Indexing of Tables and Figures: Scientists’ Reaction

1. Indexing of Tables and Figures: Scientists’ Reaction Carol Tenopir University of Tennessee ctenopir@utk.edu web.utk.edu/~tenopir/

2. My research with Donald King shows journal articles are… • Widely read by scientists and students as a reliable source of information • Read for many reasons, including research, writing, teaching/learning, and current awareness • Highly valued and essential • Most commonly found through library • Increasingly read from library e-collection

3. Scientists and other scholars must read more… • More articles are published every year • Reading more to keep up with their field • Peer reviewed journals are essential • E-journal systems and search engines provide access to more journals and articles quickly

4. Average Articles Read per year per University Faculty Member Average number of articles read per scientist *280 with outliers

5. Average Articles Read per year per faculty academic discipline Year of Studies

6. Average Minutes per Article by University Faculty Member Average Minutes Per Article Year of Studies

7. Granularity of Journal Articles Granularity= Divisible: Made up of conveniently small and independent parts Encarta Dictionary

8. 1. JournalIssue

9. 2. Article Granularity

10. Objects granularity: Extract and index figures

11. CSA Tables and Figures Prototype • Objects Database • Record includes: • Full image • Captions • Index terms • Link to full text • Other metadata

12. CSA Prototype Testing Led to: • White paper (Tenopir, Sandusky, Casado: The Value of CSA Deep Indexing for Researchers) • http://info.csa.com/csaillustrata • CSA ILLUSTRATA product

13. Key Research Questions for Tables & Figures (T&F) Indexing • What do scientists currently do with T&F? • How might they use a T&F index? • How effective is T&F searching? • How might T&F searching impact practice? • What features are most useful?

14. Participants • 9 institutions • 60 scientists (mostly life sciences) • Over 350 searches

15. Multiple Methods of Data Collection Observing Searches Pre and Post Surveys Search Diaries

16. Results of the Study • What scientists currently do • Uses and Purposes of T&F indexing • Suggestions for success

17. What they currently do • Search for photographs and maps more than tables, figures or graphs • Use Google most often • Level of satisfaction with searches consistently rated low • locating objects is “difficult” • “in general, academic figures, tables, and graphs are not available to search”

18. Potential Uses and Purposes • To find relevant articles they would not otherwise find • To retrieve and use images • To compare their work with others’ • To support analysis

19. Potential Use: To find articles they would otherwise miss • “Sometimes tables, figures, maps, etc. are ‘hidden’ in other papers. This search tool gives me the opportunity to find these items too” • “…possibility to find information that might be unnoticed in a traditional database” • “…ability to find data that may not be reflected in the title and abstract of the article”

20. Potential Use: To find articles they would otherwise miss Would Information Be Found Without Tables & Figures Search Capabilities?

21. Potential Use: To find articles they would otherwise miss

22. Potential Use: To retrieve and use images • It would be useful “when looking for information difficult to retrieve in written form” • Specific instances noted: • “looking for geologic maps of a specific area” • “for a quick assessment of photographic quality in cytogenetics research” • “when I need a specific graph, map, photograph, or figure that would be for presentations or teaching”

23. Potential Use: To retrieve and use images

24. Potential Use: To compare their work with others’ • It would be useful when “writing original manuscripts and comparing data from other researchers to your own findings” • Another researcher refers to “seeking published data with which to compare models” • “Knowing or suspecting that a specific experiment has been done, I can look for the data and compare to one I might do or may have already done”

25. Potential Use: To support analysis Participants anticipate using the objects retrieved : • for review articles • to “be inspired by how other researchers set up figures/tables” • to “expose me to different areas in which similar methods are used”

26. Potential to change practice • “I discovered some new publications in areas where I thought I knew all.” • “…made me think about different ways that data is conveyed…I’ll design my own future graphs and figures to better ‘stand alone’ as a result.” • “I actually did a few successful searches where unexpected and interesting information came up.”

27. Suggestions for Success • Images must be of high quality with ability to enlarge thumbnail images • The context of the whole article is very important—in fact it may be dangerous to see images without the context • Allow table contents to be searchable and support extraction of data from tables

28. PART 1 of the Enhanced Abstract

29. PART 2 of the Enhanced Abstract

30. Q: Would you rather use: N = 46 valid responses

31. In conclusion • Scientists use journal issues and articles for many different reasons, including current awareness, research and writing, and teaching • They read many articles each year, from a variety of journals and the amount of reading is going up • Journal issues are good for browsing and current awareness; articles found by searching are important for research and teaching

32. And… • Sometimes scientists need just a part of an article and they need systems that help them read more quickly • Providing access to tables and figures, within the context of the article as a whole, can help scientists in many ways. • Librarians and publishers must think at many levels of granularity—journal issues and whole articles AND parts of articles such as tables and figures.

33. Thank you! Questions?