Purpose -This article is an edited version of a report commissioned by the British Library and JISC to identify how the specialist researchers of the future (those born after 1993) are likely to access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years' time. The purpose is to investigate the impact of digital transition on the information behaviour of the Google Generation and to guide library and information services to anticipate and react to any new or emerging behaviours in the most effective way. Design/methodology/approach -The study was virtually longitudinal and is based on a number of extensive reviews of related literature, survey data mining and a deep log analysis of a British Library and a JISC web site intended for younger people. Findings -The study shows that much of the impact of ICTs on the young has been overestimated. The study claims that although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web. Originality/value -The paper reports on a study that overturns the common assumption that the "Google generation" is the most web-literate.

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ABSTRACT. The article presents one of the main fi ndings of an international study of 4,000 academic researchers that examined how trustworthiness is

This article reports on a large-scale survey of nearly two thousand faculty and students at one institution, University College London, and profiles their use and perceptions of ebooks. The context for the study is an action research project, CIBER's SuperBook, that will further investigate the issues raised in this initial benchmarking survey using deep log analysis and qualitative methods. The survey findings point to various ways in which user uptake and acceptance of e-books may be encouraged. Book discovery behaviour, a key issue for publishers and librarians in both print and electronic environments, emerges as a critical focus for service delivery and enhancement. Context for the researchUntil very recently, research into how digital resources are used within the academy has focused primarily on journals. Considerable steps have been made by CIBER in understanding journal user behaviour, through groundbreaking studies of Emerald, Blackwell Synergy, OhioLINK, and Oxford Open journal platforms. These studies led on the analysis of the digital "fingerprints" left by the users of electronic journals. However, the virtual scholar uses a much wider range of digitally delivered content to achieve their research, teaching and learning goals. As a first step towards a more rounded picture of how digital resources are used, we are now subjecting e-books, the new kid on the block, to the same robust approach that we have previously reserved for journals.There is much talk about the market potential for e-books, especially in a higher education context, but few robust user studies. This is worrying because e-books have, arguably, greater potential to change the information landscape than journals. We are addressing this issue through SuperBook, an action research study, funded by Wiley, Emerald and CIBER, which involves 'dropping' about three thousand carefully selected e-texts into the UCL community and then

An international survey of over 3,600 researchers examined how trustworthiness and quality are determined for making decisions on scholarly reading, citing, and publishing and how scholars perceive changes in trust with new forms of scholarly communication. Although differences in determining trustworthiness and authority of scholarly resources exist among age groups and fields of study, traditional methods and criteria remain important across the board. Peer review is considered the most important factor for determining the quality and trustworthiness of research. Researchers continue to read abstracts, check content for sound arguments and credible data, and rely on journal rankings when deciding whether to trust scholarly resources in reading, citing, or publishing. Social media outlets and open access publications are still often not trusted, although many researchers believe that open access has positive implications for research, especially if the open access journals are peer reviewed.

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PurposeThis JISC funded UK National E‐Books Observatory study is a benchmarking survey of e‐book usage and perceptions in more than 120 participating universities. The paper aims to present the results that investigated: use of e‐books in general (methods of obtaining e‐books, reasons for using, viewing/reading behaviour in connection with e‐books); use of e‐books provided by the library; use of JISC collection texts (use and awareness); use of the library and print material in general.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on an online survey which was conducted between 18 January and 1 March 2008, over which period 22,437 full or partial responses were received.FindingsThe study shows that e‐book penetration is very strong (61.8 per cent of all students are already using them in connection with their scholarly work, as teachers or students), so the e‐book revolution has already happened but clearly it has some way to go.Originality/valueThe paper presents the results of the biggest survey of its kind ever conducted, which represents a huge advance in one's knowledge of e‐book use on a national scale.

Google Scholar, a widely used academic search engine, plays a major role in finding free full-text versions of articles. But little is known about the sources of full-text files in Google Scholar. The aim of the study was to find out about the sources of full-text items and to look at subject differences in terms of number of versions, times cited, rate of open access availability and sources of full-text files. Three queries were created for each of 277 minor subject categories of Scopus. The queries were searched in Google Scholar and the first ten hits for each query were analyzed. Citations and patents were excluded from the results and the time frame was limited to 2004-2014. Results showed that 61.1 % of articles were accessible in full-text in Google Scholar; 80.8 % of full-text articles were publisher versions and 69.2 % of full-text articles were PDF. There was a significant difference between the means of times cited of full text items and non-full-text items. The highest rate of full text availability for articles belonged to life science (66.9 %). Publishers' websites were the main source of bibliographic information for non-full-text articles. For full-text articles, educational (edu, ac.xx etc.) and org domains were top two sources of full text files. ResearchGate was the top single website providing full-text files (10.5 % of full-text articles).