The study presents data from 30 college and university libraries in the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, Ireland and other countries, about their use of bibliometrics. Participants include: the University of Cambridge, Cornell University, University College Dublin, the Rockefeller University, the University of Seville, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Newcastle, SUNY Buffalo, Technische Universität München and many others.
The study helps its readers to answer questions such as: How well used are indicia such as the Web of Science, Scimago or Scopus? How are Google Scholar and JSTOR used in bibliometrics? What has been the impact of google Scholar or of digital repositories? How strong is demand for bibliometrics services? What are the centers of demand? How fast is demand growing? Is funding keeping up with demand? How are bibliometrics services promoted within the college or university? What has been the impact of altmetrics? What are favored altmetrics techniques? What role are bibliometrics playing in tenure decisions? In hiring decisions? How much library staff time is spent on bibliometrics?
Just a few of the study’s many findings are that:
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37.42% of libraries in the sample use Journal Citation Reports in their bibliometrics approach. Its use was most common in the UK and Ireland where 90% of the libraries in the sample used it.
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32.26% thought that altmetrics methods were already important and competitive with traditional methods.
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For a plurality of 45.16% of those sampled, funding for bibliometrics had remained approximately the same.