So where do researchers look for materials online? No, not journal-based sites, like Citeseer or Citebase. Neither do they check open archives listed in OAIster. No, they look in the same place you and I look - in Google. This finding, which is replicated elsewhere - here, for example, and here - is part of a general study of the use of library services by academic researchers. The study shows a general lack of awareness of open access - especially among those working in humanities and the social sciences. At the same time, the percentage of researchers visiting the library is falling, falling (see figure 8, p.20). The size of the survey (2250 researchers and 300 librarians) is pretty good, but some of the questions seem suspicious - it would have been nice to see a copy of the survey to see what choices people had when responding. Oddly, author information for this study isn't on the PDF; find it on this web page. Via the JISC repositories discussion list.
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