Where and how early career researchers find scholarly information

Abstract

This article presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project started in 2015. The project is a 3‐year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs) to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to information searching, use, sharing, and publication. The study recruited 116 researchers from seven countries (UK, USA, China, France, Malaysia, Poland, and Spain) and performed in‐depth interviews by telephone, Skype, or face‐to‐face to discover behaviours and opinions. This paper reports on findings regarding discovery and access to scholarly information. Findings confirm the universal popularity of Google/Google Scholar. Library platforms and web‐scale discovery services are largely unmentioned and unnoticed by this user community, although many ECRs pass through them unknowingly on the way to authenticated use of their other preferred sources, such as Web of Science. ECRs are conscious of the benefits of open access in delivering free access to papers. Social media are widely used as a source of discovering scholarly information. ResearchGate is popular and on the rise in all countries surveyed. Smartphones have become a regularly used platform on which to perform quick and occasional searches for scholarly information but are only rarely used for reading full text.

An investigation on e-resource utilisation among university students in a developing country: A case of Great Zimbabwe University

“…The major advantage of e-resources is that they can be simultaneously accessed ubiquitously around the world by a great number of users. Nicholas et al (2017) also concured that the use of electronic resources, such as search engines, was highly popular among early-career researchers irrespective of country, language and discipline. Appleton (2006) elucidates that changes in the traditional way of document delivery services, from print to electronic, have come about swiftly; hence, information services and libraries have transformed significantly so that they can deliver this new technology effectively to academics.…”

Which academic search systems are suitable for systematic reviews or meta‐analyses? Evaluating retrieval qualities of Google Scholar, PubMed, and 26 other resources

“…Users are perhaps guided by convenience rather than strategic considerations when choosing their search system. In fact, it was due to its great ease of use and performance in informational and exploratory searches that Google Scholar emerged as the number one go‐to academic search engine for most academic users . Students in particular utilize Google as a main source in information seeking .…”

Peer review: The experience and views of early career researchers

“…Complete details of the methods can be found in a project report (http://ciber-research.eu/download/20160916-Harbingers-research_instruments.pdf) and in an article published in an earlier issue of this journal (Nicholas et al ., 2017b), with just an abbreviated version provided here. The study was a longitudinal one, one of the very few conducted in the scholarly communication field, which sought to monitor changing behaviours and attitudes of a panel of ECRs over a period of 3 years.…”