How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Publications: Trends in reader behavior from 2005 to 2015

"Headline findings:

As a starting point for search, A&Is seem to be in a slight decline when looked at in aggregate across all regions and sectors, but remain the most important. Figure 4, p11  Academic researchers in high income countries now rate library discovery as highly as A&Is, and rate academic search engines as the most important discovery resource when searching for journal articles. Figure 11, p18  Library discovery services have made significant advances in importance in search for academic researchers, and for all roles in hard sciences in the academic sector. As an average across all subjects and sectors, however, they have not grown in importance in since 2012. Figure 4, p11; Figure 7, p14; Figure 11, p18  More than half of all journal content delivery appears to be from free incarnations of articles. There appears to be a clear PubMedCentral effect in the medical sector. Social media sites appear to be a significant source of free articles in lower income countries. Figure 37, p39  In academic STM in higher income countries, academic search engines are now more important than general search engines. Figure 4, p11  Table of Contents alerts have reduced in popularity in all measures across the survey. Figure 26, p31; Figure 35, p37  There appears to be an increased role for social media in discovery. Figure 9, p16  Online book discovery varies significantly by sector, with academics preferring library web pages marginally over general web search engines, the medical sector preferring A&I services and library web over search engines, but all other sectors preferring search engines over other forms of discovery. Figure 31, p34  Publisher web sites are becoming more popular as a search resource, although this is less true for people in wealthier countries. Figure 10, p17; Figure 18, p24  Google Scholar is used more than Google in the academic sector, but less than Google in all other sectors. Figure 22, p27  A perceived lack of awareness of Google Scholar in poorer nations appears to be leading to a reduced use of free incarnations of content in institutional repositories from these regions. Page 40  Readers in low income countries use their mobiles to access journals more than their counterparts in richer countries. However, access by phone still accounts for only about 10% of the use. Figure 42, p44  A&Is continue to be the most important search method in the medical sector. Figure 15, p21  The primary method of journals discovery is search, but even more so for online books. Figure 33, p35  App use for journal discovery is still low. Figure 45, p45  The most highly sought-after features of journal web sites are changing. Figure 49, p48 ..."