The Effective Factors on Environmental Scanning, Collecting and Using Information in Electronic Publishing

This research studies the effective factors on environmental scanning, collecting and using information by private publishers in electronic publishing in order to make the best decisions. This is a survey and the population consists of 100 active publishers in private section, 80 of them were randomly selected. Data gathered using a self-designed questionnaire. According to the results, the economic factor has been the most important external environmental factor having the mean rank of 5.23. Also, regarding information resource's element, the "subordinate managers" by 11.91 and "government publications" by 5.79 mean ranks were respectively the most and the least important and reliable factors. There is a significant correlation between the availability and quality of an information resource and its frequency of use in environmental scanning.