What is it about?
Research impact indicators are a mix of quantitative and qualitative means to indicate the attention and impact of research. For example, the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), a traditional type of bibliometrics, represents the average number of citations that an article receives in a given journal. Altmetrics are another type of research impact indicator that examine the online attention to research. This paper examines how professional academic librarians are using them, which citation databases are the most popular, and the factors that affect attitudes towards the use of these indicators.
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Why is it important?
There has been much speculation concerning how and why academic librarians use research impact indicators, but there is little research to support these postulations. This paper is an examination of a 2015 survey administered to librarians at R1 institutions in the United States, and it is the first national study of its kind. Specifically, the research results presented in this paper found that librarians were more likely to use usage statistics and least likely to use altmetrics in the context of their regular responsibilities for collection development. While this result alone seems unsurprising, this is the first study to formally identify such a relationship.
Perspectives
More research is definitely needed to explore how and why librarians are using research impact indicators. Usage statistics are the most used type of metric used for collection development, but more questions arose concerning the types of tools used to collect these statistics and what other factors affect purchasing and cancellation decisions. In addition, outside this paper specifically, we have analyzed the data and found results that suggest that tenure and promotion expectations are the driving force behind interest among faculty members in both the JIF and citation counts.
Research Impact Coordinator Rachel Miles
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Is What’s “Trending” What’s Worth Purchasing? Insights from a National Study of Collection Development Librarians, The Serials Librarian, March 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/0361526x.2017.1297593.
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Resources
Is What’s “Trending” What’s Worth Purchasing?: Insights From a National Study of Collection Development Librarians
This is the accepted manuscript (post-print) of the article published in the Serials Librarian.
2015 Academic Librarians' Familiarity with Research Impact Indicators at R1 Institutions
Raw data set of our survey's survey results.
Contributors
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