Jennifer Schaffner
Program Oficer
OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership
OCLC Research and the Research Information Network (RIN) in the UK are conducting a collaborative research project to examine what information-related tools and services researchers use throughout the course of their research workflow. The research life cycle encompasses a wide range of activities, from the development of the investigative hypothesis through to final evaluation and dissemination. The goal of this project is to discover significant patterns, intersections, gaps and issues from the researchers’ point of view, whatever the source of such information services. This presentation will highlight key findings and recommendations of both the US and UK studies, forthcoming in May 2010.
Unlike recent reports of the behavior of researchers, these studies of faculty, deans and provosts at eight research-intensive institutions focus on tools and support services and how effectively they meet researchers’ needs. Information services used in the course of research may be commercial, open source, hand-crafted, or developed by a university or library. Examples of services that support research include Zotero, Mendeley, arXiv, NSF Cyberinfrastructure’s TeraGrid, Web of Science, Sakai, and subject repositories like EthicShare and EconomistsOnline. The combined OCLC Research and RIN analyses identify opportunities to support researchers’ needs and desires in diverse disciplines, across a sample of exemplary UK and US universities. These case studies compare national academic practices and provide evidence for recommendations to meet the needs of academic research internationally.