Presented at GaCOMO 2015, Athens, GA Open access resources are only becoming more prevalent and more integral to doing research; this is especially true for physics faculty, who have been at the forefront of many open access initiatives. Research shows that graduate students tend to pick up their supervising faculty members’ methods of literature searching—but are physics and astronomy graduate students aware of the status of the open access resources they are using? This presentation covers the findings from a survey of physics and astronomy graduate students at two Atlanta universities and its relevance for librarians serving students in the sciences. Contact me for the PowerPoint file, including a notes section on each slide, or for further information on my research.

1. Information Literacy & Open
Access for Physics and
Astronomy Graduate Students
Jackie Werner, Science Librarian
Georgia State University
jwerner3@gsu.edu

2. Outline
 Background
 Open Access & SCOAP3
 Open Access in Physics & Astronomy
 Faculty and Open Access
 Graduate Students and Library Research
 Methodology
 Results
 Discussion

3. Introduction

4. Open Access & SCOAP3

5. Open Access & SCOAP3

6. SCOAP3
 Sponsoring Committee for Open Access Publishing in Particle
Physics
 High-Energy Physics partnership
 Negotiated with top ten HEP journals to pay fees to make all articles
green open access
 4,280 articles published as green OA in 2014, “comprising the
majority of the high-quality peer-reviewed literature in the field of
High-Energy Physics”

8. OA in Physics & Astronomy
 arXiv
 Founded in 1991
 Preprints and OA articles
 Multiple disciplines
 Most HEP articles appear on arXiv

9. OA in Physics & Astronomy
 Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
 Founded in 1992
 Abstract database including
arXiv & traditional journals
 Includes OA and non
 Digitizes older publications

10. OA in Physics & Astronomy
 INSPIRE-HEP
 Replaced SPIRES in 2012
 Searches arXiv & HEP resources
 Curated content in HEP
 Includes OA and non

11. OA in Physics & Astronomy
 CERN Document Server (CDS)
 Covers all CERN publications
 Searches arXiv & other HEP
publications
 Includes OA and non

12. OA in Physics & Astronomy
 Google Scholar
 Not technically OA, but…

13. Faculty and Open Access
 HEP researchers support open access
 Scientists are aware of open access
 Faculty & graduate students recognize what is open access

14. Graduate Students and Library
Research
 Graduate students turn to faculty advisors and lab group for
literature searches
 …if they receive instruction at all
 Are graduate students aware of open access?

15. My Research

16. Methodology
 Conducted at Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State
University
 Interviewed graduate coordinator for Physics and Astronomy
program
 Sent survey to all Physics & Astronomy graduate students

17. Results
 Current responses:
 1 graduate coordinator interview
 16 complete graduate student surveys
0-1 years in program: 4
1-2 years: 3
2-3 years: 3
3-4 years: 3
4+ years: 3

18. Q8. Have you ever received
training or asked for help on how
to search for physics articles in
graduate school?
• No
• Yes, in graduate courses
• Yes, by advisor
• Yes, by a librarian speaking to a group
• Yes, but only after asking a professor/librarian
• Yes, somewhere else

19. Information Literacy Instruction –
Faculty
 Graduate students given practice with oral presentation and
published papers
 Information literacy instruction and practice depends on graduate
advisors
 No library orientation for graduate students?

20. Information Literacy Instruction –
Graduate Students
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
None Yes Other

21. Information Literacy Instruction –
Graduate Students
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
None Graduate
Courses
Advisor Librarian After asking Fellow
Students
Other

22. Q6. Are you aware of open
access (OA)?
1. Never heard of it
2. Heard the term, but don’t know what it means
3. Yes, somewhat aware
4. Yes, very aware
5. Yes, and I keep up with news and developments in
open access

23. Open Access – Faculty
 Library faculty advisory board spent year educating campus on
open access
 Official stance open access publication is encouraged, but not
required
 Students may not know which resources library is paying for

24. Open Access – Graduate Students
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Never heard of it Heard of the term,
don't know what it
means
Yes, somewhat
aware
Yes, very aware Yes, and I keep up
with news and
development in
open access

25. Open Access – Graduate Students
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+
AverageAwarenessofOA(1-5)
Years in program

26. Q9. Have you published a peer-
reviewed article while in
graduate school?
Q10. How many peer-reviewed articles have you
published while in graduate school?
Q11. How many peer-reviewed articles have you
submitted while in graduate school, but are not yet
published?
Q12. Where is your article(s) currently available?

27. Publication – Faculty
 Some faculty “take it as their responsibility” to have students write
papers, others don’t
 Publication is not required for graduation

28. Publication – Graduate Students
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Yes Accepted, but not yet
published
Submitted, but not yet
accepted
No or not yet submitted

29. Number of Publications
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Published articles Submitted & accepted articles

30. Availability of Publications
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Subscription journal OA journal Subject archive University archive Other

31. Q5. Are you aware of these
resources and do you use them
to find physics and/or astronomy
articles?
1. Never heard of
2. Aware of but don’t use/use rarely
3. Aware of and use
4. Use frequently

32. Resources Used – Faculty
 “Everybody uses [arXiv] without fail.”
 Many faculty don’t use journals and don’t care about final
publication

33. Resources Used – Graduate Students
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
ADS arXiv CDS Google Google
Scholar
SPIRES Web of
Science
Familiarity/Useofresource(1-4)
Resource Use - Average

34. Resources Used – Graduate Students
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
ADS arXiv CDS Google Google
Scholar
SPIRES Web of
Science
Numberofrespondents
Resource Use - Simplified
yes (3-4) n (1-2)

35. Resources Used – Graduate Students
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+
AverageAwareness&UseofarXiv(1-4)
Years in program
Use of arXiv

36. Q13. How do you keep up
with new developments and
publications in your field?

37. Keeping Up – Faculty
 “Everybody uses [arXiv] without fail.”
 Faculty get Table of Contents from journals
 Students mostly use Google Scholar—”as good as any search
engine we pay for”
 Faculty and students encouraged to keep up in person
(conferences, etc.)

38. Keeping Up – Graduate Students
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Individual
Journals
Google
Scholar
In-Person arXiv Readcube RSS Doesn't

39. Q14. How do you think methods
of keeping up with new
developments and /or
publications in your field will
change in the next five years?

40. Changes in Five Years
 No “dramatic changes”
 Aggregation
 “Scientific community similar to LinkedIn”
 Improvements to existing resources
 “Wider recognition of open access journals”

41. Takeaways
 We don’t know how graduate students do research
 Open access resources may serve students’ needs
 …but students don’t know what library resources do
 Many questions still to ask

42. References
 Catalano, A. (2011). Patterns of graduate students' information seeking
behavior: A meta-synthesis of
the literature. Journal of Documentation, 69(2): 243-274.
 George, C., Bright, A., Hurlbert, T., Linke, E.C., St. Clair, G., & Stein, J. (2006).
Scholarly use of information: Graduate students' information seeking
behaviour. Information Research, 11(4): paper 272. Retrieved from
http://InformationR.net/ir/11-4/paper272.html.
 Gentil-Beccot, A., Mele, S., & Brooks, T.C. (2009). Citing and reading
behaviours in high-energy physics: How a community stopped worrying about
journals and learned to love repositories. Scientometrics, 84(2), 345-355.
 Ginsparg, P. (1994). First steps towards electronic research communication.
Computers in Physics, 8(2), 390-396.
 Hemminger, B.M., Lu, D., Vaughan, K.T.L., Adams, S.J. (2007). Information
seeking behavior of academic students. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 58(14): 2205-2225.

43. References
 Jamali, H.R. & Nicholas, D. (2006). Communication and information-seeking
behaviour of research students in physicist and astronomy. ASIST Annual
Conference, 3-8 November 2006, Austin, Texas.
 Larivière, V., Sugimoto, C. R., Bergeron, P. (2013). In their own image? A
comparison of doctoral students' and faculty members' referencing behavior.
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,
64(5): 1045-1054.
 Park, J. (2007). Motivations for web-based scholarly publishing: Do scientists
recognize open availability as an advantage? Journal of Scholarly Publishing,
40(4): 343-369.
 Suber, P. (2013). Open Access Overview. Retrieved from
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm (June 22, 2015).

44. Any Questions?
Jackie Werner (jwerner3@gsu.edu)