Librarians in Print : A Scholarly Approach to Library Research, Writing, and Publishing
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This document provides an overview of the scholarly publication process for librarians. It discusses selecting a topic, conducting a literature review, choosing a research approach and methodology, structuring and reviewing a manuscript, selecting a publication venue, and handling the editorial process including revisions and potential rejection. Interactive slides and examples are provided to illustrate each step of the publication process and common challenges librarian authors may encounter. The goal is to equip librarians with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to successfully publish their research.
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Librarians in Print : A Scholarly Approach to Library Research, Writing, and Publishing
- 1. LIBRARIANS IN PRINT A SCHOLARLY APPROACHTO LIBRARY RESEARCH, WRITING, AND PUBLISHING Sarah Steiner Head of Research & Instruction Services Western Carolina University All images are CC licensed
- 2. Have you already published? https://flic.kr/p/8icLi9
- 3. Do you have an idea for a publication? https://flic.kr/p/de5dUt
- 4. Today’s Special 1. Selecting a topic & gearing up 2. Selecting your research approach with the Boyer Model 3. Constructing and reviewing your piece 4. Choosing a publication venue 5. Navigating the journal editorial process 6. Handling suggestions for edits and rejection = Research Plan & Confidence (I hope)!
- 5. 1. Selecting a Topic and Gearing Up https://flic.kr/p/5HBAha
- 6. Common Lament 1: “This whole thing is overwhelming.” https://flic.kr/p/c4hh2
- 8. Common Lament 2: “I don’t have any ideas worth writing about.” https://flic.kr/p/7LLaFh
- 10. Brainstorm Topics • What challenges is my library facing? • What challenges am I facing in my job? • Is there a dearth of existing data on something I’m worrying about or dealing with? • Have I read a great article recently and want to build on its findings? • What new trend or idea am I excited about? • Do I have a skill from a previous job/career which librarians might be able to adapt? • Have I completed a project or tried a strategy I’m proud of? • Have I tried something which failed, and I’d like to assess why it didn’t work so others don’t make the same mistake? https://flic.kr/p/f6Q2N
- 11. Common Problems https://flic.kr/p/nV3XQm • Article doesn’t pass the “so what” test/ isn’t original or significant. • Plan isn’t feasible to implement.
- 12. Example • Problem I was facing: A lot of librarians were taking a very long time to pick up chat questions, and by the time they answered, the patron would be gone. Almost 20% of questions were being “missed.” • So what? If we don’t answer a chat in a timely fashion, the patron goes away unhappy and without an answer. That person might not use chat again or might tell friends about the negative experience. Our chat traffic would decline and cause people to have negative feelings about the library.
- 13. Exercise 1: Topic Brainstorm (in pairs or trios)
- 14. Identify Hypotheses: What do you suspect you will find? https://flic.kr/p/dHoPfK
- 15. Co-Authors, Editors, and Other Allies https://flic.kr/p/8qyLug
- 17. 2. Conduct a Preliminary Literature Scan https://flic.kr/p/a4VWED
- 18. Choosing Your Route with the Boyer Model https://flic.kr/p/5YyXJW
- 19. Scholarship of Discovery Traditional empirical research •Surveys •Focus groups •Ethnographies •Case studies •Experiments https://flic.kr/p/5e9LhX
- 20. Scholarship of Integration Synthesizes research across disciplines, within a discipline, or across time •Application of business ideas to librarianship •Application of counseling models to librarianship •Annotated bibliographies or other overviews on specific topics •Identification of trends or presentation of new ideas https://flic.kr/p/kLdwnC
- 21. Scholarship of Application Discovery of ways new information/knowledge can be applied to solve problems. •Applying the new information literacy framework to resolve motivation issues •Applying a new theory in cataloging to improve workflow https://flic.kr/p/98SbGw
- 22. Scholarship of Teaching Systematic study of teaching and learning processes •Exploration/sharing of class activities •Exploration of training best practices https://flic.kr/p/kLdwnC
- 23. Exercise 3: Research Options (in pairs or trios) Pick a topic and consider how it might be realized as scholarship in each of the Boyer categories. • Scholarship of Discovery (traditional empirical research survey, focus group, case study, experiment, ethnography) • Scholarship of Integration (synthesis of ideas from other disciplines or areas, synthesis of ideas across time) • Scholarship of Application (how can the discoveries of others be applied to solve your question) • Scholarship of Teaching (exploration of class, learning, or training activities)
- 24. 3. Designing Your Research https://flic.kr/p/bM96pa
- 27. Collect New Data: Ask People https://flic.kr/p/o3SPz4
- 28. Collect New Data: Observe People https://flic.kr/p/5vxGp
- 30. Keep Scope In Mind https://flic.kr/p/5Cdkz7
- 31. Example • Extant Data: • Use chat transcripts to see how long a patron waited before receiving a response. • New Data: • Interview random chat users about their experiences and thoughts regarding wait time. • Solicit chat users and observe them to determine how long they wait before they give up. • Ask users how long they think they’d be willing to wait before they gave up.
- 32. Example Narrowed • Extant Data: • Use chat transcripts to see how long a patron waited before receiving a response. • New Data: • Interview random chat users about their experiences. • Solicit chat users and observe them to determine how long they wait before they express annoyance. • Ask users how long they think they’d be willing to wait before they gave up/got annoyed.
- 33. Exercise 4: Methodology and Application (pairs or trios) • What information would you need to help you answer your research question? • Do you have existing data to use? • Will you need to gather new data/information? • If you do need to collect new data… • Which information collection mode will best meet the information need and your abilities? • Survey: • Interviews: • Focus groups: • Observation study:
- 34. Don’t forget your IRB https://flic.kr/p/5HBAha
- 35. 4. Constructing and Reviewing Your Piece https://flic.kr/p/38euo
- 36. Common Problems • Consistency: tone, tense, writing style • Grammar • Literature review: scope, currency, structure, focus • Weak research methods • Authorship arguments What concerns do you have/ or what feedback have you encountered? https://flic.kr/p/59pBRW
- 38. 5. Choosing a Publication Venue https://flic.kr/p/dvutYf
- 39. Exercise 5: Finding a Publication Venue (alone) Look at Ulrich’s or DOAJ to find possible publication venues.
- 40. 6. The journal editorial process https://flic.kr/p/8A6XQV
- 41. 7. Handling Suggestions for Edits and Rejection https://flic.kr/p/F5tn8o
- 42. Resources Babbie, Earl. The Practice of Social Research. Wadsworth Publishing, 13th edition, 2012. Beck, Susan E., and Kate Manuel. Practical Research Methods for Librarians and Information Professionals. Neal-Schuman, 2008. Boyer, Ernest. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Special Report) Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990. Creative Research Systems. Sample Size Calculator. http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm Creswell, John W. and Vicki L. Plano Clark. Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. 2nd edition. Sage, 2011. Creswell, John W. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 4th edition. Sage, 2013. Dillman, Don A., Jolene D. Smyth, Leah Melani Christian. Internet, Mail, and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, 3rd edition. Elsevier. Understanding the Publishing Process: How to Publish in Scholarly Journals. https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/91173/Brochure_UPP_April2015.pdf Hedges, Andrew. Random Number Generator. http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/random/ Qualtrics. Determining Sample Size: How to Ensure You Get the Correct Sample Size. https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/determining-sample-size/ Silipigni Connaway, Lynn, and Ronald R. Powell. Basic Research Methods for Librarians. 5th edition. Libraries Unlimited, 2010.
- 43. Sample Sizes and Selection https://flic.kr/p/bBEDt
Notes de l'éditeur
- If this is something that concerns you, get a buddy! Someone who you know and work well with. This is not the time to work with a stranger. Make sure you take a look at the person’s previous publications and see what you think of them. Do you like the writing style? Do you get along well with the person? Is there a clear area of overlap with your research interests? Pick something you’ll have to work on anyway for your primary job function. Don’t try to force partnerships, though.
- See if the journal you’re thinking of offers a research mentor program (some do, but not many). Ask someone if they will help you with just the design piece but not the authoring as a professional favor. Also, don’t feel shy about contacting the journal or book editor for assistance on whether your idea is appropriate in terms of scope, methodology, etc.
- Any piece of information which is valuable to you will be valuable to another librarian. Sometimes that’s a project you did well and want to share details of, so others can emulate and build on an idea you had and executed. You might think to yourself, well, I’m new to this, but everyone else knows it already—that’s not true. Even studies which have already been done can often benefit from a re-examination or duplication in another setting, because every library is different. So, just find something that really interests you—something you’re really jazzed about—and you can and will find a niche. Pick an idea which is close to you. Don’t try to solve someone else’s problem. Also look to ideas for additional research in articles which you read and enjoy.
- Pick a topic you’re passionate about and truly curious about. No matter what the topic, you’ll be able to do some meaningful research there. If you can tie it in with your job, DO IT. Something you’d have to investigate anyway to retain employment. This is the best way to fit in research, in my experience. One of the things I most like to do is find an article on a topic which I feel excited about, and look at their ideas for additional research. You can chat with the author or authors to see what they’re doing as a follow-up, if anything. You can use a lot of their literature review and perhaps even the structure of that article to make your life easier. If you’ve been working a while, there are surely questions you have or things which you’ve explored which you know others are interested in—if you’re interested in something and it has practical applications for you, then it will also have applications for someone else.
- Lack of originality of significance is one of the most common reasons for article rejection.
- This was an ideal question for me to investigate, as I was the virtual reference coordinator, so it was my job to think about these things, and I didn’t have to make time to do it as an add-on.
- What are your hypotheses? You may worry thinking about what you think you will find might make you more biased. You already have those ideas in your mind, in most cases, and it’s best to just get them out in the open and acknowledge them.
- Possible co-authors (would an ally from a different library or department be useful?): Possible editors: Content/topic expert: Content/topic newbie: Grammar/structure expert:
- Intent of the literature review is to get a sense of the conversation surrounding an issue and to identify gaps in the research. Follow the citation chain forward and backward. I thought for a long time that if I found a couple of articles on my topic, it would somehow be a copout or bad to write on that topic again. That’s not true. Sometimes if you find an article which is on what you’d planned to cover, you can find a great suggestion for how to take it further in the last section, where they offer ideas for additional research. If you do that though, it’s not a silly idea to contact the author or authors to find out if they are already conducting some of that research. That way, you can differentiate. If it’s your first time, you may even be able to use the same data set the author of that study used. More and more people are making their data publicly available for others to use. Again, if you do that, it’s nice to chat with the author(s). They will probably be thrilled to see their data get some more use, and they might be able to put that information in their promotion files or annual review files. Chain forward and chain back—look at works cited and then sources which cite yours in Google Scholar. Don’t forget to update your literature review at the end, once you’ve written, to see what new things have been published.
- Scholarship is anything which systematically advances the teaching, research, and practice of librarians.
- Think broadly and we can narrow later.
- This could mean it’s data you’ve already gotten through a survey, from your chat transcripts, from your headcounts or usage analysis of folks in the building. You could install some sort of heat mapping software on your website to assess clicks on that, or use click data from your LibGuides or other web resources. Software options for data analysis SPSS (quant) SAS (quant) Atlas.ti (qual) NVIVO (qual) hyperRESEARCH (qual)
- MANDY SWYBART-HOBAUGH’s GUIDE: http://research.library.gsu.edu/gradsoc/finddata strive to get a representative sampling of your audience, not a convenience sample. If you can’t think of a way to get a solid sample via survey, think of another way you can gather your data. So, for example, we just did a new website for my library. We did some usability testing. To that end, we did an analysis of our population: percentage of graduate students, faculty, undergraduates, and their subject areas. You may also want to think about commuter, traditional, or returning student status, and insure your respondents are reflective of those groups. What percentage is statistically significant? “In many… studies, for example, surveys should be administered in different seasons (e.g., high, shoulder, low seasons), at various times of the week (e.g., weekday, weekend), and with multiple activity groups (e.g., anglers, hikers) to account for differences in recreationists’ characteristics and visitation patterns (Mitra & Lankford, 1999)” http://nature.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/2008-3%20Needham%20%26%20Vaske%20-%20Chapter%2008%20-%20Survey%20Implementation,%20Sampling%20%26%20Weighting%20-%20Second%20Proofs.pdf My advice is not to choose a topic where you’re trying to create really large generalizations, to start. Do something small like testing how students use a specific space or tool and how marketing impacts that usage. Or perhaps measure how the introduction of a specific exercise helps student retention of specific information literacy concepts. Keep things small for your first time—don’t choose a population which is hard to pin down.
- In person or electronically Studying Students (University of Rochester) is a great example
- Test question construction guide: http://www.k-state.edu/ksde/alp/resources/Handout-Module6.pdf Constructing the survey: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/survwrit.php
- How long they actually waited, not low long they thing they’ll wait. The reason was that part of my lit review revealed that people aren’t good estimators of how long they wait before they get annoyed. We decided to eliminate the annoyance issue for now, but I still want to integrate it into another study at some point.
- You’ll have to do some human subjects training Then you’ll have to jump through whatever form-filling-out hoops they want you to. It’s different in different institutions. The rule I always heard is that you should go through IRB if you plan to publish, but that’s not quite an accurate assessment of when you’ll want to get in touch with them. That said, I tend to err on the side of better safe than sorry and go for an exemption. Most of our research is exempt because it is unlikely to pose risk to participants. Trying to get approval after you’ve done the research can be a pain, but it’s not impossible.
- Get someone who’s not been involved in the writing to review the piece. I like to get two people: one who knows a lot about the topic and who can critique it from an expert standpoint, and another who is new to the topic and who can tell me if it’s clear to the novice in that area. If one of those is also someone with a tight grip on grammar rules, that’s awesome. Make sure the someone who you get feels comfortable telling you about problems; if you aren’t aware of them at this point, you will hear about them from the journal editor. Empower them to give you a real critique and not pull punches—soft reviews aren’t doing anyone any favors.
- Consistency issues, tone issues, One common issue with many authors—it can be clear who wrote which parts. Maybe consider tone evening as a part of your workload at the outset. Is the literature review all on topic, or has it gone into random directions? Does it read more like an annotated bibliography than an exploration of major relevant themes? Are there too many direct quotes, or is it a synthesis of ideas?
- You may want to do this first, if you have a desired publication place in mind. Different journals have very different scopes and publish different types of studies. In some cases, like RUSQ, the focus is clear. But in journals which are more broad, you have to think about the types of studies they publish. You can also look through your lit review, as you conduct it, and see where studies like yours are being consistently published. If you’re doing a thought piece, where are those published? A quantitative? Topical, research methodologies of focus, open access considerations, unethical publishers You can put out a feeler to the editor to see if the topic is worth submitting.
- The editorial staff (the editor or assistant editors) review all incoming submissions for: • relevance to the journal • originality of research or innovative practice (and how generalizable it may be) • rigor of method and/or data (using this term very broadly) adherence to journal guidelines and engaging writing style Wendi Arant Kaspar, C&RL editor http://crl.acrl.org/content/77/5/564.full.pdf+html There’s also a great timeline graphic in this article
- How common is revise and submit? Super common, so don’t take it hard. A rejection doesn’t mean the article is bad, it just might not be a good fit. This is where those pre-letters to the editor can be really useful, especially if you are on a tight timeline.
- It’s important to think about how you are selecting respondents If you just use a class, this can be fairly easy, but still requires thought. Is the class you’ve chosen representative? Would a few different classes with different professors help to create a broader picture? Are you looking at honors students? Don’t just pick the most cooperative faculty—they might create issues. Maybe you want to pool all sections of ENG 101 and pull a random sampling of them, then hit those course sections. How can I avoid sampling bias? http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Sampling_bias Make sure you aren’t using a convenience sample Polling library users might get you a reasonable sample of library users, but that’s not necessarily representative of your entire target population. You may not care! Maybe you’re just trying to determine whether the study is feasible, or looking to get a quick idea of the landscape on an issue. Random number generator, match to a full list, target people individually. Everything has bias—there is nothing perfect. But we can try. Be aware of personal biases and how they can impact your selection of respondents. Maybe you want to ask every third or every fifth person something. CLUSTER sampling versus single stage (randomized in either case—but with cluster you first identify graduate students, undergraduate students, faculty, community, then sample from each of those groups.)