Personalization features to accelerate research

1. Presented by: Armond DiRadoAccount Development Manager a.dirado@elsevier.com Personalization features to accelerate research

2. Topics • What is personalization on the Web? • Why personalize Web sources? • Research on personalization of scholarly websites and services • Why did Elsevier introduce personalization features for the online solutions? • User feedback on personalization • How to set up personalization features • Questions

3. What is personalization on the web? “ tailoring a consumer product, electronic or written medium to a user based on personal details or characteristics they provide. More recently, it has especially been applied in the context of the World Wide Web. “ * Web pages are personalized based on the interests of an individual. Personalization implies that the changes are based on implicit data, such as items purchased or pages viewed. The term customization is used instead when the site only uses explicit data such as ratings or preferences. * *Wikipedia

4. Why personalization of web sources? • In today’s world of information overload, many users rely on personalization and similar technologies as a way to filter and organize the data most important to them. • “my” personalization trend will increase as the next generation moves into higher education and the workplace and Web users become more sophisticated • User studies indicate researchers spend less time searching. Session times go down but number of articles requested goes up

5. Study results on personalization access to scholarly articles and services Some conclusions from a qualitative user evaluation study : • Personalization was found to be associated with efficiency optimization, compared to traditional searching • Functionality, e.g.,, 'search alerts', was emphasized as being a critical success factor • The ability to choose what content and services to access, was regarded a potentially useful method to reduce information overload. • Trust was found to be a critical factor both in connection to profile based and behavior based personalization. From: My e-journal - exploring the usefulness of personalized access to scholarly articles and services, Jette Hyldegaard and Piet SeidenDepartment of Information Studies Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark

6. Why did Elsevier introduce personalization features for the online solutions ? • Request and need from users to make the research process faster and more efficient • Get people to the content they are looking for in less clicks and thus less time • Less time searching → faster research output →more research output → higher chances for institutional funding

8. Examples of personalization features Personalized alerts: • Search Alert “I want to be alerted as soon when new research is available online connected to my personal search query” • Citation Alert “Send me an email when my article is cited by somebody else in another research article” • Topic Alert “Alert when new research comes out in my area of interest” • Volume / Issue Alerts “I want to be alerted when the next issue of the Lancet is available online” Recent actions: “I remember I read this interesting article online two weeks ago but don't remember how I got to this article or in which journal it was published” • Most Recent searches • Most Recent full text articles visited • Most Recent journals of books used Favorite Journals & Books Lists (on your own ScienceDirect homepage)

9. ScienceDirect generic non personalized Homepage Personalized homepage with personal preferences of recent actions and favourite websites

10. User cases prove increase research efficiency due to personalization features • by using personalization features like alerts and recent actions users arrive at the content they are looking for 50% - 75% faster than those who don’t * • Users that set up personalized alerts use almost twice as much research data on the platform then people coming in from others sources* *ScienceDirect and Scopus usage reporting

11. User feedback on personalization features “I obtain regularly information regarding topics I am interested in without wasting time.” (Senior Researcher, Engineering & Technology, Slovenia) “Email alerts are very impressive for me, because I have new information sooner than they published in print form.” (Researcher, Materials Science, Czech Republic) “it is great that it sends me emails when my own journal articles have been cited.” (Researcher, Social Science, New Zealand) Is good because you don’t have to make a search just to see if something new comes out in a particular subject. I have set an alert, but since then I think no new article has been released. But gives me confidence that as soon as it will be released I will have it in my mailbox.” (Student, Medicine, UK) * ScienceDirect and Scopus annual Benchmark Study 2007

12. How to personalize ScienceDirect and Scopus? Easy 2 step process: • On the www.sciencedirect.com or www.Scopus.com homepage click on “not registered” in Top right corner and create a username and password • In “my settings / my profile “in the navigation bar you can amend all your personal preferences If the “remember me box” is ticked on the registration part of the homepage it will open up with your personal homepage every time you go to sciencedirect from that computer. If you don’t work from the same computer all the time simply enter your Username and password.

13. Questions? More information on personalization on: ScienceDirect: http://www.info.sciencedirect.com/using/personalization/set_preferences/ Scopus: http://www.info.scopus.com/setup/promo/usertools/ For registration: www.scopus.com www.sciencedirect.com