Information Seeking Behaviors, Attitudes, and Choices of Academic Physicists

Physicists in academic institutions utilize a variety of resources and strategies to seek, find, use scholarly information news. Using sample physicists, researchers surveyed 182 students faculty at seven Canadian university explore self-perceived success rates, consulted, databases used, social media citation management systems. To complement the survey, 11 follow up interviews/focus groups were completed with participants further uncover information-seeking behaviors, choices, strategies, feelings around keeping date needs. According survey results, minority physicists (15.4%) acknowledged that they successfully date. However, significant number (28.6%) indicated unsuccessful could do better remaining current Co-investigators, using qualitative analyses, identified four emergent themes: (1) There are “too many papers – not enough time” effectively search, evaluate read interest; (2) Staying is important especially competitive research areas; (3) Graduate seek differently than experienced researchers; (4) The arXiv database physicists. Additional minor themes included physics-related publishing constantly evolving; behaviors; and, methods can differ between physics subdisciplines. This study aims shed light on opportunities for librarians identify meet physicists’ evolving attitudes,