Where and how early career researchers find scholarly information |
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| Authors: | David Nicholas Cherifa Boukacem‐Zeghmouri Blanca Rodríguez‐Bravo Jie Xu Anthony Watkinson A Abrizah Eti Herman Marzena ?wigoń |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Russian History, Tomsk State University, Lenin Avenue 36, Tomsk 634050, Russian Federation;2. CIBER Research Ltd, Newbury, Berkshire RG147RU, UK;3. Université de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, 69100 Villeurbanne, France;4. Biblioteconomía y Documentación, Universidad de León, 24071 León, Castilla y León, Spain;5. School of Information Management, Wuhan University Ringgold Standard Institution, Wuhan, Hubei, China;6. Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;7. Wydzia? Humanistyczny, Uniwersytet Warminsko‐Mazurski, 10‐719 Olsztyn, Poland |
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| 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. |
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