© Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Disciplinary differences: some findings and conclusions Presentation to the Research Communications Forum Sue Sparks November 22nd, 2005

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Aims, methodology, caveats ► Aims ► Inform JISC of the needs of academic researchers in different disciplines for information resources ► Help JISC to understand the barriers and opportunities facing researchers both in access to research resources and in publishing their work ► Methodology ► Desk research ► Web-based survey (750 responses across all RAE UoAs) ► Validation workshop ► Reporting only broad-brush groups here but there are significant differences within groups ► Problems defining “discipline” ► Growth of cross, inter and multi-disciplinary work

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved What researchers can’t do without ► Pre and post-prints, conference proceedings each named by about 6% of physical sciences/engineering ► Datasets by 8% of social sciences, 3- 4% of physical and biological sciences ► “Other textual” sources by 10% of languages and 15% of arts/humanities

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Single essential discovery tool ► Google not the overwhelming choice ► Sciences lean to subject-specific resources ► 22% of medical/biological chose subject-specific online gateways as their single essential tool

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Problems in access to resources ► A majority in medical and biological sciences and arts and humanities reported problems in access to resources ► Sizeable minorities – over 40% - in all other groups also experience problems

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Problems in dissemination ► Around half of respondents in medical and biological and social sciences and 40% of arts and humanities researchers reported problems in dissemination ► Most important problems: space in highly-rated journals, speed of review, fewer monographs published

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Informal communication ► Around 80% in every disciplinary group seek information from colleagues face-to-face, via phone and ► Reading newsletters and blogs and posting queries to lists is more prevalent in social sciences and arts/humanities than in other groups ► Scientists (especially in the physical sciences and engineering) are less likely to circulate drafts of work among colleagues for comment but much more likely to engage in face to face collaboration and to use shared online collaborative environments compared with social scientists and arts/humanities researchers ► Social scientists and arts/humanities scholars are more likely to take an active part in discipline-specific online communities and discussion lists and to write blogs, compared with scientists

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Peer communication and the RAE ► Journal articles: quite close fit between ‘most effective peer communication’ and ‘biggest impact on RAE score’; biggest gap in physical sciences and engineering ► Many of these researchers view pre and post-prints and especially peer- reviewed conference proceedings as the most effective forms of peer communication

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Journal preferences

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved The RAE and innovation in scholarly communication ► The vast majority of researchers across all disciplines agree that the RAE skews both the practice and dissemination of research ► High awareness (60-70%) was shown of the open access debate ► The majority of researchers in all disciplines favour research funding bodies mandating self- archiving ► Most scholars across the disciplines think the journal article will remain relevant to their discipline in the next ten years, but they also think new forms of dissemination will grow in importance

JISC Disciplinary differences findings © Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Some conclusions ► Significant differences exist between disciplines in resource use, dissemination and informal communication - no surprises there ► Problems in finding appropriate outlets for interdisciplinary research occur mainly in social sciences and arts and humanities ► The effect of the RAE on research practice and dissemination is critical ► Arguably, a combination of wide provision of e-journals to the desktop and perceptions of the judgements of RAE panels has driven a ‘convergence’ of disciplinary use and publication around the journal article ► But the ‘single most essential resource’ still displays considerable disciplinary variation ► Researchers both expect and are open to change in the scholarly communications process

© Rightscom 2005 – All rights reserved Thank you Full report is at ts/Disciplinary%20Differences%20and%2 0Needs.doc