Supporting Serendipitous Discovery in the Scholarly Research Process
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In SAGE’s latest discoverability white paper, we share the results of original research into an often overlooked aspect of discovery for today’s scholarly researcher –serendipitous discovery is an information-seeking method by which scholars uncover surprising connections between content and concepts. The paper reveals new insights into the search preferences and practices that lead to indirect and unplanned discovery, as a well as a multitude of opportunities for information professionals to aid readers in serendipity within their research journey. Moderated by infoDOCKET editor Gary Price, in this one-hour webinar, white paper authors Lettie Conrad and Alan Maloney of SAGE will share the findings from their research and present a range of publisher solutions, including SAGE Recommends.
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Supporting Serendipitous Discovery in the Scholarly Research Process
- 1. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Make sure your volume is set appropriately Make sure you have followed the instructions on your keypad properly Make sure everything is plugged in properly to assure your devices are working correctly If you have audio or visual difficulties, please let us know via the Question box and we will be happy to assist you. Please Check Your Settings
- 2. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Beyond Search Supporting Serendipity in the Scholarly Research Process
- 3. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks While we do our best to answer as many questions as we can, time constraints may not allow us to answer every question. Thank you for understanding. Send us your questions! Send in your questions via the Question Box on your screen. → Using Twitter? Use the hashtag #SAGETalks.
- 4. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Gary Price Editor, Library Journal’s infoDOCKET SAGE White Papers Lettie Conrad & Alan Maloney http://bit.ly/23Z99d4
- 5. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Lettie Conrad • Executive Product Analysis Manager • Leads Discovery & Access programs At SAGE, we take seriously our obligation to ensure readers get to the SAGE content they need as smoothly and effectively as possible wherever their starting point and regardless of their device.
- 6. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Expecting the Unexpected What do users need beyond search? How are those needs and expectations formed? Does demography or context impact these expectations? How are publishers servicing those indirect discovery needs? What happens when users aren’t sure what they’re looking for?
- 7. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Research Methods UX research Survey Interviews Undergraduate Students u u Masters/PhD Students u u Faculty u u u Content & Tech Providers u
- 8. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Defining terms • Types of search • Known-item searching • Exploratory searching • Re-finding • Don’t know what you need to know
- 9. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks What is serendipity? 1. the finding of unexpected information (relevant to the goal or not) while engaged in any information activity 2. the making of an intellectual leap of understanding with that information to arrive at an insight. Andre, P., Teevan, J., Dumais, S. T., ‘Discovery Is Never by Chance: Designing for (Un)Serendipity’, C&C ‘09, October 26-30, 2009, Berkeley, California, USA
- 10. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Why does serendipity matter? • Students and researchers re-frame their information need as they go • Some useful information discoveries are unintentional • People like serendipity: it delights users Designing for serendipity may be the holy grail of the search experience. Russell-Rose, T., Tate, T. (2013). Designing the Search Experience: The Information Architecture of Discovery. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
- 11. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Beyond search • Email alerts • Following citations • Human recommendations • Machine recommendations / relatedness
- 12. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Recommendations as discovery 90% faculty 78% students Online recommendations are about as useful than those I receive from peers
- 13. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Context is key! How important are the following factors when evaluating recommended content? • Related to my field of study • Can access the full text • Recognize / trust the provider
- 14. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 15. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks 0.00% 25.00% 50.00% 75.00% 100.00% Listed as "also read" by other users From a recognized / trustworthy publisher Recommended by a peer / faculty member From a known author / expert Uses your search terms / keywords Titles that look interesting / compelling Relevant to your field Titles that appear relevant for your studies When presented with links to recommended content, which factors motivate you to click on one or more such links? (check all that apply) Faculty Undergrads
- 16. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Content types – students 1. Journals 2. Books 3. Case studies 4. Multimedia
- 17. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Content types – faculty 1. Journals 2. Books 3. Stats / datasets 4. Conference reports
- 18. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Industry research
- 19. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Alan Maloney • Sr. Product Analyst, Taxonomy & Semantic Technology • Leads Interlinking & Metadata programs Content is arguably the thing that a publisher should do best.
- 20. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Unplanned discovery in context ● ‘Researchers’ expectations are being set not by improvements relative to the past but rather by reference to consumer internet services’* * Schonfeld, R. C. (2015, March 26). Meeting researchers where they start: Streamlining access to scholarly resources. Retrieved from http://sr.ithaka.org?p=241038
- 21. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Unplanned discovery in context ● ‘Researchers’ expectations are being set not by improvements relative to the past but rather by reference to consumer internet services’ ● Amazon ‘integrates recommendations into every part of the purchasing process’* * Mangalindan, J. P. (2012, July 30). Amazon’s recommendation secret. Fortune. Retrieved from http:// fortune.com/2012/07/30/amazons-recommendation-secret/
- 22. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 23. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 24. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 25. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 26. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 27. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Unplanned discovery in context ● ‘Researchers’ expectations are being set not by improvements relative to the past but rather by reference to consumer internet services’ ● Amazon ‘integrates recommendations into every part of the purchasing process’ ● Spotify ‘uses playlists as the common currency’ to show users undiscovered music* * Pasick, A. (2015, December 21). The magic that makes Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists so damn good. Quartz. Retrieved from http://qz.com/571007/the-magic-that-makes-spotifys- discover-weekly-playlists-so-damn-good/
- 28. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks (Pasick, 2015)
- 29. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Is academic discovery different? • Objectives are (slightly) different • There’s not as much data • Consumer psychology focuses on retail • Academic content is more personal http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/04/09/academic-promotion-scholars-popular- media/
- 30. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks The popular-personal continuum Popular Personal Big data Small data Network-driven Content-driven mass market retail entertainment scholarly research
- 31. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks (Our) principles for serendipitous discovery • Academic research is personal. • Content-focused, not behaviour-focused. • Point of serendipitous discovery is the current, specific information need. • Serendipity should be unexpected. • Serendipity happens when people cross boundaries. • Serendipity is only useful when someone can make sense of the surprise information.
- 32. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 33. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 34. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks (Our) principles for serendipitous discovery • Content-focused, not behaviour-focused. • Point of serendipitous discovery is the current, specific information need. • Academic research is personal. • Serendipity should be unexpected. • Serendipity happens when people cross boundaries. • Serendipity is only useful when someone can make sense of the surprise information.
- 35. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 36. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 37. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 38. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 39. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 40. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks (Our) principles for serendipitous discovery • Content-focused, not behaviour-focused. • Point of serendipitous discovery is the current, specific information need. • Academic research is personal. • Serendipity should be unexpected. • Serendipity happens when people cross boundaries. • Serendipity is only useful when someone can make sense of the surprise information.
- 41. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks
- 42. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks While we do our best to answer as many questions as we can, time constraints may not allow us to answer every question. Thank you for understanding. Send us your questions! Send in your questions via the Question Box on your screen. → Using Twitter? Use the hashtag #SAGETalks.
- 43. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne #SAGETalks Webinar recording, slides, and follow-up Q&A will be emailed to you and available on sagepub.com/sagetalks Thank you! Alan Maloney Alan.Maloney@ sagpeub.com Lettie Conrad Lettie.Conrad@ sagepub.com Be sure to check our website for updates on our webinar series! SAGE White Papers http://bit.ly/23Z99d4
Notas del editor
- The Publisher of the Social Sciences
- The fourth installment in the SAGE series of Discoverability White papers comes in two parts Expecting the Unexpected – shares original research into academic user experiences with serendipitous discovery in scholarly research. Lettie Conrad will be speaking to the findings published in this paper. The Story of SAGE Recommends – is the R&D portion, where Alan Maloney explains how SAGE came to develop a solution for scholarly serendipity. You can find all SAGE White papers at this shortened link: http://bit.ly/23Z99d4
- First up: Lettie Conrad came to SAGE 10 years ago and is now serving as an Executive Manager in SAGE’s global Online Products division. Lettie is responsible for optimizing the discoverability and usability of SAGE’s user-centered web and mobile products. She helped articulate SAGE’s discoverability strategy by stating, that they “take seriously our obligation to ensure readers get to the SAGE content they need as smoothly and effectively as possible wherever their starting point and regardless of their device.” Among many things, she serves as co-chair for NISO’s Open Discovery Initiative and is working on her PhD in Information Science from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.
- In 2015, we wanted to examine our ability to serve the widest possible variety of discovery needs for our readers. Our goal was to explore what opportunities were available to SAGE to enhance our offerings and support fluid discovery of scholarly research across SAGE resources. Specifically, we wanted to how students and faculty were seeking and retrieving content beyond the search box. We felt we had a pretty good understanding of search use cases, but what else was going on – what other needs did we need to consider as part of the content discovery process? And what should we do about them?
- So, here’s how we went about tackling those questions… All participant populations were as global in scope as we manage – students and faculty who participated in user experience tests, surveys, or interviews were pretty international in nature, with content and tech providers being mostly from the US or UK. Undergraduate survey respondents were 53% from North America, 18% from Asia/Asia Pacific, 17% from Europe, 6% from South America, 5% from the Middle East, and 1% from Africa. Faculty responses were more heavily received from North America (70%), with 13% from Europe, 7% from Asia/Asia Pacific, 5% from Africa, 3% from South America, and 2% from the Middle East. Many discipline perspectives are represented as well. The majority of survey responses were received by scholars in the social sciences (60% of faculty and 55% of students). Although a number of responses to the survey as well as interviews were with faculty in the humanities (13%), the medical/health sciences (20%), and science, technical, or mathematical (STM) fields (7%); responses were also received from undergraduates declaring studies in the medical/health sciences (15%), STM (14%), humanities (9%), and the arts (7%).
- We felt that by embarking on a user-centered project meant that we needed to take a step back and consider what our users’ information needs might look like before they start discovery. We started with Donna Spencer, an information architect who came up with a framework of types of information seeking. We learned that there are a few such models and they had one thing in common: they differentiate between search and exploration - albeit in slightly different ways. The point that resonated with us is that these types of info seeking require different strategies. For known-item searching you’d probably use a quick search or the advanced search. For exploratory searching you might find it more appropriate to use a site’s browse functionality. Re-finding, where you’re looking for something that you’ve seen before, you’d probably try and re-trace your steps or search on the full citation. A big part of what Alan and I do is to support those first 3 activities, but we could quickly see that we were neglecting that fourth one, where the user doesn’t even really know what they’re looking for, where semantic enrichment can be most fruitful. This is where serendipity comes into the equation.
- So within that context, we zeroed in on the concept of serendipity. We felt we generally understood the term, but in the context of academic research, we learned through the literature that there’s an important distinction between the chance encounter itself and realising the relevance or the importance of that encounter and turning it into insight. Think of the classic penicillin example – the chance information that Alexander Fleming encountered was a contaminated petrie dish, but it took understanding to see that the substance that grew on that petrie dish had antibiotic properties. Chance favoured the prepared mind. We felt this definition punctuated the fact as publishers we are often more focused on the first aspect of serendipity, the stumbling up something new -- but less concerned with the second, where the ah-ha moment happens. We wanted to enhance our products to showcase content to the user and help them to make sense of it, and we took this definition into our data gathering and analysis.
- Looking at that definition you might think that serendipity is just a nice-to-have. But we think it’s more important than that. Because, it’s actually the reality of how people seek information. How often does a user perform a search and their information need is satisfied by a single, ideal set of documents? Almost never. It’s well documented how researchers re-frame their information needs as they go, based on the information they encounter. So firstly, information needs are fluid and changing, and secondly they’re not always satisfied intentionally. There are famous, world-changing examples of this, but on a more everyday level, think back to your own work and how often you’ve stumbled upon something useful that you weren’t necessarily looking for. and thinking back on that experience, you probably found that discovery pleasurable. People like serendipity, it creates user satisfaction. So serendipity is important, but it’s also hard. We like this quote – designing for serendipity may be the holy grail of the search experience. The authors here are making the point that serendipity is not just useful for discovery, but that it’s elusive - you only appreciate it after it’s happened, it’s hard to pin down. In other words, known-item searching and exploratory browsing are much more solved problems than helping people find what they don’t even know they want.
- So what does this mean in less abstract terms? When the name of a search engine becomes a commonly used verb, it seems obvious that “search” is embraced as a normal part of getting things done. So, for our survey, we used UX research results to zero in on specific use cases or techniques our users were employing for discovery beyond the search box. This is our working list of the keys ways we observed users experiencing serendipitous discovery. We saw unplanned or unexpected content discoveries happening when a user follows a link in an email alert or chases up the tree of citations from a particularly meaningful paper – and of course recommendations!
- In both interviews and surveys, we explored in detail the idea of following recommendations as a way of finding new information. The majority of users we spoke to were familiar with forms of computer-generated recommendations – likely because of popular ecommerce recommendation tools, like Amazon’s “frequently bought together” or “also bought” suggestion features, Alan will discuss these in more detail later. We found that 90% of faculty and 78% of students click on these sorts of features – we were really impressed by those numbers! And the majority felt that online recommendations were about as useful overall than those they receive from peers. In reflection - I think it’s fascinating that recommendation tools are popular and well used, but not perceived as discovery by users, as they’re not part of their proactive, intentional research workflow. Recommendations – either machine or human generated – are often not perceived as a discovery technique.
- We found there’s some nuance here – context is everything, esp. for the prepared mind Both faculty and students rated equally that a recommendation’s relevance to their studies was the top factor applied to the evaluation of recommended content. For obvious pragmatic reasons, both faculty and undergrads felt their ability to access the full text was critical to their decision of when to follow a recommendation – if they can’t read it, I’m guessing many will give up! Finally, some sense of the authority of a recommendation, a sense of trust or recognition of the provider or publisher was the third most important factor for both faculty and students.
- In our surveys, when we asked undergraduates and faculty about their experiences and preferences when searching for scholarly information, we were pleased to see that library websites and subject databases ranked at the top of the importance scale. We were also impressed that following links to related or recommended content ranked very highly as well, only slightly ahead of following recommendations from peers. It’s important to keep in mind that these are not novice users - 41% of respondents indicated that they’re looking for scholarly information several times per day and 24% are seeking info at least once / day. To me, these results speak to the wide variety of options available to today’s seeker of academic information, many of which are of equal importance within the diverse, multi-layered techniques employed by both students and faculty.
- Even more specifically, we asked about what would compel users to click on machine-generated recommendations. This was a key question in our UX research and testing designs. Impressively, students and faculty agree on most of the top motivators…RELEVANCE To understand how best to support users in this regard we asked them how they evaluate links to recommended content. The theme that I noticed is that the human side of things – recommended by your peers, frequently read by other users, even from a known author or expert, isn’t actually that important. What’s more important is the apparent relevance – simply, whether the content looks either germane or even just interesting.
- We found that the type of content being recommended would influences users’ selections – not surprisingly, students rated journals and books at the top of the list, likely because these are so plentiful and recognizable. In projects like this one, we’re starting to see case studies and multimedia are growing in popularity with students over these last 10 years. When speaking to students about recommendations and other unexpected / unplanned instances of discovery, it became clear that these activities don’t fit into their sense of what a proper literature looks like. Students didn’t see serendipity is not a commonly condoned literature review or research method. One doctoral student told us: “In my masters, I did a very thorough, systematic literature review, followed every procedure in the textbook. In my latest project, I’m taking a more free-wheeling approach that cuts across disciplines.” It’s possible that serendipity is a growing trend for today’s emerging scholars.
- For faculty, journals and books still rate at the top of the list – but they value statistical datasets and conference papers more highly than students. Examining these trends more closely, it’s clear that a key issue for faculty is retaining currency in ones field of study. What is often referred to as “Keeping up to date” is a common challenge for advanced scholars, just as the younger generations learning to cope with information overload.
- When our user-focused research was complete, the final stages of our research focused on an inward view. The last phase of our research included interviews and discussions with our publisher peers and technology partners. These are some of the folks that contributed to our research in this area, sharing their knowledge of user needs in serendipity and their various solutions for the research community. Our goal was to learn from a variety of folks across the community of academic publishers and technology providers. We asked what they understood about user needs for serendipity and what could be done to meet those expectations.
- To tell us more about what we learned about solutions in serendipitous discovery, allow me to introduce my co-author and colleague, Alan. Alan Maloney is Senior Product Analyst in the London office of SAGE Publications, working on how content is organized across SAGE's online products. Having started on the editorial team, he's always been close to the work that SAGE publishes and enjoys bringing a technological perspective on content, and vice versa, in order to make content more discoverable, findable and usable. Specifically, Alan advocates for SAGE’s semantic tech programs to be content-based, “as content is arguably the thing that a publisher should do best.”