Research support at Cardiff University Library

Kate BradburySenior consultant research support

“Thus, while librarians almost unanimously believe they have key roles as both subject experts and as teachers of "information literacy", relatively few researchers - very few in the sciences - agree with them. Rather, researchers see themselves as the experts in meeting their own wants and needs.”

Michael Jubb “Finding solutions on and off the shelf” Times Higher Education Supplement 4 January 2008

The context

RIN (2007) Researcher’s use of Academic Library Services p69 http://www.rin.ac.uk/files/libraries-report-2007.pdf

Communication

“Researchers claimed that they rarely saw their subject librarian unless they went to the library to find them. Librarians said that they ‘must always’ reach out to the research community and that communication is ‘never’ the other way. Allowing for some hyperbole, it is clear that both parties find it difficult to effect satisfactory communications, and it is also clear from the focus groups and interviews that both parties want very much to do this. It is very much in the interests of both that they should do so.”

RIN (2007) Researcher’s use of Academic Library Services p68 http://www.rin.ac.uk/files/libraries-report-2007.pdf

Training

“While researchers themselves are generally confident in their abilities in terms of discovery, librarians see them as tending to be conservative in the range of tools used and relatively unsophisticated in their search methods. Consequently, librarians think that many researchers are not exploiting services to the full. Unsurprisingly, librarians see it as a problem that they are not reaching all researchers with formal training, whereas most researchers don’t think they need it.”

RIN (2006) Researchers and discovery services. Behaviour, perceptions and needs p9 http://www.rin.ac.uk/files/Report%20-%20final.pdf

In this context, what is the role for research support?

Continue to ensure that services are provided seamlessly with minimum effort for researchers to access information.

Maximise all opportunities for communication with schools and individuals. Promotion of services that researchers may not be aware of.

Expertise in developing areas such as Open Access, Institutional Repositories, support for the Research Excellence Framework.

Help, advice and training for those who do request it. Respond to expressed needs of researchers in surveys and

interviews.

Research Support at Cardiff University Libraries

Help and training for individuals and groups. Promotion of resources to researchers. Identifying researchers’ requirements: surveys and interviews

with CU researchers; keeping up to date with published surveys.

Participation in School Research Committees and groups. Central role of Subject Librarians. Support for the University with the RAE/REF. Support Unit for Research Evidence (SURE). Working with colleagues: collection management and usage

statistics; information literacy; IT.

Staff structure

Head of Service Development – Alison Weightman (Information Literacy, Research Support, SURE)

Senior consultant, Research Support – Kate Bradbury Research Support Group – includes subject librarians,

IT research support staff. Started as a Library focussed group but moving towards an Information Services Group.

Help and training for individuals and groups

Focus on contacting new staff to offer 1-2-1 training. Liaison with HR – training offered through the University staff

development programme (Keeping Your Research up to date; Intelligent Web Searching for Researchers).

IL sessions for new research postgraduates at the start of the year and contacting individuals who start later on.

Liaison with the Graduate Centre and Graduate Schools. Surveys and interviews with current staff to determine needs. Ad hoc help and training where requested.

Help for new staff

Names of new members of staff are sent to Subject Librarians.

1-2-1 training is offered. Increasing takeup: at present about one third. This is also an opportunity to promote library

services, and nearly a quarter of the staff contacted said although they didn’t need help right away, they would contact the subject librarian when they had a query.

Promotion of resources to researchers

Subject Librarians Newsletters Web pages Blog Need to do more

Surveys and interviews

Service Quality Surveys: last done 2002 Library Review Survey 2005:

- staff/research postgraduate- research committees

New survey this year Specific surveys on collection management, for

example, Electronic Journals Interviews with researchers, school by school 2002-

Participation in school research committees and groups

Encouraging research and learning & teaching committee membership – for subject librarians and INSRVAssist academic school liaison.

Improves communication and visibility.

Central role of Subject librarians Supporting researchers is an essential role for the

subject librarians, and this is the focus for Library support to researchers in schools.

ULS Briefings are updates mainly for the subject librarians to keep them up to date with what is going on in INSRV, the University and nationally.

Topics for ULS Briefings have included: Scopus vs WoS; LISA vs LISTA; Google Scholar; Resource updates; Cardiff Eprints; DOIs and citation counts; RAE update; Modern Working Environment project update; RACDV.

Support Unit for Research Evidence (SURE)

Nationally recognised unit established to support and produce research to assist evidence-based practice and policy.

Specialised skills in: literature searching, critical appraisal, and summarising evidence.

Teaching of these skills within the University.

Work for outside bodies and, increasingly, in partnership with researchers at the University.

SURE Current Research Projects Health Evidence Bulletins W

ales (National Public Health Service)

Oral Health Specialist Library (NHS National Library for Health)

Systematic reviews of physical aspects of child protection (Department of Child Health Research)

Information support for systematic reviews by other University research groups

Intensive Care Monitor (Cardiff & Vale NHS Trust)

Identification of determinants of health indicators for cancer, child health and older people’s health (Welsh Assembly Government)

Information Support for NICE Guidance (National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence)

Support for the university with the RAE/REF

RAE: verification of outputs, DOIs, creating pdfs, collection of physical outputs. Liaised closely with colleagues in INSRV, Planning, schools.

REF: initial work to assess the impact on Cardiff of using bibliometrics and to assess the quality of the data.

“Initially at least we expect to use the Thomson Scientific Web of Science (WoS) as the primary source of citation data … We have commissioned further work on how we might extend the scope beyond WoS data, and remain open to the possibility of varying solutions to meet the particular needs of discipline groups.”

HEFCE, Research Excellence Framework Consultation. http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2007/07_34/

What kinds of data will higher education institutions (HEIs) need

to verify for the bibliometrics process?

At this stage we envisage that HEIs will need to verify data about their staff and their publications to be included in the process. We do not envisage that HEIs will be asked to verify citations to their publications; citation data will be processed centrally in order to link citations to publications accurately…

While WoS data are generally of good quality, we have not yet established that they are sufficiently free from error or uncertainty to be used at the level of disaggregation that we require in order to produce robust indicators, without further cleaning and verification.

HEFCE REF FAQs http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/assessment/faq/

Research Excellence Framework:Aims of the Cardiff Study

To see how far currently available bibliographic databases will enable us to assess our publications impact.

To compare the coverage of various databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, Publish or Perish, other subject specific databases.

To look at the impact measures currently available from bibliographic databases and from Evidence Ltd.

To highlight concerns about the current data quality.

Total number of journal articles published from Cardiff University and UWCM combined over the period 2001-2007: selected databases.

Total Cumulative Total

Total after deduplication

Number of new references

Scopus 10272 10272 10272 10272 Web of Science 8597 18869 13872 3600 Medline 4545 18417 15651 1779 CSA 744 16395 16221 570 IBSS 328 16549 16355 134 GeoRef 271 16626 16541 186 Geography 371 16912 16571 30 PsycInfo 1139 17710 16977 406 Business Source Premier 166 17143 17095 118 Total after deletions of incorrect entries 14682

Total number of journal articles published from Cardiff University and UWCM in Scopus and Web of Knowledge over the period 2001-2007: by

broad subject area category

Web of Science Arts and Humanities Citation Index 199 Science Citation Index 7851 Social Science Citation Index 1807 Total 9857 Total excluding duplicates 8576 Scopus Health Sciences 4536 Life Sciences 3758 Physical Sciences 3522 Social Sciences 1962 Total excluding duplicates 10755

Databases: inaccuracies in data entry and in assigning authorship and institution

Previous incarnations: University College Cardiff, University of Wales Cardiff, University of Wales College of Cardiff, University of Wales College of Medicine, University Hospital Wales.

Alternative spellings: Cardiff Univ, Univ Cardiff, UWCM, UHW, Univ Wales Coll Cardiff, University of Wales (Cardiff), Univ Wales Coll Med

School or research centre address only: University Dental Hospital & School; Cardiff Dental School, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff School of Biosciences, Welsh School of Pharmacy, Department of Chemistry, University of Wales; Centre for Advanced Studies; School of Psychology, email address is cardiff.ac.uk or cf.ac.uk

Mis-assigned institutions: UWIC, Glamorgan. No indication that Cardiff University is involved: not mentioned in the

author address, so unclear as to how picked up in the first place. Hard to know whether to assign to Cardiff University or not: local hospitals

(for example, Velindre), local research centres and companies (GE Healthcare)

Issues and concerns with the data

Three major points:Coverage of Web of Science – selected

journals, no inclusion of book data, selected subjects, major gaps in data.

Inaccuracies in data entry and in assigning authorship and institution – extent of data cleaning needed.

Volume of the data being analysed.

Working with colleagues: collection management; information literacy; IT;

university Supporting research postgraduates involves working with

Cathie Jackson and the information literacy group. Developing collections to support research is the remit of

Anne Bell and the Collection Development Working Group. INSRV for Researchers web pages and promotion of INSRV

services for researchers involves colleagues from IT. Supporting the RAE and the REF means working with

colleagues from IT, Planning, the VC’s office, PVC for Research and RACDV.

Comments and questions?