The 2012 report from the Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey, which tracks attitudes and practices of faculty members at American colleges and universities, just came out this week. It’s a little library-centric but touches on many issues related to teaching, research, and scholarly communication. It’s long (70+ pages) but a relatively quick read:
If you don’t have time to skim the full report, here are some excerpts that may be of particular interest to TAG:
Teaching
- Small but non-trivial shares of respondents use technology in their undergraduate teaching. But while most recognize the availability of resources to help them do so, many respondents do not draw upon resources beyond their own ideas or feel strongly motivated to seek out opportunities to use more technology in their teaching.
Conducting Research
- Collaboration — The prevalence of collaborative research varies significantly by discipline. Virtually all of the scientists reported that they have collaborated with others at some point in their career, while only two-thirds of humanists had done so.
- Data Preservation and Reuse — About four out of five respondents indicated that they build up some kind of collections of “scientific, qualitative, quantitative, or primary source research data.” But while scholars across disciplines build up collections of relevant research data—of whatever type may by appropriate for their field and research—in the course of their work, few turn to established solutions for preserving these materials aſter a given project ends (see Figure 37). Four out of five respondents strongly agreed that “I preserve these materials myself, using commercially or freely available soſtware or services.”
- Digital Research — We asked faculty members if they would like to “more deeply” integrate digital research activities and methodologies into their work. About half strongly agreed that they did, while about 20% strongly disagreed. A relatively greater share of humanists (about a third) strongly disagreed with this statement than did scientists and social scientists (about one in ten)… Among those who indicated they were interested in more deeply integrating digital research activities and methodologies, more than three quarters of respondents indicated that each of the [types of support] listed—more time, more conceptual help in understanding how digital research activities and methodologies can be thoughtfully integrated into their research, or technical support for implementing digital research activities and methodologies—would be very important to them.
- Digital Humanities — A far smaller share of humanists than of social scientists and scientists indicated that any of these digital methods were very important to their research. Even methods that are believed to be specifically applicable in the digital humanities, such as text mining or GIS mapping, are reported to be utilized by only a minority of humanists.
Disseminating Research
- Publication — Respondents tend to value established scholarly dissemination methods, prioritizing audiences in their sub-discipline and discipline, and those of lay professionals, more so than undergraduates or the general public. Similarly, they continue to select journals in which to publish based on characteristics such as topical coverage, readership, and impact factor. Finally, respondents tend to value existing publisher services, such as peer review, branding, and copy-editing, while expressing less widespread agreement about the value of newer dissemination support services offered by libraries that are intended to maximize access and impact.
- Journal Selection/Open Access — The fact that the journal “makes its articles freely available on the internet, so there is no cost to purchase and read” remains among the lowest priorities to scholars in selecting a publication venue; only about a third of respondents indicated this was a very important factor.
- Faculty Web Pages — A third of respondents indicated that they receive support in the form of having a public web presence [“a public webpage that lists links to my recent scholarly outputs, provides information on my areas of research and teaching, and provides contact ifnormation for me”] managed for them.
