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The purpose of this study is to examine the information needs of earth and environmental scientists regarding how they determine data reusability and relevance. Additionally, this study provides strategies for the development of data collections and recommendations for data management and curation for information professionals working alongside researchers.

This study uses a multi-phase mixed-method approach. The test environment is the DataONE data repository. Phase 1 includes a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of deposited data. Phase 2 consists of a quasi-experiment think-aloud study. This paper reports mainly on Phase 2.

This study identifies earth and environmental scientists’ information needs to determine data reusability. The findings include a need for information regarding research methods, instruments and data descriptions when determining data reusability, as well as a restructuring of data abstracts. Additional findings include reorganizing of the data record layout and data citation information.

While this study was limited to earth and environmental science data, the findings provide feedback for scientists in other disciplines, as earth and environmental science is a highly interdisciplinary scientific domain that pulls from many disciplines, including biology, ecology and geology, and additionally there has been a significant increase in interdisciplinary research in many scientific fields.

The practical implications include concrete feedback to data librarians, data curators and repository managers, as well as other information professionals as to the information needs of scientists reusing data. The suggestions could be implemented to improve consultative practices when working alongside scientists regarding data deposition and data creation. These suggestions could improve policies for data repositories through direct feedback from scientists. These suggestions could be implemented to improve how data repositories are created and what should be considered mandatory information and secondary information to improve the reusability of data.

By examining the information needs of earth and environmental scientists reusing data, this study provides feedback that could change current practices in data deposition, which ultimately could improve the potentiality of data reuse.

While there has been research conducted on data sharing and reuse, this study provides more detailed granularity regarding what information is needed to determine reusability. This study sets itself apart by not focusing on social motivators and demotivators, but by focusing on information provided in a data record.

This case study investigated the role of an information specialist as an active team member in an academic scientific research setting. The information specialist attended weekly lab meetings for thirty‐nine scientists, who formed the experimental group, and answered any information requests they had during the ten month period from January to October, 1981. An additional twenty‐eight scientists served as a control group. The findings indicated that the information specialist was accepted as a team member. The scientists made extensive use of the information service and reported changes in their information habits. Online searches and personal files became important information sources. The service was given a very positive evaluation and most of the scientists wanted to see it continue.

To take full advantage of the unprecedented availability of information on networks and digital systems, professionals need to be comfortable finding information relevant to the tasks at hand. This study was conducted at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research to investigate scientists’ personal information management (PIM) practices.

A qualitative research approach was used. Critical incidents were collected to probe information about PIM activities. The PIM-related critical incidents were gathered through extended conversations in the form of semi-structured interviews.

Extended conversations revealed that scientists were aware of the importance of information organization and management. They collected and received information from various sources regarding their tasks and saved part of the information for future use. Scientists organized saved information into named folders using the categories of projects, clients and planning. The files were updated by regular deletion and cleaning. Different strategies were used to retrieve the information. These included searching by keywords and file names, and browsing using the folder structure. Scientists have used various PIM tools. They reported that time pressure, information overload and anxiety due to information fragmentation were major challenges in PIM.

This study recommends a compilation of guidelines to assist scientists in the efficient management of personal information. As there are only a few studies currently available in the literature on scientists’ PIM, this study makes a valuable contribution to the relevant professional literature.

The “collaboratory” concept has recently entered the vernacular of the scientific community to reflect new modes of scientific communication, cooperation and collaboration made possible by information technology. The collaboratory represents a scientific research center “without walls” for accessing and sharing data, information, instrumentation and computational resources. The principal applications of the collaboratory concept have been in the physical and biological sciences, including space physics, oceanography and molecular biology. Discusses the attributes of the collaboratory, and applies the concept developed by computer and physical scientists to the design and operation of the SIPPACCESS prototype information system for complex data to be used through the Internet by sociologists, demographers and economists. Examines obstacles to collaboratory development for the social sciences. Concludes that four major obstacles will inhibit the development of collaboratories in the social sciences.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the academic scientists’ scholarly use of information sources, the disciplinary differences in their use and the barriers encountered, particularly while using journals.

A quantitative research design based on the survey method was used to achieve the objectives of this study. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all the academic staff of three disciplines – science, life sciences and pharmacy. Together, they constituted 24 departments of the University of the Punjab. This oldest and largest public sector university was selected as a sample.

The findings showed that e-journals, e-reports and online reference sources were frequently used. The disciplinary differences were found with regard to the use of e-journals and e-books. Users of e-journals lacked skills of advanced searching and were not able to determine the quality of e-journals. Respondents faced certain barriers in usage such as payment of e-journal articles not available through the Library, slow internet speed and lack of information literacy instructions program.

Previous researchers conducted studies that were focused mostly on the academic scientists’ perceptions and the extent of electronic information sources’ use. Researchers in Pakistan mostly examined students and research scholars’ use of electronic information sources and very few studies were conducted to investigate academic scientists’ scholarly information seeking behavior. This study is valuable, as it investigated the scholarly use of information sources by academic scientists and particularly disciplinary differences in their use, digital literacy skills and the barriers encountered while using e-journals.

Since Bernal made his pilot survey of the use of scientific literature for the 1948 Royal Society Scientific Information Conference, at least three dozen other investigations have been reported of the needs of scientists and engineers for information, of their information gathering habits, and the use to which they put information.

Taking the researchers’ perspective, the purpose of this paper is to examine the types of context information needed to preserve data’s meaning in ways that support data reuse.

This paper is based on a qualitative study of 105 researchers from three disciplinary communities: quantitative social science, archaeology and zoology. The study focused on researchers’ most recent data reuse experience, particularly what they needed when deciding whether to reuse data.

Findings show that researchers mentioned 12 types of context information across three broad categories: data production information (data collection, specimen and artifact, data producer, data analysis, missing data, and research objectives); repository information (provenance, reputation and history, curation and digitization); and data reuse information (prior reuse, advice on reuse and terms of use).

This paper extends digital curation conversations to include the preservation of context as well as content to facilitate data reuse. When compared to prior research, findings show that there is some generalizability with respect to the types of context needed across different disciplines and data sharing and reuse environments. It also introduces several new context types. Relying on the perspective of researchers offers a more nuanced view that shows the importance of the different context types for each discipline and the ways disciplinary members thought about them. Both data producers and curators can benefit from knowing what to capture and manage during data collection and deposit into a repository.

This paper aims to demonstrate the role that the Google general search engine plays in the information‐seeking behaviour of scientists, particularly physicists and astronomers.

The paper is based on a mixed‐methods study including 56 semi‐structured interviews, a questionnaire survey of 114 respondents (47 per cent response rate) and the use of information‐event cards to collect critical incident data. The study was conducted at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College, London.

The results show that Google is the tool most used for problem‐specific information seeking. The results also show the growing reliance of scientists on general search engines, particularly Google, for finding scholarly articles. Initially, finding scholarly articles was a by‐product of general searching for information rather than focused searches for papers. However, a growing number of articles read by scientists are identified through the Google general search engine and, as scientists are becoming more aware of the quantity of scholarly papers searchable by Google, they are increasingly relying on Google for finding scholarly literature.

As the only fields covered in the study were physics and astronomy, and the research participants were sourced from just one department of one institution, caution should be taken in generalising the findings.

The data are based on a mixed‐methods in‐depth study of scientists' information‐seeking behaviour which sheds some light on a question raised in past studies relating to the reason for the high number of articles identified through Google.

Semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews were used to explore the influence of personality, discipline and organisational structure on the information behaviour of biochemists, entomologists and statisticians working at an agricultural research station (n = 67). Cluster analysis was used to reveal groupings in the data. Library and document‐based activities did not differentiate individuals. Computer use, both for scientific work and information handling, and the degree of enthusiasm displayed for actively seeking information divided the population. Discipline, work role and time spent in the subject field and organisation were the most important determinants of information behaviour. There were some indications of male/female differences in information behaviour. A comparison of the groups obtained from the cluster analysis with a subjective classification showed the former to be more robust in later analysis.

A behavioural approach to information retrieval system design is outlined based on the derivation of a behavioural model of the information seeking patterns of academic social scientists. The information seeking patterns of a variety of academic social scientists were broken down into six characteristics: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. These characteristics constitute the principal generic features of the different individual patterns, and together provide a flexible behavioural model for information retrieval system design. The extent to which these characteristics are available on existing systems is considered, and the requirements for implementing the features on an experimental system are set out.