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Research Impact for Engineering: a National Survey of Engineering Librarians

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Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

August 28, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Engineering Librarians: Impacting the Past, Present, and Future

Tagged Division

Engineering Libraries

Page Count

14

DOI

10.18260/p.26082

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/26082

Download Count

393

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Paper Authors

biography

Daniela Solomon Case Western Reserve University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-6200-5216

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Daniela Solomon is Research Services Librarian for Biomedical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University. She is interested in bibliometrics, altmetrics, data management, and library instruction.

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biography

Matthew R Marsteller Carnegie Mellon University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6278-3424

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Mr.Marsteller is Senior Librarian, Engineering & Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to this position, he was Head of the Science Libraries at Carnegie Mellon University from 2006 through 2014. He has also served as the Physics and Math Librarian at Carnegie Mellon from 1999 through 2006. Earlier in his career, he served as the Library Team Leader for the National Energy Technology Laboratory Library in Morgantown, West Virginia and as an Assistant Science Librarian at the University of South Carolina. He also served in the United States Navy as a surface ship nuclear propulsion plant operator aboard the USS Mississippi. He is currently a United States representative on the Governing Council of the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) and has served as Chair of the Science & Technology Section of the Association of College & Research Libraries of the American Library Association.

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Abstract

Over the recent years, the demand on scholars worldwide and their institutions to demonstrate their research impact has become an increasingly important part of funding applications, promotion dossiers and ranking analytics. The need for impact assessment has steered the development of metrics, altmetrics, and metrics services. Some research metric services have been in place at academic institutions around the world. Some nations have even adopted nationwide assessment programs. However, in the United States this has not been the case. Recently, some United States academic libraries have established formal research metric services, but the extent of these services and the involvement of engineering librarians have not been explored. The authors are conducting a survey of engineering librarians at institutions in the United States with Very High (RU/VH) and High Research Activity (RU/H) Carnegie Classifications. The survey will explore engineering librarians’ perceptions and understanding of research impact and metrics, including traditional bibliometrics and alternative metrics. The authors hope that the survey results will help identify the most useful metrics and tools to assess broader impact of different engineering disciplines. The survey will also establish a benchmark of formally established research metric services and the extent to which engineering librarians are directly involved. Engineering librarians can be inspired to help capture research dollars by assisting engineering researchers in gathering evidence of their research impact.

Solomon, D., & Marsteller, M. R. (2016, June), Research Impact for Engineering: a National Survey of Engineering Librarians Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26082

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