Purpose – This paper aims to find the current situation of research data services by academic libraries and summarize some strategies for university libraries to reference. Recent years have seen an increasing number of university libraries extended their traditional roles and provided research data services. Design/methodology/approach – This paper selected 87 libraries of the top 100 universities listed in the World’s Best Universities released by the USA News in October 2012 as samples and conducted a Web site investigation to check if there were any research data services provided. In addition, it made an interview with the Wuhan University Library’s Research Data Service Workgroup to understand the procedure, difficulties and experiences of their research data service. Based on the survey and interview, it analyzed the current status and difficulties of research data services in university libraries and proposed some strategies for others to reference. Findings – Of the 87 university libraries investigated, 50 libraries have offered research data services. Most of the services can be divided into six aspects: research data introduction, data management guideline, data curation and storage service, data management training, data management reference and resource recommendation. Among these services, research data introduction is the most frequently provided (47.13 per cent), followed by data curation and storage services (43.68 per cent), data management guideline (42.53 per cent), data management reference (41.38 per cent), resource recommendation (41.38 per cent) and data management training (24.14 per cent). The difficulties met by research data service of Chinese academic libraries are also concluded. Originality/value – Through Web site investigation and interview with the Wuhan University Library’s Research Data Service, this paper presented an overall picture of research data services in university libraries and identified the difficulties and experiences of research data services of the Wuhan University Library. Based on some successful examples, it put forward some strategies for university libraries to reference. This study is very useful for academic libraries to promote their research data services.

Purpose This paper aims at understanding the current situation of research support services offered by academic libraries in world-leading universities and providing useful implications and insights for other academic libraries. Design/methodology/approach Of the top 100 universities listed in the QS World University Rankings in 2017, 76 libraries were selected as samples and a website investigation was conducted to explore the research support services. The statistical method and visualization software was used to generalize the key services, and the text analysis and case analysis were applied to reveal the corresponding implementation. Findings Research support service has become one of the significant services of academic libraries in the context of e-research and data-intensive research. The research support services can be generally divided into seven aspects, as follows: research data management (62, 81.58 per cent), open access (64, 84.21 per cent), scholarly publishing (59, 77.63 per cent), research impact measurement (32, 42.11 per cent), research guides (47, 61.84 per cent), research consultation (59, 77.63 per cent) and research tools recommendation (38, 50.00 per cent). Originality/value This paper makes a comprehensive investigation of research support services in academic libraries of top-ranking universities worldwide. The findings will help academic libraries improve research support services; thus, advancing the work of researchers and promoting scientific discovery.

Purpose – This article aims to summarize the employers' requirements of scientific data specialists and the status quo of LIS education organizations' training system for scientific data specialists. It also focuses on the matching analysis between the course content and the responsibilities as well as requirements of scientific data specialists. Moreover, in order to provide some indications for LIS education of scientific data specialists in China, it presents the training objectives and modes. Design/methodology/approach – Some job portals for librarians and the comprehensive job portals are investigated as information sources and the keywords such as “scientific data management”, “data service”, “data curation”, “e-Science”, “e-Research”, “data specialist” are selected to retrieval library-released job advertisements for scientific data specialists to understand the library's requirements towards scientific data specialists' core capabilities. Meanwhile the course catalogues of all iSchools' web sites are searched directly in order to find if scientific data courses are provided. Findings – Libraries value teamwork ability, communication ability, interpersonal ability and a good use of data curation tools as the core competences for scientific data specialists. Candidates who possess a second advanced degree, who understand libraries, who hold demonstrated knowledge of metadata standards, and who emphasize details, under the same condition, are more likely to be considered first. Libraries do not have a unified title for scientific data specialists yet. The current curriculums of iSchools mainly cover research method, data science, data management and data service, data statistic and analysis, data warehouse, information studies and technologies, and so on. Originality/value – This unique study explores some required qualifications of science data specialist surveyed by job openings, including the core skills, position requirements, responsibilities of the job, and some qualifications. It also investigates the related curriculum setting of iSchool universities through course descriptions. This study is very useful for curriculum development in Chinese LIS education of scientific data specialists including required core courses and selected electives, and to promote the practice of data service in Chinese academic libraries.

Purpose This paper aims to understand user information behaviours when they perform multilingual information retrieval. It also offers reference for the development of multilingual information retrieval systems and relevant service platforms. Design/methodology/approach The authors designed an experiment on multilingual information retrieval with WorldWideScience, utilized Camtasia studio7 (a screen capturing and recording tool) to record overall operational processes of subjects and collected participants’ thought processes with think-aloud protocols. Meanwhile, a questionnaire survey and interviews were used to examine the subjects’ background information, their feelings for the experiment and their ideas about the experimental platform, respectively. Thirty-two valid data points were obtained by 41 subjects. Findings The users preferred their own language for retrieval. Most users from social science chose general search or advanced search freely according to the tasks. The majority of the participants selected key words directly from the tasks as search terms. Doctoral candidates were more likely to construct a search query with logic symbols. Translation tools were utilized for assisting retrieval and solving doubts of translation. When facing obstacles, users stayed on the original web page to explore continually, followed by back to homepage. Originality/value This paper provides a study of user behaviour through investigating how users behave on the whole process of retrieving multilingual information. The findings offer advice for optimizing the function of multilingual information retrieval systems and service platforms.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct performance evaluation of eight main scientific data sharing platforms in China and find existing problems, thus providing reference for maximizing the value of scientific data and enhancing scientific research efficiency. Design/methodology/approach – First, the authors built an evaluation indicator system for the performance of scientific data sharing platforms. Next, the analytic hierarchy process was employed to set indicator weights. Then, the authors use experts grading method to give scored for each indicator and calculated the scoring results of the scientific data sharing platform performance evaluation. Finally, an analysis of the results was conducted. Findings – The performance evaluation of eight platforms is arranged by descending order by the value of F: the Data Sharing Infrastructure of Earth System Science (76.962), the Basic Science Data Sharing Center (76.595), the National Scientific Data Sharing Platform for Population and Health (71.577), the China Earthquake Data Center (66.296), the China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System (65.159), the National Agricultural Scientific Data Sharing Center (55.068), the Chinese Forestry Science Data Center (56.894) and the National Scientific Data Sharing & Service Network on Material Environmental Corrosion (Aging) (52.528). And some existing shortcomings such as the relevant policies and regulation, standards of data description and organization, data availability and the services should be improved. Originality/value – This paper is mainly discussing about the performance evaluation system covering operation management, data resource, platform function, service efficiency and influence of eight scientific data sharing centers and made comparative analysis. It reflected the reality development of scientific data sharing in China.

Purpose – Under the new technological environment, academic libraries meet an extremely intense competition in offering information services, and marketing becomes an important means to attain the goal of their sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to get an overview of library marketing in Chinese “985” Project Universities, the authors undertook a survey on each library of “985” Project Universities released on the web site of Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. And then the authors identified some successful practices based on the survey. Design/methodology/approach – First, the content of each web site, along with the individual hyperlinks and categories that every library web site has, were browsed to check the availability of the categories. Second, the search function of each library was explored using terms like “blog,” “video” and “tutorial” to retrieve information about services. Third, the Google search engine was used to retrieve information from Renren, microblog and YouTube accounts combining with the name of each library. And then the authors consult reference librarians about marketing methods and tools applied in their libraries with real-time online reference services. Findings – This paper suggests that 29 libraries are exploiting video marketing, which is the most widely used marketing methods, accounting for 74.36 percent. Mobile library marketing and microblog marketing are another two major application among the 39 “985” Project Universities libraries in China, respectively, accounting for 69.23 and 58.97 percent. Originality/value – The paper reveals that there are some deficiencies lying in the marketing of these libraries: characteristic resources in really simple syndication (RSS) are insufficient, video themes turn to be traditional and plain, network media marketing is relatively uncommon, and mobile library marketing is limited to mobile messaging services. It may fill in the gap of better understanding the relationship between the traditional information services and modern services from users’ perspective. It is instructive for libraries to systematically summarize success or failure experience of other library marketing, and keep an innovative concept and global vision.