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Fall 2007
VOLUME 23, NUMBER 2
In This Issue
- Survey findings to guide future product and service development
- West meets East
- NRC Research Press round up
- Gems from the Collection
- Pay Per Article - update
- Cryptic buzzwords
- New Director of Business Affairs
- Short Takes
Survey findings to guide future product and service development
NRC-CISTI recently commissioned two studies that will deepen librarians' insights into how people seek and use information. The first study, conducted by Phase 5 Inc. and completed in January 2007, surveyed Canadian and international librarians involved in the evaluation or purchasing of information resources and content. Although the study was undertaken to guide NRC-CISTI's internal product and service development plans for information access and delivery, several findings are expected to be of wider interest to library professionals.
The survey offered librarians a list of potential or advanced service capabilities and asked which ones appealed. Among respondents, 85% said they were somewhat or very interested in having federated search capability - the ability to search several databases or collections simultaneously.
In a category called automated information analysis, the most desired functionalities were:
- a synopsis or summary of the content of a document or set of documents (72%);
- the automated ability to identify other articles or content written on similar concepts (67%); and
- the automated ability to identify other articles or content in the same related field of study (66%).
A second study, completed by Outsell Inc. in April 2007, sought to understand the knowledge discovery needs and information workflows of scientific, technical and medical researchers and to uncover their current information challenges and future needs. Outsell gathered information through in-depth interviews with a small group of researchers from universities and successful corporations.
The study found that researchers use highly personal preferences or criteria to evaluate the validity or quality of an article. Interviewees cited such variables as relevance of the article to their research, clarity of the writing, and how many times the article has been cited. The most common criteria was credentials - the name and organizational affiliation of the author and the journal's or publication's reputation.
The study also determined that cost considerations play a significant role in preventing researchers from purchasing articles; many prefer to obtain them through libraries or to acquire them from colleagues, a finding that is particularly interesting in an era of library cutbacks and growing pay-per-view sites.
Among their frustrations, researchers cited the difficulty of obtaining easy access to the full text of articles and the dearth of search and filter tools capable of yielding only the most relevant and useful content.
Academic researchers tended to be much more aware than their corporate counterparts of institutional repositories, and although most academics said they did not currently post to or otherwise use an institutional repository, they did anticipate doing so in future.
NRC-CISTI plans to undertake further research in 2007 to develop a more complete picture of the evolving information needs and behaviours of scientific, technical and medical researchers. For further information about either of these surveys, please contact Michael Brandt at michael.brandt@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca or 613-993-4739.
West meets East
A delegation from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) visited NRC-CISTI in June to learn about NRC-CISTI's leading edge information services and explore new areas for future cooperation. In recent years NRC-CISTI has connected with its Asian partner both in Ottawa and at international conferences. This half-day meeting afforded an opportunity for NRC-CISTI to trumpet its latest offerings - eBook Loans and Pay Per Article services.
NRC Research Press round up
The scientific publishing community is changing at lightning speed these days and NRC Research Press (RP) is no exception. Here's a whirlwind tour of the latest new developments.
RP books and monographs will soon be searchable via Google Book Search, affording readers and institutions around the world ready access to NRC titles. Every word that appears in a book supplied by a participating publisher becomes part of a database searchable by the Google Book Search engine. A search for a term that appears in one or more books in the database generates a list of books containing that term. Clicking on any result brings a user to information about the book, including sample text and links to vendors.
RP has launched its new Web site! The redesigned site features updated navigation tools and a new look and feel and provides users with improved access to journal and book content, news, RSS feeds, advanced search functionality and online forms. Visit us at pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.
RP recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ÉRUDIT, a Quebec-based consortium, whose collection spans a range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. RP and ÉRUDIT plan to collaborate in areas of marketing and promotion, exchange of metadata and topic aggregations. This partnership will leverage the strengths of both parties to advance scholarly publishing in Canada. For information on ÉRUDIT, visit www.erudit.org.
New RP journal prices for 2008. Subscription rates for RP journals are now available at pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/rp/rptemp/rp_csubform_e.html. To encourage a shift to electronic subscriptions, RP has set its 2008 institutional subscription rates for electronic versions of RP journals fully 6% lower than its rates for print subscriptions - a spread that is well below the industry average. For more information, contact Mike Boroczki, Business Manager, NRC Research Press, mike.boroczki@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.
RP recently signed a licence agreement with India-based J-Gate, an electronic gateway to global e-journal literature. RP will supply J-Gate with metadata and links to full-text articles on the RP site. The J-Gate portal offers seamless access to millions of online journal articles by creating authorized links to the full text of articles on publishers' sites. The agreement highlights RP's efforts to supply e-content to users around the world.
RP's new Web site will soon feature a browse-by-topic gateway - an added way to track down RP journal content. The topic browser will offer an alternative to the old-fashioned hunt for content by journal, volume and issue. Offering more than a dozen subject categories, including such hot topics as climate studies, nanotechnology, environmental technologies, bioproducts, water technologies and agri-foods, the new portal will also feature an alerting service that allows users to sign up for one or more topic categories, as well as a focused search capability, whereby users can define search terms within a category to decrease the number of undesired hits. Watch for the browse-by-topic gateway at pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.
Gems from the Collection
This article is part of an occasional series featuring rare and esoteric treasures from NRC-CISTI's collection.
NRC-CISTI prides itself on its vast collection of scientific journals. The collection is not only broad, covering virtually all areas of science, technology and medicine, but it's also deep, reaching back through the centuries to the early days of scientific scholarship.
One of the jewels of NRC-CISTI's rare books collection is the first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The Royal Society itself originated as an "invisible college" of natural philosophers, who began meeting in the mid-1640s to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon. The Society became official on 28 November 1660, when 12 philosophers met at Gresham College after a lecture by Christopher Wren, the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and decided to found "a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning."
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was first published in March 1665, within months of the oldest scientific journal of the world, the French Journal des sçavans. But Philosophical Transactions continues to be published today, making it the world's longest running scientific journal. The philosophical in its title is a gesture to natural philosophy, the historical root of today's generic science. That's why the pinnacle of scientific scholarship is still called a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy).
The first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society featured such titles as "An Accompt of the Improvement of Optick Glasses" and "A Spot in One of the Belts of Jupiter." Many important scientific discoveries have since been published in this journal, and its illustrious contributors have included Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin. In 1672 the journal launched Newton's scientific career by publishing his first paper "New Theory about Light and Colours."
Pay Per Article - update
NRC-CISTI is pleased to announce that it recently increased the number of articles available through its self-serve Pay Per Article service launched in March 2007. Nearly 5 million articles from Elsevier were added to the Pay Per Article database in September following successful negotiations with the world's largest health and sciences publisher. The online service has already amassed a dedicated clientele that enjoys the ease of use of the interface and the speedy desktop delivery of documents.
Pay Per Article makes it possible for any researcher to search a database of 15 million copyright-cleared articles and pay by credit card to view and print those selected. No pre-registration, user name or password are required. For more information on Pay Per Article, visit cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/news/cisti/2007/pay-per-article.html.
Cryptic buzzwords
Until recently, a routine NRC-CISTI Catalogue search for journals or conference proceedings would yield the message "Not for loan." That's all in the past.
Now catalogue users whose searches call up serial records or library records for non-circulating conference proceedings will be greeted with a new status message - "In library." The change applies to records in NRC-CISTI's main collection, as well as to those in the Canadian Agriculture Library (CAL) and the library of the Institute for Research in Construction (IRC).
Circulation policies have not actually changed, however, and these items will continue to be non-circulating. We're changing the message because clients told us they thought Not for loan meant Unavailable, and nothing could be farther from the truth!
In library is our way of letting clients know that articles and papers from non-circulating serials and conference reports in the Main, CAL and IRC collections can be ordered through NRC-CISTI's Document Delivery service. Keep those suggestions coming!
New Director of Business Affairs
NRC-CISTI has appointed Jason Charron as its new Director of Business Affairs. Jason joined NRC-CISTI in 2002 as a Market Analyst and later became Business Manager of NRC Research Press, where he launched and presided over a project to digitize 50 years of Research Press back issues. Since joining NRC-CISTI, he has also designed and implemented a new approach to market analysis and competitive analysis for NRC-CISTI's marketing division. Earlier in his career, Jason managed communications and marketing groups for Nortel Networks, Xerox Canada and the Canadian Commercial Corporation. He has a Master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Ottawa.
Short Takes
Call for Applicants - Third Sangster Award
The Sangster Award competition is now in full swing. The prize is awarded biennially by the Canadian National Committee for CODATA, for outstanding achievement in a field relating to scientific and technical data, including data management, evaluation, dissemination, access, archiving and international cooperation. The Sangster Award enables a graduate student enrolled in a Canadian university (or a recent graduate) to present a paper at the biennial International CODATA Conference. The 21st international conference, Scientific Information for Society - from Today to the Future, will be held 5-8 October 2008 in Kyiv, Ukraine. The application deadline is March 31, 2008. For details, visit www.codata.org/canada/sangster.
New Quebec Region Coordinator of NRC Information Services
NRC-CISTI has appointed Éveline Landa as its new Coordinator of NRC Information Services in Quebec. For the past 10 years, Éveline has headed NRC-CISTI's NRC Information Centre in Montréal, where she planned, developed and managed scientific, technical and related business information services for a diverse clientele. Éveline has assumed responsibility for all NRC Information Services activities in the Province of Quebec, including a soon-to-be-signed service agreement with the Centre québécois de valorisation des biotechnologies.
Keep those cards and letters coming!
In the last issue of NRC-CISTI News we invited readers to switch their subscription from paper to electronic, and the response has been unequivocal. Dozens of subscribers made the switch within hours of receiving the Summer 2007 edition, and the ranks of the converts continue to grow. Contact Tracie Taylor-Labonté at tracie.taylor-labonte@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.
Published quarterly by:
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
National Research Council Canada
Building M-55, Ottawa Canada K1A 0R6
Tel.: 613-998-2362
Fax: 613-952-9112
Email: info.cisti@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Web: http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Editor: Alison Cachia
Graphic Designer: Reprographic Services
ISSN 0715-8661
