From: Tracy Gardner <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:32:42 +0000 We thought members of this list would be interested in the publication of the results of a large scale study into How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Publications, by Tracy Gardner and Simon Inger. http://sic.pub/discover The open access report, which is the culmination of a 12-month research project and has the backing of leading publishers and intermediaries within STEM, Humanities and Social Science, compares changing reader behaviour between 2005 and 2015. The research attracted interest globally with over 40,000 responses from researchers; students; teachers; lecturers; professors; journalists; managers; clinicians; medics; librarians; government officials; and engineers working across all sectors. A selection of headlines from the research include: **More than half of all journal content delivery appears to be from free incarnations of articles. PubMedCentral is popular in the medical sector and social media sites appear to be a significant source of free articles in lower income countries. **A&Is are in decline, but remain the most important starting point for search. **Academic researchers in high income countries rate library discovery as highly as A&Is, and rate academic search engines as the most important discovery resource when searching **Academic search engines are now more important than general search engines in the academic sector in high income countries. **Online book discovery varies significantly by sector. **Publisher web sites have become more popular as a search resource. **Google Scholar is used more than Google in the academic sector, but less than Google in all other sectors. **Access to scholarly content by mobile phone accounts for only about 10% of the use. The research was supported by Annual Reviews, American Theological Library Association (ATLA), The Bone & Joint Journal, Brill, Cambridge University Press, The IET, ingentaconnect, The JAMA Network/American Medical Association (AMA), OECD, SAGE, and Wiley. A full press release can be found on our website at http://www.simoningerconsulting.com/nar/news.php The report can be downloaded from: http://www.simoningerconsulting.com/nar/how_readers_discover.html Tracy Gardner Consultant Simon Inger Consulting http://www.simoningerconsulting.com/ mailto:[log in to unmask] @siox14 #howreadersdiscover