Information Literacy & Open Access for Physics and Astronomy Graduate Students Jackie Werner, Science Librarian Georgia State University

Outline  Background  Open Access & SCOAP 3  Open Access in Physics & Astronomy  Faculty and Open Access  Graduate Students and Library Research  Methodology  Results  Discussion

Introduction

Open Access & SCOAP 3

SCOAP 3  Sponsoring Committee for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics  High-Energy Physics partnership  Negotiated with top ten HEP journals to pay fees to make all articles green open access  4,280 articles published as green OA in 2014, “comprising the majority of the high-quality peer-reviewed literature in the field of High-Energy Physics”

OA in Physics & Astronomy  arXiv  Founded in 1991  Preprints and OA articles  Multiple disciplines  Most HEP articles appear on arXiv

OA in Physics & Astronomy  Astrophysics Data System (ADS)  Founded in 1992  Abstract database including arXiv & traditional journals  Includes OA and non  Digitizes older publications

OA in Physics & Astronomy  INSPIRE-HEP  Replaced SPIRES in 2012  Searches arXiv & HEP resources  Curated content in HEP  Includes OA and non

OA in Physics & Astronomy  CERN Document Server (CDS)  Covers all CERN publications  Searches arXiv & other HEP publications  Includes OA and non

OA in Physics & Astronomy  Google Scholar  Not technically OA, but…

Faculty and Open Access  HEP researchers support open access  Scientists are aware of open access  Faculty & graduate students recognize what is open access

Graduate Students and Library Research  Graduate students turn to faculty advisors and lab group for literature searches  …if they receive instruction at all  Are graduate students aware of open access ?

My Research

Methodology  Conducted at Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University  Interviewed graduate coordinator for Physics and Astronomy program  Sent survey to all Physics & Astronomy graduate students

Results  Current responses:  1 graduate coordinator interview  16 complete graduate student surveys  0-1 years in program: 4  1-2 years: 3  2-3 years: 3  3-4 years: 3  4+ years: 3

Q8. Have you ever received training or asked for help on how to search for physics articles in graduate school? No Yes, in graduate courses Yes, by advisor Yes, by a librarian speaking to a group Yes, but only after asking a professor/librarian Yes, somewhere else

Information Literacy Instruction – Faculty  Graduate students given practice with oral presentation and published papers  Information literacy instruction and practice depends on graduate advisors  No library orientation for graduate students?

Information Literacy Instruction – Graduate Students

Q6. Are you aware of open access (OA)? 1.Never heard of it 2.Heard the term, but don’t know what it means 3.Yes, somewhat aware 4.Yes, very aware 5.Yes, and I keep up with news and developments in open access

Open Access – Faculty  Library faculty advisory board spent year educating campus on open access  Official stance open access publication is encouraged, but not required  Students may not know which resources library is paying for

Open Access – Graduate Students

Q9. Have you published a peer- reviewed article while in graduate school? Q10. How many peer-reviewed articles have you published while in graduate school? Q11. How many peer-reviewed articles have you submitted while in graduate school, but are not yet published? Q12. Where is your article(s) currently available?

Publication – Faculty  Some faculty “take it as their responsibility” to have students write papers, others don’t  Publication is not required for graduation

Publication – Graduate Students

Number of Publications

Availability of Publications

Q5. Are you aware of these resources and do you use them to find physics and/or astronomy articles? 1.Never heard of 2.Aware of but don’t use/use rarely 3.Aware of and use 4.Use frequently

Resources Used – Faculty  “Everybody uses [ arXiv ] without fail.”  Many faculty don’t use journals and don’t care about final publication

Resources Used – Graduate Students

Q13. How do you keep up with new developments and publications in your field?

Keeping Up – Faculty  “Everybody uses [ arXiv ] without fail.”  Faculty get Table of Contents from journals  Students mostly use Google Scholar—” as good as any search engine we pay for ”  Faculty and students encouraged to keep up in person (conferences, etc.)

Keeping Up – Graduate Students

Q14. How do you think methods of keeping up with new developments and /or publications in your field will change in the next five years?

Changes in Five Years  No “ dramatic changes ”  Aggregation  “Scientific community similar to LinkedIn”  Improvements to existing resources  “Wider recognition of open access journals ”

Takeaways  We don’t know how graduate students do research  Open access resources may serve students’ needs  …but students don’t know what library resources do  Many questions still to ask

References  Catalano, A. (2011). Patterns of graduate students' information seeking behavior: A meta-synthesis of the literature. Journal of Documentation, 69(2):  George, C., Bright, A., Hurlbert, T., Linke, E.C., St. Clair, G., & Stein, J. (2006). Scholarly use of information: Graduate students' information seeking behaviour. Information Research, 11(4): paper 272. Retrieved from  Gentil-Beccot, A., Mele, S., & Brooks, T.C. (2009). Citing and reading behaviours in high-energy physics: How a community stopped worrying about journals and learned to love repositories. Scientometrics, 84(2),  Ginsparg, P. (1994). First steps towards electronic research communication. Computers in Physics, 8(2),  Hemminger, B.M., Lu, D., Vaughan, K.T.L., Adams, S.J. (2007). Information seeking behavior of academic students. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(14):

References  Jamali, H.R. & Nicholas, D. (2006). Communication and information-seeking behaviour of research students in physicist and astronomy. ASIST Annual Conference, 3-8 November 2006, Austin, Texas.  Larivière, V., Sugimoto, C. R., Bergeron, P. (2013). In their own image? A comparison of doctoral students' and faculty members' referencing behavior. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 64(5):  Park, J. (2007). Motivations for web-based scholarly publishing: Do scientists recognize open availability as an advantage? Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 40(4):  Suber, P. (2013). Open Access Overview. Retrieved from (June 22, 2015).

Any Questions? Jackie Werner