Signature March/April 2015 - 14

facetime

THE TRUTH ABOUT HOW
RESEARCHERS VIEW
SCHOLARLY JOURNALS
Leading researcher
Carol Tenopir says that
associations should
spend as much time on
getting the content to
the right readers as they
do on developing and
publishing it.
BY OONA SCHMID

What do you know about your
readers?
You may know a lot, you may
know a little - but I doubt you
know as much as Carol Tenopir. She
has authored more than 200 journal
articles and five books, a breathtaking array of research that examines Chancellor's Professor and CCI Board of
hundreds of thousands of research- Visitors Professor Carol Tenopir, School of
ers through interviews, longitudi- Information Sciences, University of Tennessee
nal surveys, and deep dives into
that researcher. Then they want to learn
specific disciplines in the United States
and United Kingdom.
in depth. In terms of awareness, journals
actually play a small role.
In a recent interview with Signature,
here's what she had to say about where
associations can improve their scholarly
: This separation between
journal publishing efforts.
awareness and learning suggests scholarly societies need to spend equal investment on publishing as well as out: Your research indicates that
reach to potential readers.
more than half the readers of journal
Tenopir: Associations that focus on
articles already know the information
scholarly journals would be well served
within. Journal publishers pride themto invest in an equally important role:
selves on publishing original contribuhelping researchers learn about the findtions, so how can this be?
ings. Societies need to spend as much time
Tenopir: Researchers are learning about
on awareness as publishing.
information at conferences, from blogs,
The name of the journal, the name of
from conversations, from tweets. Once they
the
society, the name of the publisher is
learn about new research, they wait to see
important for the citation - but to get
relevance. They may need to replicate the
read, information needs importance. The
experiment, cite the paper, teach about it, or
abstract used to be very important for this
understand the details, and when they need
role. It is not enough to be abstracted or
to learn more, they seek out that article or
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MARCH/APRIL 2016

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indexed now. Societies need to be in the
game. They need to Tweet. They need
to be on sharing sites like Academia and
social media sites like LinkedIn, and participating with trusted blogs.
Journals have enduring value, but there
are more and more ways to become alert
to new findings. Researchers have more
discovery tools than the journal, and these
are evolving in millions of ways.
Researchers know that journal articles
are important, and they want to cite to
those things with enduring value. They
want their own work to have that endurance. Studies show over and over that
scientists know what to trust. So, journals
are critically important - but so are the
discovery paths to those journals.
: If journal publishers could
do one thing to make their readers'
lives easier, what would this be?
Tenopir: It is more controversial and
it's a complex problem, but the access
piece needs to be easy. There is evidence
that open-access articles are easier to read.
Access to articles is less of an issue for
scholars at large comprehensive universities with wide subscription access, but
for many researchers, if access is not easy
and fast, they will leave that article for
another. Open access would be another
way for societies to get in the game.
Also, researchers want to share. It's
natural and it's part of their culture. Group
work is more important and becoming even
more important. Personal recommendations are part of how scholars know about
relevant articles. They don't want roadblocks to sharing. Why have policies that
antagonize customers? Scientists see themselves as readers and authors, and they want
to let people know about relevant articles. n
Oona Schmid (oona.
schmid@gmail.com) is director,
publishing, at the American
Anthropological Association
and a member of Association
Media & Publishing's Content
Creation Committee.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signature March/April 2015