Tracy Gardner and Simon Inger invite supporters for How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Publications 2018

"Tracy Gardner and Simon Inger and have announced they are seeking supporters for the 5th in their series of large scale research projects identifying how readers discover academic content. Gardner and Inger have been undertaking major surveys on this topic since 2005 and have mapped the changing nature of how readers – from all over the world – find content. The 2015 research focussed on journal and book content discovery, with more than 40,000 respondents, and was supported by leading academic publishers, societies and intermediaries. The latest research will take on the very contentious issue of measuring perceptions of SciHub and ResearchGate in discovery and delivery. The 2018 research report will address the following questions: • How do readers working and studying in STM and HSS discover content? How has this changed over time? • What is the impact of SCNs (e.g. ResearchGate), repositories and Sci-hub on discovery and delivery? • How much content is downloaded from “free” vs “fee” sites? • What is the impact of social media on discovery? • How important are the various routes to discovery to people working in different fields, sectors regions, and at different stages of their careers? • What features do readers value on publisher websites? Tracy Gardner commented, “Our research gives people working in the scholarly publishing community vital information about how people find content, and crucially showcases the differences in discovery behaviour across regions, sectors, subject areas and job roles. We can only carry out this research with the support of publishers, societies and intermediaries and are ..."