UKSG Conference 2017 Breakout - Postgraduate research students’ academic journal User eXperience (UX): findings from a joint Loughborough University and Taylor & Francis project - Gareth Cole and Laura Montgomery
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This document summarizes a study conducted by Taylor & Francis and Loughborough University on the user experience of postgraduate research students when searching for and managing academic information. The study found that (1) Google and Google Scholar are most students' starting points for research, though the library catalog is still used, (2) students primarily download papers to hard drives or use Mendeley to manage information, and (3) lack of access and time required to find information are the biggest frustrations. The study provides insights that could help libraries and publishers improve services to better meet students' needs.
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UKSG Conference 2017 Breakout - Postgraduate research students’ academic journal User eXperience (UX): findings from a joint Loughborough University and Taylor & Francis project - Gareth Cole and Laura Montgomery
- 1. Postgraduate Research Students’ Academic Journal User Experience (UX) Findings from a Joint Taylor & Francis and Loughborough University Project Gareth Cole, Research Data Manager, Loughborough University Laura Montgomery, Communications Manager, Taylor & Francis Group UKSG Conference – April 2017
- 2. How the session will run Brief Project Overview Introduction to the Findings Group Discussion Around the Findings
- 4. Why Are We Here? This study focuses on the needs and behaviours of the Postgraduate Research Student. Valérie Spezi, New Review of Academic Librarianship, 2016 (Literature Review): • information seeking studies of Postgraduate Researchers as a specific user group are rare. We both needed to fill this knowledge gap. We both wanted to pilot publisher-library collaboration 4
- 5. Project Overview • Collaborative study developed and run by Taylor & Francis Group and Loughborough University • Mapped the User Experience of 10 Postgraduate Research Students over 8 months • Discover how they find and manage information • Identify opportunities to enhance the PGR library UX 5
- 6. What We Wanted to Know 6
- 7. How We Did It 7 1 • T&F and Loughborough ran a joint ‘how to get published’ workshop for PGRs. • PGRs recruited to complete an initial survey 2 • Recruited participants (based on quality of survey response) from range of disciplines • Financial incentive offered 3 • Monthly diary completed by PGRs over 8 months • Additional thematic questions posed each month • Support offered by academic mentors 4 • Focus group 5 • Findings collated and analysed
- 9. Questions for discussion today 1. How do PGRs search for papers to read? 2. How do they manage this information? 3. How do PGR students develop their research skills? 4. What frustrates PGR students the most? 5. What do students want from publisher platforms and how might they be improved?
- 10. Question 1: What do you think are the gateways PGR students use to access papers to read? Go to www.menti.com and enter code 34 74
- 11. Gateways PGRs Use 11 First3to5websitesby numberofmentions The Library Catalogue plays a part! ‘Google First’: most research starts with either Google and Google Scholar Publisher websites are seldom the starting point for research
- 14. How could librarians or publishers intervene? • Group Discussion: What do you observe about these PGR student workflows? What might the PGR students be missing out on with these workflows? How might librarians or publishers intervene to enhance their searches? Please share your thoughts! Go to www.menti.com and enter code 34 74 14
- 15. Could we have helped?
- 17. Question 2: How do PGR students find relevant papers again? Go to www.menti.com and enter code 34 74
- 18. How PGR Students Retrieve Relevant Content 18 Mendeley also Popular5 3 5 10 3 8 10 7 18 27 Library Catalogue Plus e-Shelf E-mail Google Drive Reference Manager Word document of citations Browser history Browser favourites Handwritten notes Mendeley Download articles to hard drive BW DP HJ JG JH KP NR PI SK SR Most commonly download articles to hard drive
- 19. Information Retrieval Practices Evolve Over Time BUT data management does not always improve: 19 “a file of my notes and quotes from my readings with the relevant reference attached in a Word document ... is not adequate for PhD work where the process is so much longer than any take [sic] I have previously undertaken.” “At first I was very particular about saving the papers to my PC in the same folder with the same kind of document name. Now I have got too lazy and find that it takes too long to rename all the papers in my PC when downloading a lot of papers at once.”
- 20. Question 3: How do PGRs develop their research skills? Go to www.menti.com and enter code 34 74 (multiple choice) 20
- 21. How PGRs develop their research skills
- 23. Question 4: What frustrates PGRs the most? Go to www.menti.com and enter code 34 74 23
- 24. Lack of Access and Time were the biggest frustrations for PGRs 24 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 9 Finding relevant papers Unable to tell if book online is of interest (no access) Library didn't have book Lack of awareness of inter-library loan Google Books - Copyright issues Waiting for book in Library No time for inter-library loan Article search is time-consuming Access (lack of)
- 25. PGR Frustrations with the Information Finding UX • Group Discussion: How might publishers and librarians solve access problems? (Go to www.menti.com and enter code 34 74) How can we make the process less time- consuming? • Group Feedback 25
- 27. Question 5: What do PGRs think about publisher platforms & what improvements could be made? REALITY CHECK PGRs rarely use the publisher website as the starting point for their research (unless they have received a specific journal alert) “I cannot envision how I would ever make a Publisher's website a default search location. The reason for that is that I would then have to repeat my search terms on the sites of other publishers to ensure I am not missing an important article that was published in another journal” 27
- 28. Important Publisher Platform Features for PGRs 28 ‘Download PDF’ button Search bar (for searching within a journal) Obvious and readable abstracts Clearly visible metrics, citation stats, and ‘also read’ articles Aims and scope, editorial board, and submissions guidelines needs to be clearly signposted Access Icons Quick sharing links
- 29. CONCLUSIONS & NEXT STEPS 29
- 30. 7 Insights into the Postgraduate Research Student Library User Experience 30 1. Google and Google Scholar are the most frequent starting points for PGR students’ digital research, but the library catalogue is still used. 2. PGRs most frequently download useful papers to hard drive or use Mendeley. Some still rely on handwritten notes and internet history so they can find articles again, but their research management skills improve over time. 3. Lack of access to articles, and the time required to find them, are the biggest frustrations to PGR students. 4. PGR students rarely visit the physical library. Library services and support need to be visible at point of need. 5. Workshops have the greatest influence on PGRs’ information literacy skills, but supervisors also play a big role and need to keep up-to-date. 6. Social media is being used at all points in the research cycle, right from seeding an idea - not just for the dissemination of research. 7. PGR students keep up-to-date through journal or Google Scholar alerts, as well as social media, but fear missing out.
- 31. What Next? At Loughborough: Use conclusions to improve policies and process at Loughborough and monitor progress At T&F: Work with colleagues in sales, technology and marketing to ensure recommendations for service improvements are considered Launch DIY Library UX research toolkit at www.tandf.co.uk/libsite / via Library Lantern Determine global relevance of findings 31
Notes de l'éditeur
- LAURA Good afternoon and great to see you all here today! First, some introductions. This is Gareth Cole and he’s Research Data Manager at Loughborough University’s Pilkington Library. And I am Laura Montgomery – Communications Manager for Library Relations at Taylor & Francis. We’re here today to talk about the findings from a joint research project Taylor & Francis & Loughborough conducted to explore the postgraduate research student’s library user experience. The session we plan to run with you today will be pretty interactive and we hope that you will leave with further insights into how PGR students search for and manage information in the digital library, as well as some ideas about how we – as librarians or as publishers – might improve their journey. We’re going to start off by giving you a brief overview of the research we conducted and the questions we asked, then we’re going to get a bit hi-tech and – assuming you’ve all got a smartphone, iPad or laptop with you AND the wi-fi’s up and running – we’re going to do a few live online polls to find out whether our results match up with your own knowledge (or hunches!), and then – for each question we’ll have some discussion around the findings.
- The study we’re going to present to you today takes a specific segment of library customers – the Postgraduate Research Student – and shows you how we went about finding out more about their needs and behaviours. Why Postgrad Research students? Because recent years have seen rapid change in scholarly communication, and whilst the academic journal remains central in many disciplines to the research lifecycle, the ways in which this content is discovered and managed are changing year on year. Despite this, very few studies have been done to date on the Postgraduate Research student’s approach to information seeking. From our different perspectives, both T&F and Loughborough University Library needed to fill this gap. We were both also keen to experiment with how publishers and libraries might benefit from collaborating and sharing resources / expertise to fulfil different objectives in similar spheres
- This was a collaborative study developed and run by T&F and Loughborough University. The collaborative approach worked well for both parties: Taylor & Francis had the resources to collect and analyse the data Loughborough University had access to the students and provided mentors to support them The communication and press teams at both have been involved with engaging the scholarly community. Both organisations fed into the work with the same end goals in mind – to identify opportunities to enhance the User Experience. Our initiative set out to examine the online research habits of postgraduate students. 10 postgrads were recruited to provide diaries of their online research journey on a monthly basis over a period of 8 months between November 2015 to June 2016. We wanted to document how they approached online research, from the first initial search onwards. We were also interested in how they managed online information throughout the research process. We are well aware that a study of 10 students has its limitations. This was never intended to be a broad, definitive international study. In the first instance we wanted to really drill down deep into what these postgrads were doing, sketch out the likely route to information an associated pain points, and identify the questions which might ultimately lead to enhancing the Postgraduate Research Student’s experience. We would then have the option – if necessary – to broaden the study, or road test our conclusions.
- Our study sought the answers to 7 key questions: Reaching the information: How are PhD students discovering online journal resources? Using the information: How aware are PhD students of the origin of the resources they are using? How much time do PhD students spend on the various stages of the research journey? How are PhD students managing their references? The library: How are students using library space? What relationship do students have with their librarians? What role does the librarian play in the development of research skills? The publisher: What role do publisher platforms play in the research journey? How helpful do PGRs find existing publisher platforms? What features do they most like / dislike? Frustrations: What are the common frustrations with research in the digital library? Keeping up to date: How do they keep up to date? We hoped that the findings would help libraries and publishers improve the services and products we offer PGRs. From a publisher perspective, we also wanted more in depth information about PGR interaction with different publisher websites to get insights into how their functionality, layout, navigation, content, and extra information compared. These findings need further probing.
- An initial survey was completed by 26 PGRs. From these, T&F and Loughborough worked together to identify the best quality responses, and these PGRs were offered a small financial incentive for taking part in the study. The participants were all 1st or 2nd year PGRs and came from a range of disciplines: sociology of sport sport marketing Psychology Geography Design civil engineering, sport & health science and management. One was visiting from overseas. A monthly online questionnaire was completed by each student providing an overview of how they had approached their research that past month and how they had managed the resulting digital information. Because we were seeking rich descriptions of the user journey, the survey has concentrated on gathering qualitative rather than quantitative data. Accompanying this process, we also held a focus group offering the opportunity for students to share views about online research through group discussion. Mentors supported the participating students throughout, which guaranteed long term commitment and quality of response.
- We are acutely aware that the diaries of just 10 students in one particular institution cannot be representative of the global PGR universe, but they do provide us with some good clues about the PGR user experience in the digital library, and challenge some of our prior convictions. So rather than presenting our findings to you straight, we’d first like you to discuss what you would expect to find with regard to some of the questions in our study. Today we’re going to focus on the findings to 5 of the 7 questions we
- Sometimes – but without know exact detail not as often as I would have thought! Tended to be services that PGRs were unaware of – e.g. Inter-library loans or the recall option on the Library Catalogue The only interaction with a real librarian mentioned in any of the process maps was when one of the PGRs asked about how the ILL system worked – once they found out, they were off using their quota!!
- Each workflow is different – even for the same student - depending on what they are doing. Implication for Library support and UX of websites etc. If we were to do this again we would ask for the keywords they were searching to identify patterns
- The majority of students downloaded articles to their hard drive to find them again, but Mendeley was also popular. Handwritten notes were very popular as a method of Some students relied heavily on browser favourites and history. Could be more than one method – e.g. download to PC and then add to Mendeley When asked about managing the information found, most of the students mentioned that their practice has evolved since starting either their undergraduate or PhD course. BW (l), for instance, recognised that their previous system of “a file of my notes and quotes from my readings with the relevant reference attached in a Word document ... is not adequate for PhD work where the process is so much longer than any take [sic] I have previously undertaken.” However, others have mentioned that their ability to manage data has not always changed for the better: “At first I was very particular about saving the papers to my PC in the same folder with the same kind of document name. Now I have got too lazy and find that it takes too long to rename all the papers in my PC when downloading a lot of papers at once.” - l SK Key factor for change was attending a course.
- The most common trigger for change cited was a workshop.
- Face-to-face workshops have a role.
- GJC changed to “Information finding UX” GJC removed timings
- Is access denied data informing acquisitions? How might publishers develop better models for PPV? Publishers and librarians need to work together more collaboratively to problem solve? How can librarians supply users with research skills? What is the librarian’s role in keeping academic supervisors informed of the latest information literacy techniques? How can librarians better promote the services they offer? How might librarians and publishers better promote the functionality of their databases? PGR students need to learn to be patient Passwords.
- The ‘download PDF’ button was consistently highlighted as the key element on a journal article page The search bar is appreciated, especially for searching within a journal Obvious and readable abstracts are essential to understanding the value of the article Clearly visible metrics, citation stats, and ‘also read’ articles are important Additional information about the aims and scope of a journal, editorial board, and submissions guidelines needs to be clearly signposted “I’d like to see easy access to some more information however, i.e. editors, aims and scope, submission guidelines etc. These are either not present or lost in my search for them.” Icons that indicate instantly whether or not you have access to a journal are very helpful Quick links for sharing articles are useful
- So what are we going to do now? What difference does all this make? Well, at Loughborough… And at T&F, I’ll be presenting these findings to colleagues in sales, technology, and library marketing to ensure that recommendations for service improvements are integrated into our strategy – eg. by considering better PPV models, staying focused on what matters on journal article pages (and their discoverability) or by providing researchers with tools to support their information literacy, or by providing librarians with a toolkit for conducting their own research into their own student user experience. To this end we’ll be launching in a couple of weeks a Library UX toolkit – featuring tips on how to set up and analyse a research project like this of your own. We hope feedback from participating libraries will help us to determine the global relevance of our findings. Thanks!