The Need for Research Management Tools in Today’s Digital Library

Lodz 06/2008 Aaron Maierhofer, RefWorks European Account Manager

amaierhofer@refworks.com

• Research, Knowledge and Learning:

Facts and Figures

Agenda

• Research carried out since 1977 on reading and research behaviors of scientist and scholars

• Survey includes 7 Universities in US and Australia (2006)

• Average number of articles read by faculty member is 250 per year—varies by discipline.

Dr. Carol Tenopir, Professor of Information Science, University of Tennessee (web.utk.edu/~tenopir/) research findings

Facts

• Journal Articles widely read by scientists and students as a reliable source of information

• Reasons for reading - including research, writing, teaching/learning and current awareness

• Highly valued and essential; most commonly found through library

• Increasingly read from library e-collection

Facts II

• More articles are published every year• Scientists are reading more to keep up with

their field • Peer reviewed journals are essential but pre-

pub is also due to speed of availability• E-journal systems and search engines provide

access to more journals and articles quickly• Result = information deluge!

• RESULT - More articles to read and manage, less time spent—average of 34 minutes

Facts III

Figures

150172

188216

252

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

1977 1984 93-98 00-03 04-06**280 with covers

Avera

ge n

um

ber

of

art

icle

s

read

per

rese

arc

her

420

348288

240

156

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Med Science Eng Soc Sci Hum

Average Articles Read Per Year Per Academic Discipline

Year of Studies

48 47

36 34

05

101520253035404550

1977 1993-1998

2000-2003

2004-2006

Average Minutes per Article by University Faculty Member

Ave

rage

Min

utes

Per

Art

icle

Year of Studies

Summary

• Scientist read many articles each year, from a variety of journals and e-resources and the amount of reading is going up; with average amount of time spent decreasing

• Journal issues are good for browsing and current awareness; electronic articles found by searching are important for research and teaching

• Need for tools to manage this massive influx of electronic information is even more crucial to their work flow process! More so than ever in the past…..

How do the experts react?…

"Time is a precious commodity for academics, and researchers who don't use bibliographic management tools put themselves at a real competitive disadvantage.” Christopher Mackie

Princeton University

The Tools to Help

• An innovative Current Awareness service utilizing RSS Feeds (and other technologies) to gather TOC information from over 8000 journals in a variety of academic disciplines

• Choose among six specific areas of coverage including: Life Sciences, Biology, and Medicine; Physical Sciences; Engineering; Social Sciences; Arts & Humanities; and Business.

• Provides a powerful search and browsing research environment that helps users to stay up-to-date in their disciplines through alerting.

• Results include images as well as bibliographic information, if available from source.

• Seamless export to RefWorks, other BMS

• A Web-based bibliographic database management

tool for anyone in your organization

• Integrates and imports references from all data

sources – journals, books, OPACS, web sites, RSS, and

other tools……

• Creates and manages your personal database

• Allows sharing of information via the web with all your

colleagues

• Formats bibliographies, manuscripts and papers in

different, professional styles with one click!

What next?

• Learn more!Visit our booth for a 5 minute demonstration.

• Contact: – Aaron Maierhofer– amaierhofer@refworks.com

• Local Partner: – AKME Archive– joanna.kukawska@akmearchive.pl