What is it about?
Research impact metrics are used by academic librarians during consultations and instruction with faculty, graduate students, and researchers. This study examines the levels of familiarity with and the frequency of use of certain research impact metrics, such as citation counts and altmetrics (measures the online attention to research). Significant results include a heightened familiarity and usage of research impact metrics among librarians with regular scholarly communication support duties. In addition, our results found that traditional research impact metrics, such as citation counts and the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), are more likely to be discussed during consultations with faculty when addressing issues related to tenure, promotion, and grants than when addressing publishing issues alone.
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Why is it important?
Our results show that there is likely higher usage of traditional citation-based metrics among faculty members when they are fulfilling requirements related to tenure and promotion and/or grants. This shows us that the incentives for faculty members in academic institutions are likely related specifically to or at least include citation-based metrics. In addition, there appears to be an increase in the use of altmetrics among academic librarians for their own professional development.
Perspectives
The emphasis on citation-based metrics is concerning, especially if such requirements are the driving force behind faculty members' research endeavors. Thus, the authors of this paper call on academic librarians to take on a stronger role in educating themselves on research impact and assessment and helping shift academia toward a more responsible use of research impact metrics.
Research Impact Coordinator Rachel Miles
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Scholarly Communication Librarians’ Relationship with Research Impact Indicators: An Analysis of a National Survey of Academic Librarians in the United States, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, July 2018, Iowa State University,
DOI: 10.7710/2162-3309.2212.
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Resources
2015 Academic Librarians' Familiarity with Research Impact Indicators at R1 Institutions
This data is from a national survey conducted during 2015, which was administered to 13,436 full-time academic librarians from 150 institutions included in the 2013 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) list of Carnegie-classified R1 institutions in the United States. Email addresses were collected manually in order to filter out certain positions not considered professional in nature and the survey was designed to eliminate responses from outside of the US, as well as part-time, retired, and other non-full-time respondents. The Qualtrics-administered survey was sent out three times over a two-week period in 2015, resulting in a 5.3% response rate (n=707, valid responses counted only). The survey's purpose was to assess the levels of familiarity, the levels of frequency for different types of uses, and the purposes of those uses of research impact metrics, usage data, and qualitative measures of research impact among academic librarians at R1 institutions in the U.S.
How Do Academic Librarians Use Research Impact Metrics? Guest post by Rachel Miles
Blog post highlighting the most significant and interesting results from the study.
Contributors
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