E-readers such as the Amazon Kindle DX still have some drawbacks that are preventing education institutions and students from shelving paper books, a newly released University of Washington study claims.

The study conducted during the 2009-10 academic year, found that less than 40 per cent of the first-year graduate students were regularly using the Kindle DX—the e-reader for doing their academic reading.

The Kindle DX was also found to be disrupting a technique, dubbed cognitive mapping, in which users used physical cues like the position in the book to go back to find a section of the text.

Commenting on the findings, study co-author Alex Thayer said, "There is no e-reader that supports what we found these students doing. It remains to be seen how to design one. It's a great space to get into, there's a lot of opportunity."

Though the Kindle DX, the largest Kindle with a 9.7-inch screen, has note-taking capabilities, but some students were found keeping papers in their Kindle case to write notes.

The study will be presented at Association for Computing Machinery conference that will take place next week in Vancouver.