Exploring Publishing Patterns at a Large Research University: Implications for Library Practice

Abstract

2012 Amos, Mower, James, Weber, Yaffe, and Youngkin. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -The research project sought to explore the value of data on publication patterns for decision-making regarding scholarly communications and collection development programs at a research-intensive post-secondary institution, the University of Utah in the United States.Methods -Publication data for prolific University of Utah authors were gathered from Scopus for the year 2009. The availability to University of Utah faculty, staff, and students of the journals in which University of Utah authors published was determined using the University of Utah Libraries' catalogue; usage was estimated based on publisher-provided download statistics and requests through interlibrary loan; and costs were calculated from invoices, a periodicals directory, and publisher websites and communications. Indicators of value included the cost-per-use of journals to which the University of Utah Libraries subscribed, a comparison of interlibrary loan costs to subscription costs for journals to which the University of Utah Libraries did not subscribe, the relationship between publishing venue and usage, and the relationship between publishing venue and cost-per-use.

Bibliometrics and Research Data Management Services: Emerging Trends in Library Support for Research

“…Published case studies provide further insight into new services launched since 2003 by academic and research libraries in Germany (Ball & Tunger, 2006), Australia (Drummond & Wartho, 2009;Gibbs & Sergeant, 2009), and the United States (Hendrix, 2010), as well as a whole department devoted to bibliometrics in Austria (Gumpenberger et al, 2012), and smaller scale or one-off activities and undertakings in the United Kingdom (Delasalle, 2012) and United States (Amos et al, 2012;Bennett, Leonard, & Wrublewski, 2012). Activities undertaken range from impact analysis (described as "response analysis" by Ball and Tunger, 2006), using quality indicators such as the h-index, Egghe's g-index, or alternative calculations for humanities and social science researchers (Bennett et al, 2012;Delasalle, 2012: Drummond & Wartho, 2009Hendrix, 2010), to trend analysis for scientific topics over time (Ball & Tunger, 2006;Drummond & Wartho, 2009), in addition to delivery of training and education for individuals and groups, which at the University of Vienna includes curricular courses for doctoral students and LIS students (Gumpenberger et al, 2012).…”

“…Services can be targeted at individuals, academic units, or institutional level and marketed in various ways for internal or external purposes: for example, advice on publishing strategies, especially for early-career researchers, and support for job applications or a salary/faculty review (Delasalle, 2012;Drummond & Wartho, 2009); "tenure metrics" workshops for faculty (Hendrix, 2010); standard sets of research impact measures for "grant application statements" (Drummond & Wartho, 2009); output comparisons for benchmarking with peer groups at different institutions (Ball & Tunger, 2006;Bennett et al, 2012;Delasalle, 2012;Drummond & Wartho, 2009); analyzing publishing patterns and usage data to inform a scholarly communications program at the University of Utah (Amos et al, 2012); finding a university's most cited papers and providing h-indices for the most cited researchers for institutional promotional materials (Hendrix, 2010); and support for national research assessment exercises (Delasalle, 2012;Drummond & Wartho, 2009), including compiling whole-career citation counts for researchers across the university (Gibbs & Sergeant, 2009). Practitioners have identified additional benefits of bibliometrics work in informing library collection development, facilitating institutional repository growth and improving metadata quality but also comment on the significant staffing effort involved (Amos et al, 2012;Drummond & Wartho, 2009;Gibbs & Sergeant, 2009;Hendrix, 2010).…”

“…Practitioners have identified additional benefits of bibliometrics work in informing library collection development, facilitating institutional repository growth and improving metadata quality but also comment on the significant staffing effort involved (Amos et al, 2012;Drummond & Wartho, 2009;Gibbs & Sergeant, 2009;Hendrix, 2010).…”

Open access publishing and author rights: A local and comparative study of selected ARLs

“…In the only U.S. bibliometric study found involving OA publishing, Amos et al () reported that 1% of the articles published by 22 “prolific” researchers at the University of Utah were published in OA journals. It is clear that additional local and multi‐institutional studies are needed to gauge changes in scholarly publishing.…”

A Local and Multi-Institutional Study of Open Access Engineering Publishing

“…There have been some larger bibliometric studies conducted to quantify OA publishing in India, 5 Germany, 6 and the UK, 7 but essentially none in the United States. In a study of 22 "prolific" researchers at the University of Utah, Amos et al 8 found only 1% of those researchers published in an OA journal. In a larger study of ARL libraries, Hubbard 9 reported that annual Gold OA publishing was between 5% and 9% for the institutions studied.…”