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Weekly News Digest
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October 14, 2021 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
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Ex Libris Rolls Out Survey Results on the State of Academic Research
Ex Libris shared the results of its annual study on academic researchers’ challenges, research office leaders’ priorities, and opportunities libraries and research offices can leverage to advance their institution’s scholarship output. Respondents to the study’s survey were 400-plus researchers and research office leaders in a variety of disciplines and were located in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.Key findings include the following: - Funding remains a key challenge for researchers. Finding relevant funding opportunities (a task rated difficult or very difficult by 61% of the surveyed researchers) and applying for grants (rated difficult or very difficult by 80% of the researchers) continue to be the most demanding elements of the research life cycle. On a positive note, campus research offices have been supporting researchers’ search for funding more in 2021 than in 2020.
- Research office members and researchers differ in the way in which they measure research impact. Citation-based metrics are at the top of the list, used by 94% of the surveyed researchers and 68% of research office staff. Measuring social impact has been significantly more important in 2021, according to 57% of research offices, than it was in 2020, according to 43% of research offices. In 2021, measuring social impact has been significantly more important for 28% of researchers.
- Interdisciplinary collaboration is high on researchers’ agenda, with 37% of researchers saying that most or all of their work involves interdisciplinary collaboration. This figure aligns somewhat with research office priorities; 25% of research office leaders stated that promoting interdisciplinary collaboration is a priority.
- Researchers expect more from their library than in 2020. Although 61% of researchers expressed satisfaction with the support they receive from their institution’s library, they expect more assistance than in 2020, especially with data-related services and services such as publication depositing.
- Collaboration between research offices and libraries has risen in 2021. Research office leaders report that their collaboration with the library increased by 6% on average from 2020. Open-access compliance is the main area of collaboration, primarily for UK respondents.
For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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