The Virtual Scholar the work of the CIBER research group

1
The Virtual Scholarthe work of the CIBER
research group

• David Nicholas
• CIBER
• School of Library, Archive and Information
  Studies
• University College London
• david.nicholas_at_ucl.ac.uk
• www.ucl.ac.uk/slais/research/ciber

2
CIBER (Centre for Information Behaviour and the
Evaluation of Research)

• Lecture - celebration of 8 years of CIBER
  researching the digital transition. Focus on most
  current research the Virtual Scholar.
• CIBER researchers are.

3
Research equivalent of The thundering herd

• Including associates and research students about
  20 of us
• Size and momentum key
• 25 articles per year
• Dozens of conferences
• Big high profile research projects
• Social too

4
(No Transcript)
5
CIBER successes

• 2 million, 20 projects 300 papers.
• Monitored roll-out of digital consumer health
  services for DoH to the UK.
• Developed methodology that enables us to see
  what happens in the virtual space in regards to
  millions of people.
• Created concept of national e-observatories.
• Blown the whistle on what happens in cyberspace.
  Bin It!
• Global impact

6
Visitors to the CIBER website
7
The Virtual Scholar
8
For Anoraks Virtual Scholar portfolio

• Evaluating the usage and impact of e-journals in
  the UK. Funded by RIN, 2008
• UK National E-Books Observatory. Funded by JISC,
  2008-2009
• The Impact of Open Access Journal Publishing,
  Funded by OUP, 2006-
• Digital Lives. With BL, funded by AHRC, 2007-2009
• Biomedical Information Marketplace. Funded by the
  British Library, 2007
• Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (Google
  Generation). Funded by British Library and JISC,
  2007
• SuperBook. Funded by Emerald and Wiley
  Publishers, 2006 2007
• Authors as users a deep log analysis of
  ScienceDirect. Funded by Elsevier, 2005-2006
• New journal publishing models the 2005 CIBER
  survey of journal author behaviour and attitudes.
  Funded by Publishers Association and STM, 2005
• MaxData. Funded by US Institute of Museum and
  Library Services, 2005 -2007
• Scholarly communication in the digital
  environment what do authors want? Funded by PA,
  2003-2004
• Digital journals site licensing, library
  consortia deals and use. Funded by Ingenta
  Institute 2002.

9
The Virtual Scholar programme

• Massive exodus of users from physical to virtual
  space and opening up of information resources to
  millions who had no/limited access to scholarly
  information.
• Built evidence base from millions of digital
  footprints people leave behind them after
  visiting a digital resource (e-books, e-journals,
  blogs).
• Sense made of these data and stitched together to
  create information seeking portraits for a wide
  range of scholarly communities.
• As most of you are scholars or work with scholars
  should be of interest to all.

10
The Virtual Scholar findings

• Evaluated actual behaviour of about 2,000,000
  people in 8 digital environments over 5 years
  know more than we have ever known about scholars,
  in unbelievable detail
• Yet policy makers and managers still reluctant to
  take data seriously because it is rather
  unsettling, it comes warts and all, and does
  not fit their existing (flawed) paradigms
• You will see why - there is a (huge) elephant in
  the scholarly room (and some people cannot see
  it!)
• An illustrated, audience-friendly portrait of the
  virtual scholar follows

11
Good news huge numbers and high demand for the
product

• Access main driver. More people drawn into the
  scholarly net (we are all scholars now!) and
  existing users can search more freely flexibly.
• One site saw 6 million pages viewed in three
  months
• Database containing full-text of 6000 journals
  saw 5995 used in one month.
• One e-journal database attracted more than half a
  million users in a month

12
Especially from overseas

• In case of UK Government funded scholarly
  websites less than a third of visits from UK
  scholars.
• In case of OUP journal, Glycobiology, less than
  7 of visitors were from the UK.
• Are overseas scholars taking more advantage of
  the scholarly resource?

13
Many of them are young

• Students constitute the biggest users in terms of
  visits and pages viewed, which is largely because
  they constitute the biggest academic community.
• They also spend more time online
• Noise!

14
And then there are the robots

• Best kept secret
• Around half of all visitors to a scholarly site
  are robots
• They mimic human information seeking to get entry
• To do this they need to .

15
be promiscuous

• Around 40 of people visiting do not come back,
  shop around
• Ascribed to poor retrieval skills, leaving
  memories in cyberspace, massive choice, Google
  constantly refreshing the virtual landscape

16
bounce

• Half of all visitors view 1-3 pages from
  thousands available. Bounce in again and then out
  again.
• Bounce because of search engines, massive choice
  and shortage of time. Overseas scholars bounce
  less and young people more (a story is unfolding!)

17
flick

• Some bouncing can be attributed to flicking
• A kind of channel hopping, checking form of
  behaviour
• Victoria!

18
view

• Remember humans have been conditioned by
  emailing, executive summaries text messaging
• Dont view an article online for more than 2
  minutes
• Spend more time reading short articles online
  than long onesquick wins
• If its long either read the abstract or squirrel
  it away for a day when you will not read it

19
power browse

• Hoover through titles, contents pages and
  abstracts at a huge rate of knots

20
navigate

• Navigating towards content in very large digital
  spaces a major human activity.
• People spend half their time viewing content,
  rest of the time they are trying to find there
  way to it (or out of it).
• So many possible routes to content people get
  lost (excited) - leads to bouncing, encourages
  promiscuity

21
they are not all the same

• National differences Germans the most
  successful searchers and most active
  information seekers. Canadians and Australians
  more interested in older material
• Age differences older users more likely to come
  back, and view abstracts. Elderly users had most
  problems searching two thirds of searches
  obtained zero returns!
• Gender differences women more likely to view
  articles in HTML and return to a site (less
  promiscuous!)

22
brand, dont go there, there are problems

• Difficult in cyberspace responsibility/authority
  almost impossible in a digital environment so
  many players
• Also what you think is brand is not what other
  people think
• And then there is cool.

23
but do dive in if you see something free
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
Employee Relations
4000
2000
Int. Jr. of Public Sector Management
0
29.06.2002
22.06.2002
15.06.2002
08.06.2002
01.06.2002
24
do not behave like a librarian (a real give-away)

• Adage we are all librarians now used to highlight
  the fact that thanks to the Internet everyone has
  access to vast stores of information and they
  would behave like one.
• It did not turn out like that...

25
they became eShoppers

• Because of massive choice
• Using a common platform meant habits rubbed off.
  Examples
• Two major influences on eShopping can claim an
  information pedigree a) Amazon (site design
  navigation), a site with origins in selling
  books, and Google, a search engine.

26
Conclusions and reflections

• In broad terms scholarly behaviour can be
  portrayed as being active , bouncing, navigating,
  checking and viewing. It is also promiscuous,
  diverse and volatile
• Does this constitute a dumbing down?

27
View from the Observer

• The study confirms what many are beginning to
  suspect that the web is having a profound impact
  on how we conceptualise, seek, evaluate and use
  information. What Marshall McLuhan called 'the
  Gutenberg galaxy' - that universe of linear
  exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined
  reading and study - is imploding, and we don't
  know if what will replace it will be better or
  worse. But at least you can find the Wikipedia
  entry for 'Gutenberg galaxy' in 0.34 seconds

28
Fast-forwarding to a dumbed down scholarly
universe

• Its bad now but when young become physicists,
  statisticians, etc will they seek information
  from their friends on Facebook, rather than
  searching ScienceDirect, write a blog rather than
  an essay, never read a whole book, except on
  hols?
• CIBER were commissioned to find out GoogleGen
  project

29
GoogleGeneration

• Did find
• No conceptual information map to guide
• High failure at the terminal - serious worries
  about quality of searching
• Little time is spent in evaluating information,
  either for relevance, accuracy or authority.
• Big literacy concerns, and clear relationship
  between good literacy and academic outcomes

30
GoogleGeneration

• However, the really big surprise
• is that everyone has these problems
• And indeed our latest research is that the older
  folk are even better at skimming, bouncing,
  viewing etc than the kids.
• If we are like them they are like us

31
GoogleGeneration

• There are signs of Facebook fatigue with users
  finding that managing their virtual life is too
  demanding and that amount of information updates
  causes strains.

32
The really big questions for us all

• Really the big issue is whether Web has
  enfranchised and disenfranchised at the same
  time.
• Just as all kinds of life-critical services are
  being rolled out to the Web, finding that access
  does not equal outcome or satisfaction
• Vulnerable people going to be exposed in this
  environment and fail in their millions.
  Inequalities will arise
• Big role here for librarians and publishers and
  academics

33
If you are a (rare) reader not a viewer there is
a book
BOOK Digital Consumers Re-shaping the
Information Professions Edited by David
Nicholas Ian Rowlands, Facet Publishing,
2008 Key strategic areas covered include
theories and concepts surrounding digital
information use the digital information
marketplace and its economics the psychology of
the digital information consumer the
information-seeking behaviour of the virtual
scholar searching behaviour of the digital
consumer authority and trust in the digital
environment the young digital information
consumer lessons from the e-shopper
34
Thanks no questions please, we are going for a
drink