The Research Workflow Revolution:The Impact of Web 2.0 And Emerging

Networking Tools On Research Workflow

Bill RussellCommunications Director

4th April 2011

Welcome To Yorkshire

Research Aims

• Are social media impacting upon researcher workflows?

• If so, how should publishers and librarians respond?

About the surveyA global survey of facts and opinions

• Key facts

• 2,414 researchers

• 215 countries

• Arts and humanities, STM, social sciences inc. business

Methodology

1,923

users

491

non-users

Research partners• Emerald & UCL

Contributors & Groups• Charleston Conference • Cambridge University Press• Taylor & Francis• Wolters Kluwer• Imperial College, London• Manchester University• Edinburgh University

Contrast Group

Most popular social media in researchA big gap between awareness and use

• Key findings

• Big gap between awareness (orange) & actual use (green) in 7 out of 8 categories.

• Exception - Collaborative authoring

• Social media has not yet made big inroads into researcher workflows.

Most popular social media in researchGeneric services rule

Use of social media toolsFew people use more than 2 sets of tools

• 63.4% of social media active researchers use tools from just 1 or 2 categories.

The research life cycleWhere do social media fit?

Emerging research preferences

Observations

There are real benefits where social media

support the research process.

The core of the research process is

not well supported by social media.

Research Workflow: Perceived usefulness of social networking tools by research stage

The scale is

1=Not at all useful

2=Somewhat useful

3=Very useful

4=Extremely useful

Perceived social media benefitsDoes visibility drive esteem? 1=Strongly disagree 5=Strongly agree.

Social media enthusiastsDifferences by age group?.. Not much!

What users want from publishers:- Read any content on any platform. - Links to data

Links to the data

behind the

published

article 33.4%

Greater use

of multimedia

11.2%

RSS as

standard

6.4%

Content readable

on all platforms

42.8%Multilingual

capabilities

6.3%

Researchers single Researchers single

out one of the out one of the

recommendations recommendations

as highest priority as highest priority

for publisher action.for publisher action.

What users want from librariesMake the library more like Google

Index full text library

holdings56%

Preserve

Web 2.0

content

7.9%Catalogue

Web 2.0 content

9.8%

Socially tag library

Catalogue 11.7%

Add a social network

interface to the

library catalogue

14.2%

Researchers single

out one of the

recommendations

as highest priority

for library action.

Scholarly information discovery preferences 1=Least favoured and 5=Most favoured

Importance attached to specific dissemination channels1=Not at all important & 4=Extremely important

Researcher’s Maze Getting BiggerAnd More Complex

Information And Research GumboRicher, More Complex, Faster/Slower

• Articles

• Book chapters

• Institututional Repositories

• Government reports

• Research bodies (OECD)

• Media

• Blogs

• Social Media encountered material

• ALL sources need checking and validating

Scholarly Research & TechnologyEvolutionary Process

• Printed Journal: 1665

• Conferences

• Telephone

• Journal explosion

• Books

• Internet & digitisation

• Institutional repositories

• Science Blog – Blog of Blogs

• Skype

• Twitter

• Facebook

• What’s next……..?

Charles Darwin

As The World Gets More Complex..Metrics & Authority Matter More

• Citation Rankings• REF Lists• Subject lists• Journal Usage Factor• PIRUS 2 – Usage at the article level

Does Social Media Mark A Watershed?

• Not really…….

Research Workflow

Implications For Researchers

• Author needs have not changed that much

• Scope for research expanding, especially Social Science

• More tasks – and more checking

• Social Media outlets no competition for releasing research.

• Great for amplifying dissemination

• Concern over releasing “unsafe” data

Research Workflow & The Library

• “Library is a building: Google is the whole world”

• Version of record is key

• Lots of proactive work by librarians

• Library & librarians not mentioned once in two researcher dominated groups – 4 hours of discussion

• Opportunity to influence workflow and increase research efficiency, but how to maximise impact – not clear

Implications For Publishers

• Proven dissemination approaches are still working well

• Version of record, with great metadata, matters

• Multi-level versions - video/audio/language/summaries

• Must connect with subject communities in their space

• Tweetable titles

• More technology to keep up with

• Shared Challenge: librarians and publishers need to engage and support users as technologies and workflow evolves