From: Tracy Gardner <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 15:06:15 +0000

Apologies for cross posting.

We thought readers would be interested in this latest news from Simon
Inger and I regarding a large scale research project we have recently
undertaken. Over 19,000 survey responses were received from academics,
lecturers, students, corporate researchers, practitioners and medics
from all over the world, working in a variety of subject areas and
sectors. The purpose of the research was to understand how readers in
different regions and disciplines discover content in scholarly
journals and what impact that has on publisher and library web site
design and function.  The full press release can be found below and a
free summary report can be found at:
http://www.renewtraining.com/publications.htm


PRESS RELEASE: 7th November 2012

Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner publish results of largest ever study
into How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Journals

The report, which is the culmination of a 6-month research project and
has the backing of leading publishers within STM, Humanities and
Social Science, compares the changing reader behaviour between 2005
and 2012 and as a result looks at the impact on publisher and library
web site design and function.

Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner announced today the publication of a
detailed report into discoverability of online content.

Simon Inger, commenting on the reasoning behind the research said
“There have been many studies using web logs that calculate where
users of scholarly resources were referred from, but this approach
doesn’t indicate where those users started their research, merely the
details of the last “hop” before hitting a content website. Discovery
of academic content is complex with a plethora of discovery resources
to choose from and many different routes to take. In order to expose
content to the maximum number of potential readers, publishers and
libraries need to understand these different routes and that is where
this report can help them”.

This report is the output of a large-scale survey focussing on journal
content discovery conducted during May, June and July of 2012. Over
19,000 responses were received from all over the world from readers in
many different sectors, job roles and subject areas.

The research repeats two earlier studies performed in 2005 by
Scholarly Information Strategies (for whom the authors were
consultants) and in 2008 by the authors. The shifts in reader
preferences over time provide a valuable insight into reader
navigation, the features that readers find useful in publisher web
sites, and the role and effectiveness of library technologies. The
2012 survey was also updated to include questions about search engine
preference and app use.

Given such a large number of responses were received, this report goes
much further than the previous two and is able to provide an insight
into how readers in different sectors, regions, subject areas, and job
roles behave.

So, for example, answers to all the following questions can be found
in the report:

• In which subject areas, regions, job roles and sectors do readers
make the most use of aggregated databases when searching for online
articles?

• Is Baidu, Google or Google Scholar the most popular search engine
amongst students in China?

• Which features do students, lecturers and academic researchers find
most useful on Publisher web sites?

• Which sectors make the most use of journal homepages and ToC Alerts?

Tracy Gardner said “This report informs publishers, libraries,
intermediaries and academics which resources the world’s consumers
prefer to use to discover scholarly content. It’s an invaluable piece
of research and we would like to wholeheartedly thank those
organisations who supported us”.

The survey was supported by BMJ Group, CABI, Cambridge University
Press, IOP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan,
Publishing Technology, RSC Publishing and SAGE.

A summary report is available for free and the full report is
available for £250 for organisations, £100 for academic libraries, and
approximately £7 (or equivalent in other currencies) for individual
use on Kindle (or Kindle viewers for PC, Mac, iPad).  The full data
set and the analytical tool are also available for purchase.  See
http://www.renewtraining.com/publications.htm  for more details.

ENDS

Tracy Gardner
TGM / Renew Training
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: www.renewtraining.com