Scholarly Communication Librarians’ Relationship with Research Impact Indicators: An Analysis of a National Survey of Academic Librarians in the United States

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Academic librarians, especially in the field of scholarly communication, are often expected to understand and engage with research impact indicators (or the collective quantitative and qualitative measures of research impact). However, much of the current literature only speculates as to how academic librarians are using and implementing research impact indicators in their practices. METHODS This study analyzed the results from a 2015 survey administered to over 13,000 academic librarians at Carnegie-classified R1 institutions in the United States. The survey concentrated on academic librarians' familiarity with and usage of research impact indicators. RESULTS This study uncovered findings related to academic librarians' levels of familiarity with research impact indicators and their uses of these indicators in their professional development and in their library job duties. DISCUSSION In general, academic librarians with regular scholarly communication support duties at R1 institutions tend to have higher levels of familiarity with research impact indicators. Overall, academic librarians are most familiar with citation counts and usage statistics and least familiar with altmetrics. During one-on-one consultations with faculty, certain research impact indicators, such the JIF, were more likely to be addressed than others. In addition, the findings suggest that faculty who are concerned with tenure, promotion, and grants are more likely to have an interest in research impact indicators. The survey results also hint toward a growing interest in altmetrics among academic librarians for their professional advancement. CONCLUSION Academic librarians are continually challenged to keep pace with the changing landscape of research impact metrics and research assessment models. By responsibly employing research impact indicators in their own practices, academic librarians can provide a crucial service in educating the wider academic community.

Conjoint analysis of researchers' hidden preferences for bibliometrics, altmetrics, and usage metrics

“…As potential reasons for altmetrics' low popularity, Aung et al (2019) mention academics' insecurities regarding altmetrics' added value, missing encouragement of altmetrics-and social media usage from institutions, and privacy concerns, among others. The reoccurring finding of a comparatively low familiarity with altmetrics is in line with multiple other surveys across academic librarians (Miles, Konkiel, & Sutton, 2018) and faculty (Bakker et al, 2019;DeSanto & Nichols, 2017).…”

“…These findings are in line with observations made in previous surveys and interviews that revealed a critical stance many researchers have regarding both altmetrics as relevance indicators and social media platforms as channels for scholarly communication (Aung et al, 2019;Lemke et al, 2019;Nicholas et al, 2020a). The rank order bibliometrics > usage metrics > altmetrics also coincides with findings by Miles et al (2018) about academic librarians' familiarity with different types of research impact indicators. It stands to reason that also for researchers their reluctance to use web-based indicators can at least in part be explained by their lesser familiarity with them compared to citation-based metrics (Aung et al, 2019;Bakker et al, 2019;DeSanto & Nichols, 2017;Lemke et al, 2019).…”

Investigating academic library responses to predatory publishing in the United States, Canada and Spanish-speaking Latin America

“…Indeed, it is becoming common to see academic libraries hiring specialists in “scholarly communication” to support researchers with the creation, evaluation, dissemination and preservation of research (e.g. Miles et al , 2018). Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate what types of support academic libraries are providing to researchers to help them avoid predatory publishing.…”

Faculty Perceptions of Research Assessment at Virginia Tech

“…With the increasing focus on short-term quantitative indicators for research assessment and resource allocation, institutions across the world have shifted priorities and sought expert advice on bibliometric indicators and databases, especially from academic libraries (Thuna & King, 2017). A survey study found that faculty members are more likely to consult with librarians on the use of the JIF, h-index, and citation counts for purposes related to promotion, tenure, and grants than for other purposes, highlighting the importance of these three indicators for evaluation purposes (Miles et al, 2018). A recent review of RPT documents from a representative sample of 129 public universities in the US and Canada revealed that despite the high incidence of the terms 'public' and ' community,' there were no explicit incentives for ' assessing the contributions of scholarship to the various dimensions of publicness ' (17), such as the openness and accessibility of scholarship.…”

“…The majority of academics are unfamiliar with altmetrics in general and/or do not use them (Aung et al, 2019;Južnič et al, 2014;Miles et al, 2018;Sutton et al, 2018). Additionally, they are not widely used in RPT evaluations, and even when they are, evaluators do not usually consider them towards promotion or tenure decisions (Alperin et al, 2019).…”