Introducing altmetrics to the Journal of the Medical Library Association

The Journal of the Medical Library Association’s (JMLA’s) website now shows a range of article-level metrics (e.g., article views, online mentions, social media attention) for each published article. This editorial explains how ”altmetrics“ may be better than traditional citations in reflecting the impact of JMLA articles on the practice of health sciences librarianship and provides tips for how to increase the impact of your articles

Publishing Case Studies in Health Sciences Librarianship

While most issues of the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) contain one or two case studies, the JMLA editorial team is pleased to note that the current issue contains six case studies, highlighting a wide range of library-driven initiatives to support health sciences research and education

Report from the Medical Library Association’s InSight Initiative Summit 1: Engaging Users in a Disruptive Era

At the Medical Library Association’s Insight Initiative Summit 1, held March 6–7, 2018, academic and hospital librarians and publishing industry partners came together to discuss their shared role in engaging users of health sciences information in an era in which “disruptors” such as pirate websites, scientific collaboration networks, and preprint servers pose threats to traditional means of access to scholarly content. Through a mixture of keynote talks, themed panel discussions, and small-group problem-solving exercises, the summit program raised important questions, sparked conversation, and provided insight into the need for both libraries and publishing organizations to improve their user experience, lower their barriers to access, and offer value to users that cannot be provided by competitors, including helping authors and students become informed, responsible advocates for and consumers of scholarly publications. The key takeaways from the summit are expected to impact libraries’ and publishers’ strategies and stimulate the cocreation of enduring materials to enhance user engagement in disseminating and discovering scientific and medical information

Thank you to the Journal of the Medical Library Association reviewers in 2018

The Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) sincerely thanks the 210 peer reviewers in 2018

Disciplinary differences in faculty research data management practices and perspectives

Academic librarians are increasingly engaging in data curation by providing infrastructure (e.g., institutional repositories) and offering services (e.g., data management plan consultations) to support the management of research data on their campuses. Efforts to develop these resources may benefit from a greater understanding of disciplinary differences in research data management needs. After conducting a survey of data management practices and perspectives at our research university, we categorized faculty members into four research domains—arts and humanities, social sciences, medical sciences, and basic sciences—and analyzed variations in their patterns of survey responses. We found statistically significant differences among the four research domains for nearly every survey item, revealing important disciplinary distinctions in data management actions, attitudes, and interest in support services. Serious consideration of both the similarities and dissimilarities among disciplines will help guide academic librarians and other data curation professionals in developing a range of data-management services that can be tailored to the unique needs of different scholarly researchers