Evidence Summary
Librarians Are Interested in Finding
Research Collaborators
A Review of:
Tran, N. Y., & Chan, E. K. (2020). Seeking
and finding research collaborators: An exploratory study of librarian
motivations, strategies, and success rates. College
& Research Libraries,81(7), 1095. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.81.7.1095
Reviewed by:
Jennifer Kaari
Librarian
East Orange Public Library
East Orange, New Jersey,
United States of America
Email: jkaari@eopl.org
Received: 2 Sept. 2021 Accepted: 12 Oct. 2021
2021 Kaari. This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0
International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the
same or similar license to this one.
DOI: 10.18438/eblip30031
Abstract
Objective – To explore research collaboration among librarians,
including librarians’ motivations for collaboration, methods for finding
collaborators, and how they perceive the success of these methods.
Design – Online survey questionnaire.
Setting – N/A
Subjects – A total of 412 librarians took the survey, and 277
respondents completed the entire survey.
Methods – The researchers developed a survey using Qualtrics,
including questions focused on whether respondents had sought research
collaboration, factors that motivated them to collaborate, methods they used
for finding collaborators, and success rates of these methods. Demographic
questions were also included.
Main Results – The survey results indicated that librarians are
very interested in research collaboration, with 91.8% of respondents answering
that they had sought collaborators, were currently collaborating, or were
interested in seeking collaborators in the future. The top motivating factor
for seeking collaboration was to gain expertise that the respondent lacked. The
most common strategy for finding collaborators was through a respondent’s
current or past place of employment, and this method was rated as extremely
successful by more than 50% of respondents. Demographically, 70.1% of respondents
worked in academic libraries.
Conclusion – The results of this study indicate that research
collaboration is of interest to librarians at a higher rate than previously
observed. These results can help inform initiatives to support and promote collaboration
in library and information science research, as well as provide a groundwork
for further research in this area.
Commentary
Why are librarians seeking out research collaborations
and how are they finding their collaborators? The authors of this paper set out
to explore these questions, building on an established literature that
indicates research collaboration and co-authorship are both common and
increasing in practice among library and information science researchers
(Chang, 2018; Cheng et al., 2019).
Utilizing Glynn’s critical appraisal tool, this study
was found to have 80% validity (2006). The authors clearly describe their
methods, include the survey in the published paper, and provide well-outlined
results. The largest weakness of the study is the small sample size, which as
the authors note, makes the results not generalizable to a large population.
This study would have been strengthened by narrowing
the focus of the survey population. The survey was open to librarians from all
disciplines and areas of library science; however, the environment around
research and collaboration varies across different types of institutions and
disciplines within librarianship. Given that academic librarians were the
largest subgroup of respondents and that the environment around publication is
very specific in academia, focusing the study on academic librarians
exclusively may have made the results more insightful, even with a small sample
size. In addition, it seems unclear if
the term “research collaboration” was clearly defined for the respondents of
the survey. The authors define the term as research wherein professional
contributions are written by two or more authors, but it seems unclear if the
term is meant to encompass published papers as well as other research outputs
such as posters and presentations.
As an exploratory study, this paper does provide a
good foundation for further research into the area of research collaboration.
The authors note many areas for future inquiry, including opportunities for
cross-sectional analysis and further study into the researchers with whom
librarians are collaborating. It would be interesting to know how often
librarians are collaborating with researchers from outside library science.
Institutions and individuals seeking to strengthen and
encourage research collaboration would find insights into where librarians are
looking for collaborations, and they could potentially find opportunities to
encourage use of these existing methods as well as develop pathways to explore
new methods for collaboration seeking. The results of this study seem to
indicate that librarians may find collaborators primarily through existing
connections—it would be very intriguing to investigate how new connections for
research collaboration are, or could, be formed. Although this study found
that very few respondents utilized social media to find collaborators, a deeper
investigation into the potential of social media to facilitate collaboration is
also an area for further research.
References
Chang, Y.-W. (2018). Research collaboration by practitioners in computer
science, library science, and management. portal:
Libraries and the Academy, 18(3),
473–490. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2018.0029
Cheng, F.-F., Huang, Y.-W., Tsaih, D.-C.,
& Wu, C.-S. (2019). Trend analysis of co-authorship network in Library Hi Tech. Library Hi Tech, 37(1),
43–56. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-11-2017-0241
Glynn, L. (2006). A critical appraisal tool for library and information
research. Library Hi Tech, 24(3), 387–399. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830610692154