Skills in Scholarly Communication – Needs & Development

This post is reblogged from Unlocking Research, the blog of the Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge.

This blog post is part of the write-up of an investigation into the background of people working in scholarly communication, with a specific focus on skills.

Introduction

Library staff need to have a wide range of skills in order to undertake their roles. Whatever type of library they work in and whatever their individual role there is a range of both generic and specialist skills which staff need to acquire over the course of their career. In the Office of Scholarly Communication our focus is on making sure library staff are equipped to work in research support roles but we also have a wider interest in who makes up the global scholarly communication workforce.

In late 2016 we conducted a survey to find out more about this issue. We were slightly overwhelmed by the popularity of the survey which gathered over 500 responses from people who self-identified as working in scholarly communication which we defined as:

The process by which academics, scholars and researchers share and publish their research findings with the wider academic community and beyond. This includes, but is not limited to, areas such as open access and open data, copyright, institutional repositories and research data management.

You can read a summary of some of the findings from this research here but we wanted to delve a little deeper and look at which skills scholarly communication staff felt they needed and how they developed them. This blog post looks at that question.

Which skills?

Rather than come up with yet another list of skills that staff should or could have we made the decision to use an existing list from UKeIG – the UK eInformation Group of CILIP. This list is comprehensive in its coverage and we felt that it would provide a good basis for future comparisons as well as providing a list with which the community would be familiar. The list is of course not exhaustive and respondents were invited to add any additional skills which they felt were relevant to their roles.

Respondents were asked to highlight the skills which they used in their current roles. Their responses are summarised in Figure 1 (all figures can be viewed at higher resolution by clicking on them).

FIG 1: Skills used in current roles

Institutional repository (management/curation) (72%) and Copyright (63%) were the skills most used, closely followed by Open Access – content discovery (59%) and Understanding metrics (55%).

Some skills were used with much less frequency such as Resource Description and Access (RDA) (10%), Post-cancellation access and archiving (9%) and Mobile technology (8%). Under the option Other skills specified by respondents included knowledge of open educational resources, educating faculty and students about how to get published and electronic theses.

Skills for future roles

Respondents were also asked to select the skills they felt would be important for the future of the profession. The results are summarised in Figure 2:

FIG 2: Skills of importance to the future of the profession

The top four selections had a similar number of responses: Innovations in academic publishing (51%), Research data management (50%), Understanding the user experience (47%) and Copyright (46%). It is interesting to note that Copyright is the only skill to appear in the top five of both current and future skills.

The other end of the scale again included RDA (6%) and Post-cancellation access (7%) as well as working with standards (6%). Under the option Other skills included instruction and education, developing strategic partnerships and gumption!

Developing these skills

What we really wanted to know was how people working in scholarly communication developed these skills – through their formal education, on the job training or self-directed learning. Survey respondents were asked how they had developed the skills included on the UKeIG list, and their responses can be seen in Figure 3 below:

FIG 3: How did you develop your knowledge about the following areas?

Almost all of the respondents had some level of either undergraduate or postgraduate education, with 71% either holding or working towards a postgraduate qualification in library and information science. Given this, it is surprising to note that so few felt that they had developed the skills they needed for their role through formal education. This gap could perhaps be attributed to the fact that 74% of respondents have held their qualifications for a significant amount of time and so these subjects were not offered at the time. They would have had little choice but to learn these skills on the job or in their own time as it was unlikely to be practical to return to formal education.

Generic skills on the list scored much higher with participants for formal education, perhaps because library school courses are designed to produce well-rounded information professionals able to work in a variety of sectors and so cover the skills that are most likely to be of use in a broad career.

Looking at the results in more detail we can see that a potential skills gap is being created. Looking at the top five skills respondents’ have identified as using in their current role we can see that the levels of formal learning for each are low (Figure 4).

FIG 4: Current needs: How are these skills being addressed?

There is evidence that this skills gap could continue into the future. Figure 5 shows the top five skills respondents think will be of most importance to the future of the profession. Again the numbers developing these skills through formal education are low, showing that those working in scholarly communication are having to rely on either on the job or self-directed learning to develop the skills they identify as being important to the future of the profession.

FIG 5: Future needs: How are these skills being addressed?

Next steps

We will continue to analyse the results of the survey to find out more about how those working in scholarly communication have developed their skill sets and how they see future offerings being delivered. In the meantime the OSC is part of a group which is looking to tackle the provision of dedicated scholarly communication in the UK. As well as sharing our discussions on this blog you can talk to us at various events. We have already visited RLUK and are scheduled to present at LILAC and CILIP Careers Day so do come and chat to us if you have a chance!

Originally published: Unlocking Research, March 23rd 2018

Librarians as Researchers: Methods, Lessons and Trends

Yesterday I travelled down to Canterbury to speak at a CILIP in Kent event Themes and Trends in Library and Information Research. It was a really enjoyable day and I learnt a lot about current research trends from my fellow speakers. For anyone interested I've included my slides and a summary of my talk below.

Librarians as Researchers: Methods, Lessons and Trends from Claire Sewell

I started by talking about my various roles, both my job and outside of work. This wasn't done in any way to show off but to demonstrate that all sorts of people can undertake research. In my day job I train Cambridge library staff in scholarly communication and research support which means learning about the research process. I've also dipped my toe into the research pool by working on a few small research projects. Sitting on the editorial board of a journal gives me an insight into the traditional publication process which is useful for my role. I'm not someone who thought they would ever be a researcher, no matter how part time, and hopefully I got this message across to attendees.

Given all the demands on the time of the librarian why should they take on the additional role of researcher? I would argue that it's something they already do in their day jobs. When you want to solve a problem you investigate all of the solutions, choose one to implement, test it and then evaluate it. This is essentially research by another name. Undertaking research can help to give weight to your arguments, especially your managers. You may know that something isn't working or that there is demand for a certain service but taking evidence to the person who holds the purse strings can have a bigger impact. For some it's a required part of their role but even if it isn't then doing some research can make your CV stand out and enhance your skill set. The research process can obviously develop an understanding of research but it also develops project management, communication and critical thinking skills to name a few. Lastly doing research helps to satisfy the natural curiosity of the librarian.

The number of practitioner-researchers has been growing over the last few years but why is this? There has been an increase in the training available on research recently - a quick Google finds a range of training courses, books and presentations on the topic. This comes with a growing realisation that librarians have been undertaking quality research for a long time, for example the work that is produced during postgraduate study for a library degree. Happily there are now ways to showcase this research such as the LISDIS conference. People are also moving beyond the traditional methods of sharing their research like conferences and peer reviewed journals and towards social media which is helping to make it more accessible to a wider audience and getting it out of the academic echo chamber. The increasing number of research support roles available means that more library staff are needing to understand the research process and are trying out small projects. The result of all these developments is that the research process as a whole has been demystified. Whereas it once used to be closed off it is now more open to a wider range of people which can only be a good thing!

So what are the current trends in LIS research?

• Evidence-based librarianship - this has it's roots in the health and education and sectors and is the theory that decisions should be made based on evidence. This can be a powerful bargaining tool with management who are less likely to argue if you can produce solid evidence to back up your ideas
• More practitioner-researchers - there has been an increase in the number of active practitioners doing some form of research and sharing the results. This leads to new networks being formed which help people to share best practice and encourage them to develop as researchers
• Link between theory and practice - research has tended to focus on the this is what we did and how we did it case study approach but there is a growing interest in the theory that underpins the work we do. A good example of this is teaching. Librarians are often required to teach as part of their work but many are now starting to think about the pedagogy which informs that teaching. Why do we teach as we do? Is there a way to improve it? This inevitably leads to questioning things more
• Trendy trends - every discipline has its trendy topics and librarianship is no different. A few years ago it was ebooks, now UX and scholarly communication are in vogue. Communities build up around these areas and form their own research patterns and trends which then begin to influence the next trend. If you can spot the next trend first then you are ahead of the curve!
• Failure - this is one trend I'm really pleased to see. Librarians are becoming more open to talking about what doesn't work which can be a really valuable learning experience. This is a general trend in scientific research but it seems to be crossing into other sectors which is great as it has previously been hard to get published in these areas. The tide is now changing and there are publications and even conferences dedicated to sharing failures
• Trying something new - the final trend is the chance to try something a little bit different. New areas of research are emerging all the time as librarians move to work in ever expanding areas, they're drawing ideas in from other disciplines and trying new research methods. There are also more chances to collaborate with others outside your institution or even outside librarianship. This can lead to lots of exciting new opportunities to pursue research projects and promotes good working relationships with those outside the library

We're working on developing the librarian researcher community at Cambridge through training and encouragement. One thing that has been successful so far is a Community of Practice which meets regularly to discuss a different aspect of the research process. This helps to answer questions and move projects along and has been really useful for me personally as I try my hand at research.

As a final thought I found the following quote from Zora Neale Hurston: 

Research is formalised curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. 

Librarians like to poke away and find the answers - it's what we're trained for. Doing research just gives a formal structure to this curiosity. If we use our knowledge, skills an natural curiosity then we can become the librarian researchers of the future.



Pin the Activity on the Research Lifecycle

Over the summer I ran the third iteration of the Research Support Ambassador programme at Cambridge. Every year I try to tweak the programme a little in response to feedback, getting rid of the bits that don't work and improving the bits that do. One piece of feedback I've had from previous runs is that participants would welcome a basic introduction to the scholarly communication landscape and how this relates to libraries. In response I ran the first Ambassador session as an interactive workshop called Scholarly Communication 101. 

Part of this workshop is an activity designed to get librarians thinking about how their work supports the research community. It's kind of like pin the tail on the donkey but without a prize as there isn't really a correct answer! Participants are shown a basic research lifecycle and given a brief explanation of the different stages. They then have to identify which of the stages they feel their role most closely aligns to and indicate this on the lifecycle (using a small librarian graphic). Next they are shown cards representing various research activities (data management, literature searching, grant proposals etc) and asked to indicate with stickers which activities their library currently undertakes and which activities they feel the library should be working on. These activity cards are then attached to the lifecycle. The end result looks something like this:

The point to this exercise was to illustrate to library staff who may be new to research support just how deeply both they and their library are involved in the research lifecycle. There is involvement at every stage through both new and existing services and the activity often provides a good jumping off point for discussions about the library's role in research support. I've run this exercise a couple of times and the results were quite interesting. Obviously what follows is a very non-scientific analysis of the outcomes from this activity but it does show some interesting patterns.

Which lifecycle stage do librarians identify with?
In fairness to the participants I asked them to only choose one stage to identify with but as expected they overwhelmingly went with the discover stage. There were a couple of librarians in the plan and manage stages but as a rule they tended to favor discovery. Given the established role of librarians this isn't a surprise and sparked useful discussions about the changing nature of library work.

Which services does the library currently provide?
Obviously this depends on the individual library and their audience. I'm also well aware that at Cambridge we have a well supported library system which impacts on the type and range of services we are able to provide. The results show that Cambridge libraries provide a wide range of services although staff had not always thought about them explicitly in terms of the research lifecycle.

By far the most popular current services were Open Access (in this context taken to mean OA advice and training), literature searching, citation advice and copyright. Also popular were reference and data management and advice on social media. Many of these represent 'traditional' library services in an academic context so participants were fairly keen to claim them. Interestingly there were no results for advice on publication agreements or the right format for publication, both of which are key elements of the research lifecycle. In both groups this led on to discussions about whether librarians had the skills needed to provide this type of advice. The conclusion was that they did and in fact often provided adhoc advice even if they didn't focus on it as a dedicated service. When participants placed these activities on the lifecycle they were spread across three of the five areas with only one (literature searching) ending up in the discovery stage they had previously identified with. 

Which services should the library be providing?
This turned out to be an interesting question. Following on from what was in the scope of the academic library there was lots of discussion about the types of service that should be provided. Again Open Access support, reference management, literature searching and citation and copyright advice were the most popular services but there was more of an even spread among the other areas. 

Providing advice on publication format was the only service not to be selected by any participants which needs further investigation on my part. Given that library staff felt that they had the skills and knowledge to provide this why aren't they? One suggestion was that it might be outside the scope of the library's role but it's something I've been working on addressing with training and support. Again these activities were spread out across the lifecycle when added by participants.

Conclusion

These results are in no way scientific and conclusive but they do point towards some interesting trends which will help me inform my future training. The most valuable aspect of this activity was in showing participants that both what they are already doing and what they would wish to do compliment the whole of the research lifecycle rather than being concentrated in one area. Hopefully after this participants would identify with more than just the discovery section of the cycle and place their token accordingly.

Resources

If you want to try this activity with your own staff as a way to open up a wider discussion or just as a way to find out how they understand their role in research support the materials can be downloaded here. If anyone does have a go I'd be really interested to learn about the results and whether they are similar across libraries or vastly different. Happy pinning! 

Where Did They Come From? the Background of People Working in Scholarly Communication

This post is re blogged from Unlocking Research, the blog of the Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge.

Scholarly communication roles are becoming more commonplace in academic libraries around the world but who is actually filling these roles? The Office of Scholarly Communication in Cambridge recently conducted a survey to find out a bit more about who makes up the scholarly communication workforce and this blog post is the first in a series sharing the results.

The survey was advertised in October 2016 via several mailing lists targeting an audience of library staff who worked in scholarly communication. For the purposes of the survey we defined this as:

The process by which academics, scholars and researchers share and publish their research findings with the wider academic community and beyond. This includes, but is not limited to, areas such as open access and open data, copyright, institutional repositories and research data management. 

In total 540 people responded to the calls for participation with 519 going on to complete the survey, indicating that the topic had relevance for many in the sector.

Working patterns

Results show that 65% of current roles in scholarly communication have been established in respondent’s organisations for less than five years with fewer than 15% having been established for more than ten years. Given that scholarly communication is still growing as a discipline this is perhaps not a surprising result.

It should also be noted that the survey makes no distinction between those who are working in a dedicated scholarly communication role and those who may have had additional responsibilities added to a pre-existing position. These roles tend to sit within larger organisations which employ over 200 people although whether the organisation was defined as the library or wider institution was open to interpretation by respondents.

Responses showed an even spread of experience in the library and information science (LIS) sector with 22% having less than five years’ experience and 27% having more than twenty.  Since completing their education just over half of respondents have remained within LIS but given the current fluctuations in the job market it is not surprising to learn that just under half of people have worked outside the sector within the same period.

Respondents were also asked to list the ways in which they actively contributed to the scholarly publication process. The majority (72%) did so by authoring scholarly works or contributing to the peer review process (44%). Although not specified as a category a number of respondents highlighted their work in publishing material, indicating a change in the scholarly process rather than a continuation to the status quo.

LIS qualifications

Most of those (71%) who responded to the survey either have or are currently working towards a postgraduate qualification in LIS, an anticipated result given the target population of the survey. The length of time respondents had held their qualification was evenly spread in line with the amount of time spent working in the sector with 48%having achieved their qualification less than ten years ago whilst 49% having held their qualification for over a decade. Just over half of this group felt that their LIS qualification did not equip them with knowledge of the scholarly communication process (56%).

Around a fifth of respondents (21%) hold a library and information science qualification at a level other than postgraduate, with the majority of being at bachelor level. Of these there was a fairly even divide between those who have held this qualification for five to ten years (31%) and those who qualified more than twenty years ago (28%). Only 17% of this group felt that their studies equipped them with appropriate knowledge of scholarly communication.

Qualifications outside LIS

A small number of respondents do not hold qualifications in LIS but hold or are working towards postgraduate qualifications in other subjects. Most of this group hold/are working on a PhD (69%) in a range of subjects from anatomy to mechanical engineering.

This group overwhelmingly felt that what they learnt during their studies had practical applications in their work in scholarly communication (74%). This was a larger percentage than those who had studied LIS at either undergraduate or postgraduate level. These results echo experiences at Cambridge where a large proportion of the team is made up of people from a variety of academic backgrounds. In many ways this has proven to be an asset as they have direct experience of the issues faced by current researchers and are able to offer insight into how best to meet their needs.

So what does this tell us?

The scholarly communication workforce is expanding as academic libraries respond to the changing environment and shift their focus to research support. Many of these roles have been created in the past five years in particular within larger organisations better positioned to devote resources to increasing their scholarly communication presence.

Although results from this survey indicate that the majority of staff come from a library background a diverse range of levels and subjects are represented. As noted above this can provide unique insights into researcher needs but it also raises the question of what trained library professionals can bring to this area. Given that the majority of those educated in LIS felt that their qualification did not adequately equip them for their role this is a potentially worrying trend which needs to be explored further.

We will be continuing to analyse the results of the survey over the next few months to address both this and other questions. Hopefully this will provide insight into where scholarly communications librarians are now and what they can do to ensure success into the future.

Originally posted on Unlocking Research on March 9th 2017. Shared here via CC BY licence