Academics as information consumers

1
Academics as information consumers

• David Nicholas
• CIBER
• UCL Centre for Publishing
• School of Library, Archive and Information
  Studies
• www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk

2
A presentation showing

• Evidence of new and changing patterns of
  information seeking behaviour CIBER has found as
  a result of examining the digital fingerprints of
  hundreds of thousands of academics/scholars
  students, professors, researchers
• The marked consumer traits of this behaviour
• Significance of this to information providers and
  academic policy makers at last we have an
  evidence base which provides us with some grip
  and punctures the hype

3
Period of massive continuing change

• From mediated to non mediated searching
• From searching from libraries to searching from
  home, office and on the move
• From niche searches to global searches
• From an information corner shop to an
  information superstore
• From a few searchers to everybody searching
• From prepared searching to unprepared searching
• From little choice to massive choice
• From little change to continuous change
• There has been a paradigm shift in user behaviour

4
Virtual Scholar programme (2002-2006)

• Massive evidence base on behaviour of virtual
  scholars
• Deep log analysis methods digital fingerprints
  related to user demographic and attitudinal data
• Studies of digital libraries EmeraldInsight
  Blackwell Synergy ScienceDirect IoP Electronic
  Journals Service OhioLINK OUP Open
• Pick out the key (and surprising) characteristics
  that have emerged from these studies
• I dont recognise the users you are describing

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Users phenomenally active, increasingly
interested

• Synergy more than 500,000 people used site a
  month, recording nearly 5 million views
• OhioLINK 6000 journals available and all bar 5
  not used within month surveyed
• EmeraldInsight two-thirds of visitors
  non-subscribers
• Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) 17,150 downloads
  made in a single month and usage increased by
  150 in two and a half years
• Scholarly publications a product in demand and it
  is improved access (via big deals, search
  engines, OA) that is the driver

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NAR daily article views for two half years
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NAR monthly articles viewed by referrer
8
Sales help too
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Bouncers

• Over two thirds typically view no more than three
  items in a visit and then leave
• Many do not return within a year 50-66 of did
  not come back. User loyalty a concern highly
  volatile users, like search engines
• Search a variety of sites to find what they want
  
• Suggesting at best a checking-comparing, dipping
  sort of behaviour that is a result of search
  engines, a shortage of time and huge digital
  choice. Flicking. Promiscuous. Or, at worse,
  massive failure at the terminal?

10
Trust up for grabs

• Authority and relevance to be won (and checked).
  End-user checkers
• Determining responsibility a problem Tesco
• Particular problems for libraries e.g. Google
  users of ScienceDirect, searching courtesy of the
  Library.
• Differences between age groups NHS example

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Dominance of search engine searching has big
implications

• People using search engine were
• far more likely to conduct a session that
  included a view to older article (older material
  on a level-playing field
• more likely to view more subject areas, more
  journal titles, and also viewed more articles and
  abstracts too.
• Undergraduates most likely to have used the
  search facility 46 had compared to 26 of
  postgraduates, 19 of researchers and 15 of
  professors or teachers. Changing

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User diversity

• We must move away from hits to users. As already
  indicated, very real differences between various
  types of user, especially in regard to their
  subject field academic status and geographical
  location. We have also examined - and found in
  some cases differences - according to gender,
  type of organisation worked for, type of
  university, attitudes towards scholarly
  communication

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Diversity examples (ScienceDirect)

• Physics Computer sciences users visited most
  often. Repeat visits increase with age. Those
  visiting regularly published more.
• Number of views increased with age. Chinese and
  Germans viewed the greatest number of items.
• Use of abstracts increased markedly with the age
  of the user.
• Students made the greatest use of full text
  (HTML) articles and Chinese users recorded the
  highest use of PDFs.
• Older and younger users and those from Spain and
  China were more likely to view current material.
• Germans the most successful searchers (more
  hits, less zero searches). Overall Germans
  appeared to be the most efficient users.

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Reading or scanning?Something to get those grey
cells working

• Articles took about 38 seconds to view, which
  suggests that people were not reading online,
  but probably scanning to determine relevance or
  simply downloading them.
• People spent more time reading/scanning shorter
  articles online than longer ones. Longer the
  article the more likely to read as an abstract
  only. Does this mean that shorter articles are
  more likely to be read (and cited) than longer
  ones?
• Are any of the articles downloaded read at
  another time never see the light of day again (a
  form of digital osmosis)?

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Conclusions, questions and implications (1)

• Choice and a common/multi-function retrieval
  platform changing us all making us (even
  Astrophysicists) behave as consumers and we
  should question our assumptions about todays
  scholar
• Have we really thought through the implication of
  horizontal rather then vertical user searching?
• Is the popularity of the system with users (we
  are all librarians now) masking its failures
  what of future of life critical digital services?

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Conclusions, questions and implications (2)

• When people are provided with a digital service
  things dont go as expected. When millions of
  users are on the road that is an impossibility
  (kiosks)
• Therefore feedback techniques like DLA are
  essential. DLA raises the questions.
• We need to get closer to the user but we are
  actually moving further apart.
• We need to move from hits, to users and then
  outcomes
• Its tough being a consumer today

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Some references(see also www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk
)

• Nicholas, D., Huntington, P. and Watkinson, A.
  Scholarly journal usage the results of deep log
  analysis. Journal of Documentation, 61(2), 2005,
  246-280.
• Nicholas, D., Huntington, P., Dobrowolski, T.,
  Rowlands, I., Jamali, H. R. Polydoratou, P.
  Revisiting obsolescence and journal article
  decay through usage data an analysis of
  digital journal use by year of publication,
  Information processing and Management, 41(6),
  2005, 1441-1461.
• Nicholas D, Huntington P, Williams P and
  Dobrowolski T. The Digital Information Consumer
  in New directions in human information
  behaviour. Edited by A Spink and C Cole. Kluwer
  Academic, 2005
• Nicholas D and Huntington P. Digital journals
  are they really used? Interlending and Document
  Supply, June 2006 In press
• Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jamali HR and Tenopir,
  C. Finding information in (very large) digital
  libraries a deep log approach to determining
  differences in use according to method of access.
  Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32 (2), March
  2006, 119-126
• Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jamali HR and Tenopir
  C. (2006) OhioLINK ten years on what deep log
  analysis tells us about the impact of Big Deals.
  Journal of Documentation, 62 (4) July 2006.