In Spring 2007 more than 2000 high-energy physicists took the time to answer a survey about HEP information systems that was put together by the libraries at CERN, DESY, Fermilab, and SLAC. My colleagues and I have now compiled these results and some analysis of them in arXiv:0804.2701 [cs.DL]
We found the HEP users tend to prefer the systems that have grown within their community, such as SPIRES and arXiv. This is probably not surprising to people within HEP; however, other fields often rely on more general systems that are not as tailored to the behavior of the specific researchers. The overwhelming success of the community systems in HEP may prove to be of interest to other areas of research. In addition, those of us who run these systems in HEP got some much-needed feedback about what we are doing right, and what we need to be doing better!
From the abstract:
Access to previous results is of paramount importance in the scientific process. Recent progress in information management focuses on building e-infrastructures for the optimization of the research workflow, through both policy-driven and user-pulled dynamics. For decades, High-Energy Physics (HEP) has pioneered innovative solutions in the field of information management and dissemination. In light of a transforming information environment, it is important to assess the current usage of information resources by researchers, and HEP provides a unique test-bed for this assessment. A survey of about 10% of practitioners in the field reveals usage trends and information needs. Community-based services, such as the pioneering arXiv and SPIRES systems, largely answer the need of the scientists, with a limited but increasing fraction of younger users relying on Google. Commercial services offered by publishers or database vendors are essentially unused in the field. The survey offers an insight into the most important features that users require to optimize their research workflow. These results inform the future evolution of information management in HEP and, as these researchers are traditionally "early adopters" of innovation in scholarly communication, can inspire developments of disciplinary repositories serving other communities.
We'd like to again thank those researchers who participated in this survey, which has already begun to guide us in delivering better services to the HEP community. You will certainly be hearing more about these new developments in the coming months, and we will continue to involve the community in the design and construction of these resources.
