Medical faculty use of the journal literature, publishing productivity and the size of health sciences library journal collections.

OBJECTIVES: This 1990-1991 study explored the relationship between the size of health sciences library journal collections and the number of different journals cited by medical school faculty in departments of biochemistry and medicine. METHODS: Two regression equations, including variables associated with a national stratified sample of 622 faculty who published articles during those two years, were used to explore factors correlated with variations in faculty use of the journal literature and faculty publishing productivity. RESULTS: Results suggest that, after controlling for other variables in the models, neither the number of different journals those faculty cited, nor the number of articles they published, had statistically significant correlations with the number of journals in the health sciences library collection. CONCLUSION: The traditional view that the size of an academic health sciences library's journal collection is a good measure of how well that library is positioned to support faculty research may not be entirely accurate.     

How research becomes impact: Librarians helping faculty use scholarly metrics to select journals

Many librarians support faculty with the publishing process, which includes journal selection and evaluating the impact of their scholarly output. While large universities have the resources for entire departments devoted to bibliometrics, the authors of this article give strategies for faculty publishing support at a smaller liberal arts university. The authors created a LibGuide with publishing resources and presented the initiative to several academic divisions. Faculty were surveyed, and the results indicated that the majority of respondents were interested in assessing journal quality and viewed the library as a resource for help with the publishing process.     

Publication and citation patterns among LIS faculty: Profiling a “typical professor”

Research on publication and citation patterns generally focuses on prolific or highly cited authors or on highly ranked programs. This study investigates the work and influence of a cross-section of library and information science (LIS) researchers at various stages of their academic lives, using a random sample of faculty members at programs accredited by the American Library Association. The analysis shows that the number of publications increases steadily as faculty rank advances. Assistant professors publish more conference papers and fewer journal articles, a pattern that is reversed with associate and full professors. Researchers used Web of Science® and Google™ Scholar to determine the influence of the publications. Web of Science reported no citations for most LIS faculty publications. With its broader scope, Google Scholar located more citations and revealed that the works of professors are cited significantly more frequently than publications by assistant or associate professors. When faculty profiles are compared by type of program, faculty members at schools granting doctoral degrees publish significantly more than their counterparts at schools where there is no doctoral program or where the doctoral degree is offered jointly with other academic units. When the comparison is made across ranks, full professors publish significantly more than faculty members at other ranks. There is no significant difference between assistant and associate professors.     

Out of class communication between faculty and students: A faculty perspective

While many scholars recognize that the process of education extends beyond the formal classroom, relatively little research has focused on the role of communication in this area. This article focuses on out of class (OOC) communication between faculty and students. First, the benefits of OOC contact for students, faculty, and educational institutions; the frequency of such contact; and what is known about the roles of student and instructor sex in such contexts are explored. Then, the results of a study exploring the roles of faculty perceptions of instructor empathy, relational topoi, and instructor sex are reported. The findings indicate that these variables all relate to the amount and kinds of OOC communication that occur.     

Scholarly productivity of U.S. LIS faculty

One aspect of faculty effectiveness can be measured through research productivity, and publication and citation rates can serve as an indicator of that productivity. This study, the fourth in a series to examine LIS faculty and program productivity as measured by publication and citation, uses the same methodology as the previous investigations. A consistent data instrument (the Social Science Citation Index) provided publication and citation data for LIS faculty, covering the years 1999 to 2004. Tables show the faculty and programs with the highest publication and citation rates, both overall and per capita, as well as a cumulative ranking of LIS programs based on faculty research productivity. This study, in conjunction with the three previous, documents an increase in LIS research productivity, suggesting an increase in faculty effectiveness.     

More Than a Number: Unexpected Benefits of Return on Investment Analysis

In 2010–2011, University of Colorado (CU) librarians implemented a multi-campus pilot study to measure the institutional value of library resources used by faculty in their research. The study incorporated quantitative methods including return on investment (ROI), cost benefit analysis (CBA), and citation analysis of journal articles published by faculty; and qualitative methodologies such as in-person interviews with faculty. The study resulted in a CU ROI model that can be used to measure faculty perceptions of value and the economic benefits of electronic journal collections for faculty research in terms of ROI. The CU ROI methodology provides outcomes beyond a single ROI number and led to unexpected benefits for informing collection development decisions and strategies.     

Do We Have It? A Comparative Analysis of Library Journal Holdings and Works Referenced in Faculty Publications

Libraries often wonder if their collections can support their faculty’s research. Large citation databases, such as Scopus or Web of Science, can help automate such a review process. This session will present findings about to what extent faculty were able to complete their journal publications without utilizing interlibrary loan. Using data gathered from Scopus, the range and date of journals referenced by faculty at my home institution will be compared with holdings from my library’s electronic resources knowledge base to determine the level of overlap. Results will be presented by journal discipline to highlight any variation among the science, social science, and arts and humanities divisions. Special emphasis will be given to using this data to inform decisions about purchasing journal backfile collections.     

A Review of “Temptations in the Office: Ethical Choices and Legal Obligations”

A citation analysis study was conducted on faculty publications from Business School at Institution. Citations were analyzed by format of materials, library availability, journal concentration by department and the citation age of the journal articles. This study was undertaken in an effort to guide local collection development knowledge, compare how departments in the business school used different resources, and illustrate trends in business faculty citations as compared to similar studies. The study was also conducted in order to enable business librarians to be able to understand, anticipate, and respond to faculty research needs in the business school.     

Analysis of recorded biomedical book and journal use in the Yale Medical Library. II. Subject and user relations

Cancelled charge slips collected over a one-year period supply the data for this analysis of circulation in the Yale Medical Library. Full-time teaching faculty are the heaviest users of journal literature, and students, of monograph literature. Faculties of Medical School departments are compared in terms of their use of material in individual subjects. Subject literatures are analyzed in terms of groups of users borrowing from them. The extent to which journal titles used by medical students are also used by Medical School faculty is examined. One of the products of the study is a rank list of journal titles used in the Library. Results are presented in several tables.     

Discriminative graphical models for faculty homepage discovery

Faculty homepage discovery is an important step toward building an academic portal. Although the general homepage finding tasks have been well studied (e.g., TREC-2001 Web Track), faculty homepage discovery has its own special characteristics and not much focused research has been conducted for this task. In this paper, we view faculty homepage discovery as text categorization problems by utilizing Yahoo BOSS API to generate a small list of high-quality candidate homepages. Because the labels of these pages are not independent, standard text categorization methods such as logistic regression, which classify each page separately, are not well suited for this task. By defining homepage dependence graph, we propose a conditional undirected graphical model to make joint predictions by capturing the dependence of the decisions on all the candidate pages. Three cases of dependencies among faculty candidate homepages are considered for constructing the graphical model. Our model utilizes a discriminative approach so that any informative features can be used conveniently. Learning and inference can be done relatively efficiently for the joint prediction model because the homepage dependence graphs resulting from the three cases of dependencies are not densely connected. An extensive set of experiments have been conducted on two testbeds to show the effectiveness of the proposed discriminative graphical model.     

Challenges of getting faculty status: Perception of university librarians in Pakistan

Abstract

Objective:To find out the university head librarians’ perceptions about the issues in getting faculty status.

Methodology:A qualitative research design was used to explore the issue through personal and telephonic interviews with 15 chief librarians of 18 university libraries located in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The textual data was content-analyzed and coded. The emerged themes and subthemes have been presented with the frequency of their occurrences. The findings have been supported by the selected quotations of the interviewees.

Findings:A majority of the librarians had vague understanding of the notion of faculty status. Almost all of them desired for granting faculty status to the university librarians. However, their opinion was divided on the prerequisites for faculty status. Most of them supported the same criteria for employment and promotion of faculty librarians, as is used in case of their teaching faculty counterparts. The study has identified that the main barriers in getting faculty status are the librarians themselves, lacking preparedness in terms of qualifications and research output.

Implications:The study brings into light both the possibilities of granting faculty status to the university librarians and barriers in this regard. Besides, the findings though extracted from a small number of respondents, may be of interest to other countries in the region.

Originality/value:This exploratory investigation identifies barriers in getting faculty status and is the first ever study on the subject in the local literature.

Conclusion:Faculty status will help in improving visibility, image and respect of librarians. Therefore, there is a need to prepare university librarians for faculty status, and to struggle for getting it.     

Computer-stored faculty publication file using the MT/ST in a medium-sized medical center library.

The Bowman Gray School of Medicine Library has implemented a computerized faculty publication file adapted from an existing system that utilized a Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter for catalog card production and computer storage. The faculty publication file has provided printouts for the school's annual report and monthly faculty bulletins. After the data for all faculty bibliographies have been stored in the file, it will be possible to retrieve complete author and departmental listings. The file will be continuously updated by adding current citations and the bibliographies of new faculty members and by deleting data when faculty members leave the staff.     

Assessment of drug information resource preferences of pharmacy students and faculty

A 39-item survey instrument was distributed to faculty and students at Wingate University School of Pharmacy to assess student and faculty drug information (DI) resource use and access preferences. The response rate was 81% (n = 289). Faculty and professional year 2 to 4 students preferred access on laptop or desktop computers (67% and 75%, respectively), followed by smartphones (27% and 22%, respectively). Most faculty and students preferred using Lexicomp Online for drug information (53% and 74%, respectively). Results indicate that DI resources use is similar between students and faculty; laptop or desktop computers are the preferred platforms for accessing drug information.     

Analyzing faculty citations for effective collection management decisions

The article provides details of a faculty citation analysis study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The citation analysis analyzed faculty citations for publications published from 2002 to 2010. The citation analysis was used for a collection assessment project and continues to be used, along with other data to help assist with collection management decisions.     

Updating learning outcomes and engaging library faculty with the ACRL Framework

The arrival of the ACRL Framework and the removal of the ACRL Standards posed a new challenge to the user education coordinators at William Paterson University: how can the ACRL Framework be implemented and buy-in acquired from other library faculty? Not all librarians who teach are information literacy librarians; many never fully interacted with the Framework or knew about threshold concepts. Simply informing the other library faculty about the ACRL Framework was ineffective. They were not using it and still were unfamiliar with it months after incorporation by the ACRL Board. A strategy was devised to solve this problem by engaging the library faculty with the Framework while revising the preexisting general learning outcomes for information literacy instruction. Incorporating principles of reflective practices and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), user education librarians hosted a teaching circle designed to get librarians reading, talking, and discussing the ACRL Framework. With faculty feedback in hand, the existing outcomes were then revised and updated to include elements of all six frames.     

How ethnic studies faculty use streaming video: Instructional needs,applications, and challenges

While there have been studies on faculty use of streaming video resources in academic libraries, none have focused on the specific needs of ethnic studies faculty. Using a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 ethnic studies faculty from two public university campuses, this study found that faculty engagement with video is based upon a pedagogical strategy that responds to the specific demands and goals of ethnic studies curricula, while centering on student needs by using free resources whenever possible. Within this paradigm, faculty choose from three categories of content: key primary and secondary sources; flexible supporting sources; and current topics of interest. Understanding what motivates ethnic study faculty could be helpful as librarians work with vendors and advocate for the content that best meets instructional needs. Librarians can also help improve faculty's instructional outcomes by communicating about licensing options and streaming media availability through the library.     

The journal deselection project: The LSUMC-S experience

Financial constraints, along with several other factors, prompted the library staff of the Louisiana State University Medical Center at Shreveport (LSUMC-S) to evaluate the journal collection through a comprehensive review project. Faculty members were involved throughout the process. After identifying those subject areas most relevant to their disciplines, faculty members received journal lists by subject to rate the titles in importance to their department's work. This subjective input from faculty was considered along with usage statistics and other objective data gathered by library staff. This combination of information assisted the library staff in making difficult decisions in a fair and logical manner.     

Information-seeking behavior and use of social science faculty studying stateless nations: a case study

The information-seeking behavior of social science faculty studying the Kurds was assessed using a questionnaire, citation analysis, and follow-up inquiry. Two specific questions were addressed: how these faculty locate relevant government information and what factors influence their seeking behavior and use of such information. Results show that besides using traditional methods for locating relevant government information, social science faculty studying the Kurds use the World Wide Web (Web) and electronic mail (e-mail) for that purpose, suggesting that these faculty are aware of, and utilize, new information technology to support their research. Results also show that the information-seeking behavior of social science faculty studying the Kurds is influenced by factors similar to those influencing other social science faculty. Moreover, results also show that accessing the needed materials is a major information-seeking activity that should be added to David Ellis' behavioral model, and that faculty examined here employ somewhat a more elaborate “differentiating” information-seeking activity than the one described in the model. Some elements of interdisciplinarity of Kurdish studies as a field of research have been discovered, however, further research is required to verify that. Implications for library services and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Online journals' impact on the citation patterns of medical faculty.

PURPOSE: The purpose was to determine the impact of online journals on the citation patterns of medical faculty. This study looked at whether researchers were more likely to limit the resources they consulted and cited to those journals available online rather than those only in print. SETTING: Faculty publications from the college of medicine at a large urban university were examined for this study. The faculty publications from a regional medical college of the same university were also examined in the study. The number of online journals available for faculty, staff, and students at this institution has increased from an initial core of 15 online journals in 1998 to over 11,000 online journals in 2004. METHODOLOGY: Searches by author affiliation were performed in the Web of Science to find all articles written by faculty members in the college of medicine at the selected institution. Searches were conducted for the following years: 1993, 1996, 1999, and 2002. Cited references from each faculty-authored article were recorded, and the corresponding cited journals were coded into four categories based on their availability at the institution in this study: print only, print and online, online only, and not owned. Results were analyzed using SPSS. RESULTS: The number of journals cited per year continued to increase from 1993 to 2002. The results did not indicate that researchers were more likely to cite online journals or were less likely to cite journals only in print. At the regional location where the number of print-only journals was minimal, use of the print-only journals did decrease in 2002, although not significantly. CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION: It is possible that electronic access to information (i.e., online databases) has had a positive impact on the number of articles faculty will cite. Results of this study suggest, at this point, that faculty are still accessing the print-only collection, at least for research purposes, and are therefore not sacrificing quality for convenience.