Information‐seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers
Hamid R. Jamali, David M. Nicholas · Aslib Journal of Information Management · 2008
Purpose The study aims to examines two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up‐to‐date and methods used for finding articles. The relationship between academic status and research field of users with their information seeking behaviour was investigated. Design/methodology/approach Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of PhD students and staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; 114 people (47.1 per cent response rate) participated in the survey. Findings The study reveals differences among subfields of physics and astronomy in terms of information‐seeking behaviour, highlights the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists. Originality/value The study is the first to deeply investigate intradisciplinary dissimilarities of information‐seeking behaviour of scientists in a discipline. It is also an up‐to‐date account of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers.