Towards Researcher Participation in Research Information Systems

Abstract

This poster presents an ongoing collaborative study supported by OCLC/ALISE LIS Research Grant. This mainly includes description and research design of this study. The project explores researcher participation in research identity management systems (e.g., Google Scholar, ResearchGate, ORCID). It will especially discuss about knowledge base of how to design reliable, efficient and scalable solutions for the systems, motivate researchers to participate in the systems, and contribute to the system development in digital library settings. Accurate research identity identification and determination are essential for effective grouping, linking, aggregation, and retrieval of digital scholarship; evaluation of the research productivity and impact of individuals, groups, and institutions; and identification of expertise and skills.

There are many different research identity management systems from publishers, libraries, universities, search engines and content aggregators with different data models, coverage and quality. Although knowledge curation by professionals usually produces the highest quality results, it may not be scalable because of its high cost. The literature on online communities shows that successful peer curation communities which are able to attract and retain enough participants can provide scalable knowledge curation solutions of a quality that is comparable to the quality of professionally curated content. Hence, the success of online research identity management systems may depend on the number of contributors and users they are able to recruit, motivate, and engage in research identity data curation.

The outcomes of this exploratory research will include but not be limited to a qualitative theory of research identity data and information practices of researchers, quantitative model(s) of researchers’ priorities for different online research identity data and services, the factors that may affect their participation in and commitment to online research identity management systems, and their motivations to engage in research identity data curation. The study’s findings can greatly enhance our knowledge of the design of research identity data/metadata models, services, quality assurance activities, and, mechanisms for recruiting and retaining researchers for provision and maintenance of identity data.