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The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of an empirical study of information behaviour of young Slovenian researchers.

Built on some well‐known models of scholarly information behaviour the study complements a previously conducted study of the same population, which focused on the aspects of user friendliness. This second study is an attempt to shape a more detailed picture of the investigated user group. Presented are types of scholarly information behaviour, enriched by some complementary issues regarding their behaviour as digital users.

The respondents were found to express many of the features of both digital scholars and other users of digital technology. Direct searching and power browsing are most often expressed searching behaviours; also common are probing and accessing. Collecting behaviour is mostly expressed through “squirrelling”, and sometimes gathering. Satisfaction with the system and with search results is very influential, but sometimes not decisive, for the user to stay with the system, since attention to the content of the results is also very strong.

The rationale for the study was that understanding users' information behaviour is crucial in the design of their information tools.

Scholarly information behaviour has been extensively studied in Western countries, however, studies of this nature are not so common in Slovenian scholarly literature. As such, this study is one of the first to tackle this issue.

The focus of this paper is to study the influence of social media on scholarly communication. The aim is to provide an overview of researchers' use of Web 2.0 techniques, and discuss a possible change of information behaviors in the context of scholarly communication.

A web survey was distributed to a targeted sample of university staff (professors, teachers, researchers, and doctoral students). SPSS was utilized as a main tool to synthesize and analyze data, and present the results.

Web 2.0 tools are well‐known to researchers. Most researchers are familiar with blogs, wikis, social networks, multimedia sharing, and online document. Social media provide a convenient environment for scholarly communication. Depending on different aims within the scholarly communication process, researchers choose appropriate modes of communication in their research work.

A combination of content analysis with survey and/or interviews may highlight other aspects of Web 2.0, which is not possible using a single method of content analysis.

There are few studies on the changes of scholarly communication in the context of Web 2.0. This study provides new insights for exploring the effects of Web 2.0 tools on scholarly communication and the development of new information behavior to match the scholarly environment of social media. This understanding can aid the researchers to keep abreast of new characteristics of scholarly communication and help the librarians to develop the correlative services in the scholarly environment of social media.

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.

This paper aims to use the technology acceptance model 2 (TAM2) to investigate the perceived ease of use, perceived benefits, barriers to use and acceptance of Arab scholars of informal communication tools in research writing.

This study adopted a quantitative approach using a questionnaire distributed among Arab scholars in Jordan, Egypt and Oman. The questionnaire based on the TAM2 model aimed to measure the acceptance of the sample of informal scholarly communication tools.

The study’s findings confirmed that the sample is considering informal scholarly communication tools are useful for their research. Informal scholarly communication tools increase the papers’ visibility, leading to a higher number of citations, building scholars’ reputation, creating new collaboration opportunities and maintaining the established collaboration.

The study’s findings can only be generalized on Arab scholars. The sample size could be one of the limitations, and the sample’s distribution was limited to three Arab universities in Jordan, Oman and Egypt. The authors recommend that future researchers use TAM2 model as a framework for studying the adoption of informal scholarly communication tools in different cultural contexts to achieve a better understanding of factors influencing the adoption of such tools.

A practical implication of this research is in drawing the attention of higher education institutions for the potentials of these scholarly communication tools in increasing the availability of publications of their scholars and increasing the citation of these publications, which would help in increasing the ranking of scholars, and the rank of these institutions which opens new opportunities of international research collaboration.

The outcomes of this research have several implications for the successful adoption of the TAM2 model. This study brings new knowledge to the literature related to informal scholarly communication adoption by the application of TAM2 constructs to determine the adoption behavior; the findings offered evidence of the TAM2 success in predicting adoption of such tools.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, adopting TAM2 in this research will add to knowledge by being one of the first studies to adopt TAM2 to measure acceptance of informal scholarly communication tools.

To provide a review of the log analysis studies of use and users of scholarly electronic journals.

The advantages and limitations of log analysis are described and then past studies of e‐journals' use and users that applied this methodology are critiqued. The results of these studies will be very briefly compared with some survey studies. Those aspects of online journals' use and users studies that log analysis can investigate well and those aspects that log analysis can not disclose enough information about are highlighted.

The review indicates that although there is a debate about reliability of the results of log analysis, this methodology has great potential for studying online journals' use and their users' information seeking behaviour.

This paper highlights the strengths and weaknesses of log analysis for studying digital journals and raises a couple of questions to be investigated by further studies.

This study aims to investigate how the transition from print to electronic scholarly communication has affected faculty’s information behaviour and their perception of academic libraries.

An online survey was distributed among academics affiliated to the member universities of the Consortium of University Services of Catalonia. A total of 2,230 replies were received.

Journal articles are the most relevant information resource used for research and teaching purposes. Databases are the preferred starting point for bibliographic searches, although a significant proportion of scholars rely on Internet search engines. The main source for gaining access to documents is libraries, followed by free materials available online. Scholarly journals are the preferred channel for disseminating research outputs, with the open access being a factor of marginal interest when deciding where to publish.

The results of this study should be useful to guide policies regarding scientific information and research and, more specifically, policies regarding academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Information is provided about each source, and the paper discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether engineering master’s students at a medium-sized university use library-provided abstracting and indexing (A&I) services (e.g. Compendex), and if they do, to what extent, in what manner and for what purposes.

A mixed methodology approach was used to explore electronic information-seeking patterns of engineering master’s students at New Mexico State University. Usage statistics, a focus group and a Web-based survey were used, the latter composed of 17 questions using a critical incident approach and direct questions to probe: reasons for and method of search, types of materials used (with relative frequencies), means of obtaining materials and evaluations of the usefulness of five library-provided A&I services.

Only 15 per cent of respondents used a subscription A&I service such as Compendex when searching specific terms. The majority of sources used were located through known term searches, and master’s learned of these information resources through article citations or conversations with colleagues. Half the respondents reported using Google Scholar to find the last scholarly article they had read. Engineering master’s students – similar to practicing engineers – evaluate the costs associated with obtaining information, and may “satisfice”. Even so, students expressed interest in increasing their knowledge of skills and strategies to find worthwhile electronic information.

This study sheds light on engineering master’s students’ use of A&I services, and examines their perceptions of five of these services commonly provided by academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of reading in scholarly work among academics in Finland. This study analyzes readings from a variety of publication types including books, conference proceedings, research reports, magazines, newspapers, blogs, non-fiction and fiction.

An online survey was developed and distributed in Finland in 2016–2017 (n=528). Participants were asked their finding and use of scholarly information resources of all types.

Scholars read from a variety of publications. Different types of publications are read and used differently. Reading also varies between disciplines, ranks, work responsibilities and type of research performed.

The study was a nationwide study of researchers in Finland; therefore, all findings are within the context of researchers in a single country. All results are self-reported; therefore, the authors assume but cannot be sure that respondents accurately recollect the specifics of their use of scholarly information.

The results of this study are relevant to publishers, research librarians, editors and others who serve consumers of scholarly information resources, design information products and services for those scholars, and seek to better understand the information needs and use of a variety of types of scholarly publications.

This study replicates previous studies in a variety of countries and provides a more up-to-date and single-country contextualized overview of how researchers find and use scholarly information in their work.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the information behaviors in which scholars regularly engage, in participants’ own words wherever possible, and discuss how those behaviors function in the broader landscape of scholars’ academic practice.

Scholars’ information behaviors were investigated using semi-structured interviews, along with document analysis. Three scholars recognized for significant contributions to their fields were identified from each of the three major divisions of academia (humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences) using intensity sampling, for a total of nine participants. Interviews asked each participant to describe a recent research project from conceptualization to completion, focusing on how scholars engaged with ideas, information resources, tools, and processes.

Information behaviors were found to permeate scholars’ work from conceptualization through publication, and included behaviors such as skimming, reading, data collection and analysis, and writing. Of particular interest are the specific information behaviors that fall into the broader category of information use.

This study uses established definitions of information behaviors to broaden the information behaviors conversation to include the entirety of academic practice. The study shows how scholars from across the academy engage with information throughout the course of their academic work, not just when they are engaged in more traditional information seeking activities.