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A study of factors that affect the information‐seeking behavior of academic scientists

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  • Xi Niu
  • Bradley M. Hemminger

Abstract

In an effort to understand how academic scientists seek information relevant to their research in today's environment of ubiquitous electronic access, a correlation framework is built and regression analysis is applied to the survey results from 2,063 academic researchers in natural science, engineering, and medical science at five research universities in the United States. Previous work has reported descriptive statistics about these scientists' information‐seeking behavior. This study extends that work to examine relationships between scientists' information‐seeking behaviors and their personal and environmental factors. Several regression models, including the Poisson model, the logit model, and the ordered logit model, are built to interpret the correlation among scientists' behaviors. In addition, exploratory factor analysis is used for data reduction. Overall, many factors were found to affect the specific information‐seeking behaviors of scientists, including demographic, psychological, role‐related, and environmental factors. Of the factors having an effect, academic position was the most important determinant of information behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Xi Niu & Bradley M. Hemminger, 2012. "A study of factors that affect the information‐seeking behavior of academic scientists," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 336-353, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:2:p:336-353
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21669
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    Cited by:

    1. Elizabeth Martín-Mora & Shari Ellis & Lawrence M Page, 2020. "Use of web-based species occurrence information systems by academics and government professionals," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-41, July.
    2. Liang, Guoqiang & Hou, Haiyan & Ding, Ying & Hu, Zhigang, 2020. "Knowledge recency to the birth of Nobel Prize-winning articles: Gender, career stage, and country," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    3. Ehsan Mohammadi & Mike Thelwall & Stefanie Haustein & Vincent Larivière, 2015. "Who reads research articles? An altmetrics analysis of Mendeley user categories," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(9), pages 1832-1846, September.
    4. Steffen Lemke & Athanasios Mazarakis & Isabella Peters, 2021. "Conjoint analysis of researchers' hidden preferences for bibliometrics, altmetrics, and usage metrics," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(6), pages 777-792, June.
    5. Mahmood Khosrowjerdi & Anneli Sundqvist & Katriina Byström, 2020. "Cultural Patterns of Information Source Use: A Global Study of 47 Countries," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(6), pages 711-724, June.

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