Understanding Factors that Encourage Research Productivity for Academic Librarians

Abstract

Objective -This project identifies the factors that contribute to the success of librarians as active researchers. Research success is generally aligned with productivity and output, and the authors are therefore interested in understanding the factors that encourage research productivity. This fills a gap in the literature on librarians as researchers, which has tended to focus on barriers rather than enablers.Methods -For this quantitative study, we distributed an online survey to 1,653 potential participants across Canada and received 453 usable responses for a 27% response rate. The Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2017, 12.4 103 survey asked participants to report their research outputs and to answer questions that addressed three categories of factors: Individual Attributes, Peers and Community, and Institutional Structures and Supports. We then statistically analyzed participant responses in order to identify relationships between the research output variables (weighted output score and number of peer-reviewed articles) and the three categories, the factors within those categories, and the constituent components.Results -Participants' research output consisted largely of presentations, non-peer-reviewed articles, peer-reviewed articles, and posters. All three categories of factors were significantly related to research output, both for a calculated weighted output score and for number of peerreviewed articles. All of the factors identified within those categories were also significant when tested against weighted output score, but Intrinsic Motivations was not a significant factor when tested against number of peer-reviewed articles. Several components of factors were also not significant for number of peer-reviewed articles. Age was the only significant component of Demographics. Three components of Education and Experience were significant: whether participants had received research training after completing their MLIS, whether they were working on an advanced degree, and the institution where they had obtained their MLIS.Conclusions -Research productivity is significantly impacted by all three categories: Individual Attributes, Peers and Community, and Institutional Structures and Supports. Fostering an environment that focuses on all of these areas will be most likely to promote research output for librarians. At the same time, this study's findings point to particular aspects that warrant further investigation, such as the nature and effect of institutional support and librarians' motivations for doing research.

An Exploratory Study of Accomplished Librarian-Researchers

“…The authors developed a survey to elicit information about the respondents' professional training, their research networks, their beliefs about research, and their research practices. The survey included questions about research beliefs and practice adapted from Hoffmann et al (2017). The survey also included five openended questions about factors contributing to research productivity designed to elicit a more comprehensive understanding of the factors directly from the accomplished librarianresearchers.…”

“…The survey also included five openended questions about factors contributing to research productivity designed to elicit a more comprehensive understanding of the factors directly from the accomplished librarianresearchers. The authors also measured productivity of participants directly by collecting and coding full and recent CVs of each participant rather than self-reports, which can be unreliable (Hoffmann et al, 2017).…”

“…Based on a definition of research productivity as "completion of research activities and subsequent dissemination of research findings" (p. 15), the authors conducted a content analysis of these articles and identified 16 factors that they believe contribute to research productivity, which cluster into 3 broad categories: individual attributes, peers and community, and institutional structures and supports. They used these categories to develop a survey administered to 1,653 librarians who worked at the 75 Canadian Research Knowledge Network and were likely conducting research as part of their job responsibilities (Hoffmann, Berg, & Koufogiannakis, 2017). In the study, Hoffmann et al calculated a research productivity score and looked for statistical correlations with specific success factors.…”

“…The last section asked respondents to evaluate twenty-eight statements regarding beliefs about the research process with a yes or no response to report whether it generally applies to them or not. The statements are a subset from the survey administered by Hoffmann et al (2017) to academic librarians employed by Canadian research libraries. To facilitate comparisons with this previous study, the statements used as much of the verbatim language as the original question as possible.…”

Canadian Academic Librarians and the Need for a Systematic and Comprehensive Research-Support Model

“…While the primary focus of this research was to learn of supports that academic librarians currently have and use, the secondary focus was to determine if comprehensive support models that cover aspects discussed in the literature have evolved over time Koufogiannakis 2014 and2017;Blessinger and Costello 2011;Cosgriff, Kenney, and McMillan 1990;Fox 2007b;Isaac 1983;Koufogiannakis and Crumley 2006;Sassen and Wahl 2014).…”