Factors influencing reading practices

As are publishing practices, scholarly reading practices are influenced by various factors, including discipline, work organisation, and the nature of the work.

Reading practices and amount of reading activity differ significantly also between individual researchers. Next, empirical studies exploring the influencing factors are presented.

3.3.3.1 Discipline

Many studies have revealed differences between disciplines in reading practices (King & Tenopir 1999). At least some differences are related to publishing practices in individual disciplines. Reading scholarly journals is most common in the natural and medical sciences. In technical sciences, researchers rely more on technical reports and personal contacts instead of scholarly journals. Reading of conference proceedings too is most active in the technical sciences. In the social sciences and the humanities, researchers read more monographs than do researchers in other disciplines. Researchers in the social sciences and the humanities are also the most active readers of other than academic literature (FinELib 2012; Tenopir & al 2012a; King & Tenopir 1999).

The National Electronic Library of Finland, FinELib (2012), conducted a survey (N = 3,830) of researchers working at universities and 39 other research institutions (including state research institutes) in Finland in 2011. Respondents were asked to indicate their frequency of reading various types of publications.

International academic journals were the most frequently read publication type.

The majority of respondents in every discipline read international journals at least weekly. National academic journals were most frequently read in the health sciences and social sciences. One third of the respondents read academic monographs at least weekly. Respondents representing the humanities were the most frequent readers of academic monographs. Most of the respondents representing the humanities read monographs at least weekly. In spite of the improved opportunities to read books in electronic form, most respondents used printed books. Almost 25% of the respondents read conference proceeding at least weekly. Conference proceedings were read most frequently in the technical sciences, where the majority read them at least weekly. The survey measured frequency of reading of research reports and handbooks and textbooks too.

Overall, a quarter of the respondents read research reports weekly. Respondents

representing the social sciences read research reports more frequently than respondents from other disciplines did. One third of the respondents read textbooks and handbooks at least weekly. More than half of the humanists read textbooks and handbooks weekly. (FinELib 2012)

There is also a difference between disciplines in the extent of using literature from other fields. Originally, Mote (1962, here Talja & Maula 2003) drew a high/low distinction between domains on the basis of the scatter of the literature.

In disciplines where scatter of the literature is great, literature is used from several disciplines. In disciplines in which the scatter is low the core literature can be found in specialist journals. It is quite clear that in interdisciplinary fields researchers reading is spread more across various research fields (Meadows 1974).

According to the study by FinELib (2012), in general, 61% of respondents read publications at least from other disciplines to some extent. Respondents representing the humanities and social sciences used more publications from other disciplines than did those in other fields. This was also more common at universities than at other research institutions. (Ibid.)

3.3.3.2 Research organisation

Also, the organisation where the researcher works affects reading practices.

Tenopir and King (2002) showed that researchers working at universities are more active readers than are those working in government laboratories and private companies (King & Tenopir 1999). On the basis of log analyses, Nicholas and colleagues (2010) found that there was a significant difference between UK universities and government laboratories in the use of the ScienceDirect database.

Use of this database was considerably lower in government laboratories than at universities. According to FinELib (2012), the availability of library electronic materials from other organisations is significant. Researchers working in smaller organisations perceived availability as weaker than did those working in larger organisations (FinELib 2012).

3.3.3.3 Other factors

Reading habits are influenced by the practices typical of the discipline but also by the researcher’s personal characteristics. It has been noted that some researchers read a large amount while others do not (King & Tenopir 1999). Those reading in

large amounts are called ‘stars’ or ‘gatekeepers’ of the organisations. Stars may read twice as much as the average readers and pass on the information they have gained (Meadows 1974; King & Tenopir 1999). For a number of studies, there was a correlation between reading and publishing (Tenopir et al. 2012a; Tenopir et al.

2008; King et al. 2009; Tenopir et al. 2009b). In general, successful scholars, those who publish more or who have earned an award in the past two years, read more of all types of scholarly materials. Reading multiple types of materials had positive outcomes often, such as inspiring new thinking and improving results (Tenopir et al. 2012a). Tenopir and King (2007) showed that researchers perceived their work as being of higher quality when they read. For example reading inspired new ideas and thinking and improved research results. Only few times researchers reported reading as waste of time or as unhelpful.

Tenopir and colleagues (2012a) discovered some differences in reading practices between researchers working in different professional positions. Compared to those in other positions, associate professors read the most articles and senior lecturers the least. On the other hand, lecturers reported the most book readings while research associates reported the fewest. As for other materials, senior lectures and associate professors reported most readings and spent the most time on reading.

Scholars’ age was another element connected to reading activity. Respondents under the age of 30 read the most articles and respondents over 50 years the fewest. The correlation between age and the number of book readings was the opposite. Older respondents engaged in more book readings than did younger ones. However, time spent on reading decreases as the respondent’s age increases.

Age has an influence also on the principal purpose behind the reading. Younger respondents read more likely for research and writing, while respondents in their forties were more likely to read for teaching purposes than were those in other age groups. (Ibid.)

According to Tenopir and colleagues (2012a), the nature of the work too had a significant influence on reading practices. Article reading was connected especially to research work. Respondents who spend more than 50% of their work time on research and writing read more articles in comparison to those spending less time on research and writing. Book reading was connected to teaching in particular.

Respondents who used most of their work time for teaching read more books than did those who spent less than half of their time on teaching.

4 Cultural shaping of scholarly communication

As shown above, communication practices differ greatly between disciplines.

Differences between disciplines are partly due to the differences between the academic cultures of the disciplines. Academic disciplines have created their own cultures, which are shaped by social and epistemological features (Becher 1989).

Becher and Trowler (2001, 23) define culture as ‘sets of taken-for-granted values, attitudes and ways of behaving, which are articulated through and reinforced by recurrent practices among a group of people in a given context’. In other words, a scientific culture is commonly shared practices of people working, for example, in the same discipline.

One of the first notions of academic cultures was that of C.P. Snow, from his famous lecture ‘The Two Cultures (1959) at the University of Cambridge. Snow introduced his thesis about the split of intellectual life in Western societies into two cultures: the sciences and humanities (Becher 1989, xi). Later, Snow discussed the emergence of a third culture, the social sciences (Snow 1993, here Ylijoki 1998, 33).

Later, in the field of sociological studies of sciences, cultural characteristics in different disciplines and the organisation of the sciences have been defined (e.g., Kuhn 1970; Price 1963; Zuckerman & Merton 1971; Biglan 1973; Kolb 1980).

More recently, Becher (1989) and Whitley (1984) have studied scientific cultures and defined cultural factors affecting fields’ behaviour. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the work of these two authors, whose theories, with their basic concepts, are presented next.