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Academic libraries are undergoing a paradigm shift of service, due to various changes in their environment and internally. The maker culture is one of these factors and implies challenges regarding space, infrastructures, and services organization. This situation extends to research support services, in which the users have a particular informative behavior. This chapter aims to analyze whether the academic library has created research support services adapted to the era of maker culture. It examines how research is a key factor in the higher education system to contextualize the importance of research support services in academic libraries. How the researcher accepts or not the role of academic libraries in the process of production and communication of research is studied. As critical elements of the process, we examine part of researcher information behavior in the era of maker culture and the relationship of these users with librarians.

The aim of this chapter is to describe a four-type model of organisational structures and to discuss two cases, Embrapa and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, as well as additional cases at SAM-Research and the centre for shared medical support services established at the University of Bologna.

These cases should help readers understand the importance of designing distinctive, tailored-made support services while keeping these structures flexible for further adaptation under unforeseen changes.

The chapter concludes by stressing the role of institutions to steadily invest in the design of these tailored support structures and in personalised training for their support staff.

As any library strives to improve services and make them increasingly relevant, planning for change has become routine. During 2011, the University of Arizona's Libraries undertook extensive assessments in order to develop and improve services in support of research and grant services so that campus-wide achievements in research, scholarship, and creative works could improve. A project explored ways for the library to become more effective at increasing research and grant support to faculty, researchers, and graduate students in a scalable way, and to help the campus increase achievements in research, scholarship, and creative works. The project defined the library's role in research and grant activities and explored ways for the library to be involved at optimal points in these cycles. This chapter discusses the process developed for assessing what new research and grant support services the library might want to develop. This involved interviewing peer university libraries and surveying faculty and graduate students at the University of Arizona about their research and grant needs. The chapter also describes how results were analyzed to identify potential new library services. The project team recommended new services which were presented to the library for inclusion in its Strategic Plan. The methodology presented in this chapter can be used by any type of library for developing new services to include in their strategic plans.

Recent changes in the funding and governance of academic research in many OECD countries have altered established authority relationships governing research priorities and judgements. These shifts in the influence of a variety of groups and organisations over scientific choices and careers can be expected to affect the development of different kinds of intellectual innovations by changing the level of protected space they provide researchers and the flexibility of dominant intellectual standards governing the allocation of resources and evaluation of research outcomes. Variations in these features of public science systems influence scientists’ willingness to pursue unusual and risky projects over many years and help to explain cross-national differences in the rate and mode of development of four innovations in the physical, biological and human sciences.

Research models and practices change rapidly. While evidence of such changes includes cross-campus collaborations and multi-authored scholarship, faculty development opportunities also signal what is to come. In this case study, authors representing diverse disciplines examine what faculty development programs reveal about the future of academic research. The authors offer an analysis of faculty support programs across the country as a foundation, and then provide an examination of initiatives in place at their four-year regional comprehensive institution in the United States. The authors then report on the outcomes of these programs for research productivity, with a focus on opportunities that were available to all faculty across the university. Finally, the authors offer perspective on the future of academic research based on findings from examining these programs. The authors suggest that the future of research will focus on (1) collaborative design(s) of research-related support, (2) support structures and programs that encourage and facilitate cross-campus and interdisciplinary research collaborations and sharing, (3) incentive for integrating areas of research with teaching and service, and relatedly (4) programs that encourage faculty to span academic research with industry or community partnerships and collaborations, especially ones that can generate revenue or produce future research, development, or funding streams.

The emergence of Research Management and Administration (RMA) is a result of the pressure on academics to secure research funding from external sources, the increasing competition for these funds, as well as the rising requirements of research funders in terms of reporting and compliance with regulations. This is relevant in the case of the current Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (HEU) funded by the European Union (EU) which requires important level of professionalisation of the research support staff on behalf of the applicant institutions. Data management, open science, research ethics and integrity, achieving impact beyond academia and the valorisation of project results can be regarded as non-research specific criteria which have to be met by applicant organisations to secure the highly competitive funding. Meeting these non-specific criteria is not always possible in countries whose performance is lagging behind compared to the Western European competitors in EU-funded programmes, such as Hungary.

Our findings reveal two things. First, research support in Hungary is in its early stage of maturity, similary to many countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In several cases, Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs) do not possess the knowledge necessary to meet the non-research specific criteria even if the knowledge is present at the institution or with other colleagues. Second, due to the continuously increasing participation in EU-funded framework programmes (FPs), the state of research support in Hungary is constantly evolving. There is also willingness to learn and improve capacities, which needs strategic planning, studying others’ examples and their adaptability. Such processes can support the capacity building and professionalisation of research offices not only in Hungary, but in countries of the Central and Eastern European region with a similar maturity level of RMA.

Mentoring processes have been researched extensively, but rarely from a perspective that incorporates issues related to stress. In this chapter, a focus is placed on the common themes and connections between these two important literature bases. The first part of the chapter describes the mentoring process, including a description of types of relationships, stages of relationship development, and the mentoring exchange. Stress research is presented along with a presentation of research that explicitly examines stress in relationship to mentoring. Specific stress points related to each aspect of the mentoring process will be described and illusted in a conceptual model. The chapter will conclude with suggestions for future research and methods that will enhance both stress and mentoring research.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Undergraduate information commons have become pervasive in the academic library landscape. In recent years, librarians and administrators have come to identify the need for comparable commons’ spaces and services for graduate students. This chapter serves as a review of recently developed models of graduate commons—in this discussion referred to as Scholars’ Commons—as defined by an integration of physical learning spaces, personnel, and a dynamic availability of research support services that support assist graduate students throughout their academic life cycle. These provisions serve as the foundation for the development of enhanced library-supported graduate student success.

Still a rare commodity, existing models from selected institutional web sites were examined using a framework for analysis consisting of several criteria: new use of space; segmented services; partnerships; and new organizational structures. Through a synthesis of the commonalities prevalent in these systems, this chapter aims to provide recommendations for prospective Scholars’ Commons models and proposals for their development. Library organizations contemplating the development of a Scholars’ Commons need to consider the needs of their target population, potential new or reallocated spaces, feasibility of providing support and research technologies, and possible staffing models. As well, the authors consider the importance of library-based graduate student support that bolsters cross-divisional collaborative partnerships across the academy.