A qualitative study of social sciences faculty research workflows

Abstract

PurposeThis paper is a qualitative study of how social sciences faculty construct their research workflows with the help of technological tools. The purpose of this study is to examine faculty scholarly workflows and how both tools and practices support the research process. This paper could inform academic libraries on how to support scholars throughout the research process.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative study case study of ten faculty members from six research universities from the United States and Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and recorded. Atlas.ti was used to code and analyze the transcripts; each participant was a separate case. Descriptive coding was used to identify digital tools used for collaboration; process and descriptive coding was utilized to examine practices in scholarly workflows.FindingsThrough case study analysis the results of this study include the role of technology in faculty research workflows. Each workflow was grouped into four categories: information literacy, information management, knowledge management, and scholarly communication. The findings included scholars creating simple workflows for efficiency and collaboration and utilizing workarounds.Research limitations/implicationsThe study did not observe faculty in the process of doing research and, thus, only reports on what the researchers say that they do.Originality/valueThe research is unique in that there is almost no research on how social scientists conduct their research workflows and the affordances/impasses of this process.

Collaborative technology practices in social science early career scholarly research workflows

“…A second challenge we identified in earlier work is the difficulty of using collaboration tools when different collaborators use different tools (Ince et al, 2022). For example, if one scholar at one university is expected to use OneDrive for secure storage and another is required by their institutional human subjects committee to use Box.com, some arrangement needs to be reached.…”

“…Nonetheless, sometimes the lack of collaboration and learning support in tools impedes scholarly workflows, and especially the kinds of apprenticeship and legitimate peripheral participation that junior scholars need. In one example (Ince et al, 2022) we see a faculty member describing how the lack of support for learning tools and learning through tools hampered the types of participation young scholars could have with their advisor.And when every tool becomes more complex than the problem solving, I think they just tend to abandon this or I just don’t have the time as an assistant professor with everything I have to juggle to have to manage a tool and then manage people that are a team of people. A team of students.…”

“…But this does not appear to be any sort of systematic apprenticeship or knowledge transfer. Since faculty practices are often very heterogeneous and may not take advantage of newer tools (Ince et al, 2022), this means students may be left to improvise or attempt to learn from other sources, whether through Web searches, marketing from software providers, or communities besides their local faculty and student colleagues. And, while students may be very fluent in using technology tools for collaboration from prior use in other non-scholarly contexts, they typically have limited fluency with technology in support of their scholarly work (Margaryan et al, 2011).…”

“…Sometimes even Facebook becomes a really rich space because I'm friends with a lot of people who are studying similar things to me Nonetheless, sometimes the lack of collaboration and learning support in tools impedes scholarly workflows, and especially the kinds of apprenticeship and legitimate peripheral participation that junior scholars need. In one example (Ince et al, 2022) we see a faculty member describing how the lack of support for learning tools and learning through tools hampered the types of participation young scholars could have with their advisor.…”

“…There is a limited amount of literature on how and why doctoral students are using tools within the research process (Carpenter et al, 2012; Gessner et al, 2011; Ince et al, 2018, 2019, 2020) but we found none focusing on why doctoral students are using collaboration tools within the scholarly workflow. We (Ince et al, 2018, 2020, 2022) define scholarly workflow as being composed of four categories of activities and their concomitant skills: Information Literacy (forming a research question, searching for and/or gathering information); Information Management (organizing the information found in a way that it is manageable for the scholarly process); Knowledge Management (selecting and curating information); and Scholarly Communication (disseminating output and other scholarly communications practices). In this study, we examine which tools doctoral students use as part of the scholarly workflow, specifically with a lens on collaboration in both the vein of collaborative research and collaborating to learn to research.…”