Information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers

Purpose – The study examines two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up-to-date and methods used for finding articles. The relationship between academic status and research field of users with their information seeking behaviour was investigated. Methodology/approach – Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of PhD students and staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; 114 people (47.1 per cent response rate) participated in the survey. Findings – The study reveals differences among subfields of physics and astronomy in terms of information-seeking behaviour, highlights the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists. Originality/value – The study is the first study to deeply investigate intradisciplinary dissimilarities of information-seeking behaviour of scientists in a discipline. It is also an up-to-date account of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers

Use of research by librarians and information professionals

The study’s aim is twofold: first to determine the extent to which Australian library and information professionals produce research literature (specifically journal articles); and second to explore the status of the use of research literature by library and information science (LIS) practitioners as evidence for their practice. All articles published in the field of LIS in 2015 by Australian authors were analysed and seven interviews were conducted with Australian librarians. Out of 152 articles published in 2015 by Australian authors, 37 articles (20.3%) were authored by at least one practitioner, 29 articles (15.9%) were fully authored by practitioners, and eight articles were joint work by faculty members and practitioners. Australian LIS journals played an important role in providing a venue for the publication of articles authored by practitioners. Interviews showed that the use of research literature as evidence is not yet an institutionalised practice in the profession. Practitioners’ expectations of research literature generated by academic researchers is not high for they believe academic research lacks relevance, applicability, and coverage, and is sometimes aspirational. They find commissioned research, practice-led research and professional research more valuable than academic research. Mailing lists play an important role in the dissemination and identification of research that is useful for practitioners. Research collaboration between practitioners and researchers should be facilitated and encouraged

Information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers

Purpose – The study examines two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up-to-date and methods used for finding articles. The relationship between academic status and research field of users with their information seeking behaviour was investigated. Methodology/approach – Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of PhD students and staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; 114 people (47.1 per cent response rate) participated in the survey. Findings – The study reveals differences among subfields of physics and astronomy in terms of information-seeking behaviour, highlights the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists. Originality/value – The study is the first study to deeply investigate intradisciplinary dissimilarities of information-seeking behaviour of scientists in a discipline. It is also an up-to-date account of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers

Collaboration network of applied linguistics research articles with different methodological orientations

The current study draws on synthetic techniques and bibliometric analysis to explore the patterns of scientific collaboration in light of methodological orientations. We examined 3,992 applied linguistics (AL) articles published in 18 top-tier journals from 2009 to 2018 and analyzed their methodological orientations and scientific collaboration. Considering that the number of co-authored papers outweighs single-authored counterparts, our results revealed that the overall degree of collaboration for AL journals was moderate-to-high (57.7%). In particular, quantitative studies contained the highest degree of collaboration (66.8%). This was followed by systematic reviews (60.9%), and mixed-methods approach (55.7%). Country-wise, our overall findings further indicated that the United States and the United Kingdom were the two main hubs of collaborative activities for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research. While the USA was the top country in systematic reviews like all other research approaches, the UK was the fifth country in systematic reviews. As for collaborating authors, our findings demonstrated that the most influential quantitative researchers had collaborated on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and data mining. While the mixed-methods researchers had a tendency to collaborate on conceptual issues subscribing to the language testing and assessment strand, the most productive qualitative researchers had collaborated on L2 writing issues. Implications for applied linguistics research are further discussed

Common Problems of Library and Information Science Education in Asian Developing Countries: A Review Article

Education of Library and Information Science (LIS) has several problems that are caused by the changing nature of the discipline and the social, economic and cultural contexts in which LIS departments function. The aim of this article is to enumerate and discuss some of the common problems of LIS education in developing countries of Asia and suggest solutions. We show that as Asian developing countries share some of the social, economic and cultural elements, they have similar problems in LIS education. Therefore, the same solutions could be recommended such as setting up limited number of independent LIS schools, establishing or empowering accreditation agencies, flexibility in educational systems, more emphasis on research, developing in-service training, relocating the departments in new faculties, equipping the departments with new facilities, employing new and skillful staff, encouraging collaboration among faculty members and departments, diversifying courses and degrees, updating syllabi in an ongoing manner, taking advantage of IT, and creating and publishing LIS literature in native language

Effect of repetitive feedbackon residents' communication skills improvement

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Analysis of Emerging Reputation and Funding Mechanisms in the Context of Open Science 2.0

This report covers the outcomes of two studies funded by JRC IPTS to explore emerging drivers for Open Science 2.0. In general, Open Science 2.0 is associated with themes such as open access to scientific outputs, open data, citizen science and open peer evaluation systems. This study, however, focused on less explored themes, namely on alternative funding mechanisms for scientific research and on emerging reputation mechanisms for scholars resulting from Web 2.0 platforms and applications. It has been demonstrated that both are providing significant new opportunities for researchers to disseminate, share, explore and collaborate with other researchers, but it remains to be seen whether they will be able to bring about more disruptive change in how science and research systems function in the future. They could well do so, especially if related changes being considered by the European Commission on ‘Science 2.0: Science in Transition’ are taken into account.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Viewing and Reading Behaviour in a Virtual Environment: The Full-Text Download and What Can Be Read Into It

This article aims to focus on usage data in respect to full-text downloads of journal articles, which is considered an important usage (satisfaction) metric by librarians and publishers. The purpose is to evaluate the evidence regarding full-text viewing by pooling together data on the full-text viewing of tens of thousands of users studied as part of a number of investigations of e-journal databases conducted during the Virtual Scholar research programme

Log Usage Analysis: What it Discloses about Use, Information Seeking and Trustworthiness

The Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition research project1) was a study which investigated the behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers and consumers of scholarly information resources in respect to how they determine authority and trustworthiness. The research questions for the study arose out of CIBER’s studies of the virtual scholar. This paper focuses on elements of this study, mainly an analysis of a scholarly publisher’s usage logs, which was undertaken at the start of the project in order to build an evidence base, which would help calibrate the main methodological tools used by the project: interviews and questionnaire. The specific purpose of the log study was to identify and assess the digital usage behaviours that potentially raise trustworthiness and authority questions. Results from the self-report part of the study were additionally used to explain the logs. The main findings were that: 1) logs provide a good indicator of use and information seeking behaviour, albeit in respect to just a part of the information seeking journey; 2) the ‘lite’ form of information seeking behaviour observed in the logs is a sign of users trying to make their mind up in the face of a tsunami of information as to what is relevant and to be trusted; 3) Google and Google Scholar are the discovery platforms of choice for academic researchers, which partly points to the fact that they are influenced in what they use and read by ease of access; 4) usage is not a suitable proxy for quality. The paper also provides contextual data from CIBER’s previous studies