of librarians and professors which nowadays is working, theoretically and practically, in the management of the digital libraries in Italian scientific institutions
