How the users find science journal articles in the digital environment

Abstract

The author discusses the most popular search services for science articles retrieval — which make the main information source for modem researchers. Based on the findings of the global sociological study of over 40,000 respondents, the services most popular with the users are compared. Among the most frequently used are: abstracted bibliographic databases, science retrieval services, global general search services, libraries’ www-sites, publishers’ www-sites, journals www-sites, and social networks. The author analyzes libraries’ potential for tuning popular services for the users to transit from brief article descriptions (bibliographic records) to their full texts available through subscriptions. To unify the exchange mode and formats, the requirements documents by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) regulate data exchange between content providers (publishers and aggregators), discovery services developers and the libraries. Integration of Russian journal resources into the global exchange infrastructure is hindered by incompleteness and inconsistency of the metadata being provided. Meanwhile such integration is vital for Russian science article visibility and citation. The author also emphasizes the importance of the standardized data exchange between Russian content providers, discovery services, and the libraries.