Conference presentation at Internet Librarian 2014: ‘Social search and the evolution of discovery’

Librarians Will Meredith and Corey Davis wanted to explore what impact changes in dissemination and discovery have on the future of research.

Transformations in scholarly publishing, especially around open access, have provided academics with more methods of knowledge dissemination. Options for discovering existing literature have also expanded, from Google Scholar to discovery layers to institutional repositories, leaving researchers confused and underserved. Librarians Will Meredith and Corey Davis wanted to explore two related issues: what impact might the changes in dissemination and discovery have on the future of research, and is the scholarly marketplace becoming more focused on discovery platforms than publication channels?

Meredith and Davis discussed the state of open access in the academy, how the academic publishing landscape is changing more broadly, and the degree to which industry players have adapted to these shifts. They then focused on the academic publisher Elsevier's 2013 purchase of Mendeley, a platform which bills itself as "a reference manager and academic social network". Given the expanded options for both dissemination and discovery, and the tremendous growth of online social networks in wider society, the sought to understand how Elsevier’s acquisition might signal growth in the role of social networks in literature searching.

Meredith and Davis presented their findings at the Internet Librarian conference in Monterey, California in October, 2014.