Information Seeking Behaviors, Attitudes, and Choices of Academic Physicists

ABSTRACT

Physicists in academic institutions utilize a variety of resources and strategies to seek, find, and use scholarly information and news. Using a sample of physicists, researchers surveyed 182 students and faculty at seven Canadian university institutions to explore self-perceived success rates, resources consulted, databases used, and use of social media and citation management systems. To complement the survey, 11 follow up interviews/focus groups were completed with participants to further uncover information-seeking behaviors, choices, strategies, and feelings around keeping up to date with information needs. According to survey results, a minority of physicists (15.4%) acknowledged that they were successfully keeping up to date. However, a significant number of physicists (28.6%) indicated that they were unsuccessful and could do better in remaining current with information needs. Co-investigators, using qualitative analyses, identified four emergent themes: (1) There are “too many papers – and not enough time” to effectively search, evaluate and read scholarly papers of interest; (2) Staying up to date is important especially in competitive research areas; (3) Graduate students seek information differently than faculty and experienced researchers; and (4) The arXiv database is important to many physicists. Additional minor themes included physics-related publishing is constantly evolving; physicists use a variety of information-seeking behaviors; and, information-seeking methods can differ between physics subdisciplines. This study aims to shed light on opportunities for academic librarians to identify and meet physicists’ evolving information behaviors, attitudes, choices, and needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Physicists
• information-seeking behaviors
• information needs
• information sources
• graduate students
• faculty
• academic (university) libraries
• knowledge management
• information literacy

Introduction

How do physicists seek information? What resources do they consult? How successful are they? What information-seeking behaviors do they exhibit? How do they feel about these choices? These questions form the basis of this study as the third of a three-part research project investigating academic chemists (Gordon et al. 2018), mathematicians (Gordon et al. 2020), and physicists. As academic librarians, the researchers were interested to observe idiosyncrasies specific to physicists’ information seeking while commenting on similarities and differences observed within this scholarly group and subdisciplines.

Physicists as researchers, instructors, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students utilize a variety of resources to investigate, document, and communicate their findings. Physicists depend upon specialized journals and databases as well as subject-specific strategies and approaches to share new and changing developments. In this way, physicists are set apart from other disciplines in their information needs, choices, resources consulted, pace of development, and means of scholarly communication.

This study attempts to shed light on how physicists approach information seeking using a two-phased, mixed-method research design with the goal of creating rich datasets and insightful analyses. This study is intended to be useful for physicists and adjacent researchers as well as academic librarians, journal publishers, information architects, artificial intelligence database producers, search engine programmers, and designers.

Literature review

What is physics?

Physics is “The study of the laws that determine the structure of the universe with reference to the matter and energy of which it consists” (Rennie and Law 2019, 142). Paul Mainwood (2016) further commented that physics is “The study of matter and energy and how they interact through space and time.” Physics is one of the oldest natural sciences and borrows from the fields of mathematics and chemistry as well as current technologies. Yet, Rory Coker (2018), a Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, commented, “This is going to sound snarky, but [physics] is based on fact and experience. Essentially 100% of the human race does not have even the vaguest, foggiest concept of what physics is … [and] what physicists do when they are actually doing physics.” Dominic Walliman (2016) commented on this lack of understanding: “[Physics] is a huge subject that covers many different topics going from galaxies in the depth of space right down to subatomic participles … it’s difficult sometimes to see how all these different subjects are related to each other.” Physics, whether the study of things very big or very small, can be difficult to conceptualize.

The field of physics has a long history which has occupied the public consciousness for years if not centuries. Noted contemporary reviews of this discipline and celebrated contributions include bestselling books (Al-Khalili 2020; Baker 2016; Barrett, Delsanto, and Tartaglia 2016; Cotterell 2018; McPhee 2018; Perkowitz 2019; Rex 2014) and online YouTube streaming content (Lukey 2016; Walliman 2016). Many videos visually map out the complexity of physics while at the same time ironically demonstrate that physics as a science is based on simple ideas. Defining the boundaries and limits of what constitutes physics can be challenging.

Physicists are trained to see the world in different ways, have unique information needs, and conduct research within well-defined subcommunities. This study does not define physics, its boundaries, or subdisciplines. Instead, co-investigators are interested in exploring physicists’ unique information-seeking behaviors and how they feel about these choices as they relate to their research and teaching.

Information seeking in general

“Information seeking is one of the most fundamental attributes of human behavior” (Shah 2017, 26). Wilson (2000) further defines information behavior as “ … the totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information including both active and passive information seeking, and information use” (49). Thus, information-seeking behavior happens consciously or unconsciously by the way people search for, interact with, feel about, and utilize information. Carol Kuhlthau (1991, 1993) echoes these sentiments, describing information-seeking behavior as “The user’s constructive activity of finding meaning from information in order to extend his or her state of knowledge” (361).

Information seeking, information need, and related behaviors may have interchangeable definitions. Self-explanatory definitions and variations in meanings of information-seeking terminology is acknowledged when applied to different systems, contexts and models. Information need as proposed by Dervin and Nilan (1986) focuses on a user’s perspective, where information-seeking behavior according to Ingwersen and Järvelin (2005) is “ … human information behavior dealing with searching or seeking information by means of information sources and (interactive) information retrieval systems” (21). This study builds on information seeking and searching behaviors with active, directed, and sense-making physicists that constantly make choices when fulfilling scholarly research needs.

Information seeking has its origins in social science research in the early 1980s with the work of David Ellis’s behavioral stage-like approach (Ellis 1989a, 1989b, 1993), Kuhlthau’s interactive and human factor model (1991, 2004) and Thomas Wilson’s use of human interaction (1999, 2000, 2013, 2016). The development of these and other information-seeking theories and models helped to frame observations and “ … motivations behind seeking information, the nature of information sought, and the context in which this process occurs” (Shah 2017, 13). Recent progress has given rise to a plethora of new conceptual frameworks that attempt to articulate how researches’ seek, use, and value information (Allam et al. 2019; Case and Given 2016; Chang 2017; Cole 2017; Dervin and Nilan 1986; Falciani-White 2016; Fisher, Erdelez, and McKechnie 2005; Fisher and Julien 2009; Ford 2015; Robson and Robinson 2013; Ruthven and Kelly 2013; Savolainen 2018). St. Jean, Gorham, and Bonsignore (2021) provide an excellent review and commentary on these information behavior models and theories.

Building on these frameworks, researchers are increasingly breaking down information seeking and related behaviors as iterative processes. This involved collecting and interpreting data on users’ choices, patterns, feelings, sensibilities, and thought processes. “These models consider the motivations behind seeking information, the nature of the information sought, and the context in which this process occurs” (Chang 2017, 13). Researchers further identified commonalities in how different groups sought, made sense, and characterized information as they deemed successful. Holstrom (2018), reflecting on what works best when identifying seeking behavior, commented that “The best tools balance information retrieval technology and information seeking sensibilities.”

The examination of information seeking is essential to artificial intelligence and big data researchers, graphical designers of user interfaces, emerging databases, networking and social media platform developments. Reviews of current information-seeking behavioral theories and models provide schemes and context for new developments (Alhoori et al. 2019; Alotaibi and Johnson 2020; Jamali and Asadi 2010; Rovira et al. 2019). Albeit with much excitement, researchers are “ … only starting to understand how users’ information-seeking behaviors and design opportunities may transform moving from traditional graphical user interfaces to … new opportunities for improving search experience, in particular for user modeling” (Liao et al. 2020, 267). Many of these new studies incorporate context, cognitive functions, affective analysis, situational, integrative, social networks, and perceptual seeking elements (Alhori et al. 2019; Atoy et al. 2020; Megwalu 2015; Nakamura 2021; Pettigrew et al. 2001; Spink 2010). Yet, theories and models can be oversimplifications. People’s behaviors within varying contexts are complex, difficult to describe, and only attempt to link rationale for specific behaviors with researchers’ needs.

Social science researchers have debated the evolution of information-seeking behavioral models with contradictory and varying opinions. The deficiency of understanding and developing a consensus of understanding is due in part to a constantly evolving digital landscape, multiplying channels, the complexity and constant deluge of information (Kwanya 2016; Zha et al. 2015). Waseem Afzal (2017) commented that information seeking, conceptualization, and measurement of needs often lacks theoretical grounding, a consistent framework for measuring needs, and interpreting the relationship(s) of information need within a wide range of human phenomena. This lack of agreement of social science scholars has neither dampened the need for nor the number of information-seeking behavioral studies.

This study does not attempt to define or redefine key concepts, definitions, models, theoretical backgrounds, or information theories. Instead, this research attempts to describe and comment on information-seeking behaviors of physicists in the context of their scholarship and research.

Information seeking of groups

A significant portion of the current information-seeking literature comprises of studies of user groups and their identified sources, decision making, and flows of information (Frederick 2019). Many of these studies attempt to understand seeking behaviors by position, status, demographic, discipline, or subdiscipline. Yet, the study of information seeking within higher educational groups is difficult to summarize as information seeking is contextual, and varies from one person to another, within and between groups (Fitzgerald 2017, 2018a, 2018b; Weber, Becker, and Hillmert 2019). Regrettably, there is limited literature that captures how information-seeking behaviors vary across and between scientific disciplines.

Fitzgerald (2017), studying information seeking in higher education, found a myriad of contextual issues that “ … shapes their information seeking choices, how scholars change their information seeking over time, how emotional and interpersonal factors influence their choices, and how the tools available for information seeking influence their research”(ii). Early academics like new graduate students are prone to gaps in knowledge and effective strategies to stay on top of the literature. This information gap may lead to feelings of stress, frustration, and a lack of stability and belonging with those whom may be more mature in their seeking behaviors (Wilson and Given 2020). Faculty and doctoral students with a greater grasp of their research paradigms are driven by a shared need to understand and follow a scholarly dialogue. Yet, understanding resource discovery continues to be heavily influenced by people, choices, learned behaviors, distributed, and unpredictable social networks (Moore and Singley 2019).

Higher education groups retain disciplinary distinctions, paradigms, abilities and expertise. “Overall, disciplines seem to share more similarities than differences in terms of information practice. They all appreciate the convenience and speed of access enabled by the digital information environment. The differences are probably more noticeable when one looks at a more granular level, possibly at the subdiscipline level in order to incorporate the influence and characteristics of the digital information environment for a given subdiscipline, that is, the scholarly communications that take place in a specialized field of research, as well as the disciplinary culture that makes up the fabric of the discipline” (Spezi 2016, 89).

Studies of higher education groups point to commonalities in databases used, preferred scholarly sources, means of sharing, documenting, archiving, citing, communicating, and sharing information (Pontis et al. 2017; Weber, Becker, and Hillmert 2019). Studies of pertinent interest include graduate students (Catalano 2013; Jordan 2013; Sloan and McPhee 2013), scientists (Ellis, Cox, and Hall 1993; Hemminger et al. 2007; Jamali and Nicholas 2010; Tenopir, Christian, and Kaufman 2019), and interdisciplinary groups (Ge 2010; Wilson 1997, 2020), many involve health sciences (Butler 2019), and other disciplines e.g., engineers (Wellings and Casselden 2019). New studies include nanoscientists (Stopar et al. 2016), forensic scientists (Bankston et al. 2021), aquatic scientists (Superio et al. 2020), and other groups as researchers. These and other studies attempt to better understand and depict in meaningful ways scholars’ salient, disciplinary and opportune information-seeking behaviors.

Physicists information seeking

There are relatively few studies that have investigated physicists’ information-seeking behaviors using a disciplinary lens. Besides Cecilia Brown’s (1999) classic paper, most generic studies commented that researchers including physicists tend to initiate seeking new information using generic databases, rely on using keywords and authors’ names, and heavily rely on a close network of colleagues for information. These studies fail to appreciate that information searching is often highly complex, but may appear to be deceptively simple (Aymar 2009; Cruickshank 2019; Gentil-Beccot et al. 2009; Haines et al. 2010; MacKenzie 2014; Niu and Hemminger 2012).

Hamid Jamali (2008) and colleagues (Jamali and Nicholas 2008, 2010) highlighted the importance of physicists keeping up to date in their subfields, using a variety of resources, strategies, and behaviors. Brindesi, Monopoli, and Kapidakis (2013) observed that physicists universally use Google and general search engines e.g., Microsoft Academic, as information seeking starting points, veer toward subject-specific databases e.g., ADS and arXiv when wanting to investigate further, and whether they are successful or not, felt “ … confident about themselves concerning the way they search for relevant information” (791). Sahu and Singh (2013) observed that physicists work in a wide variety of academic settings with equally varied and specialized needs. Jamali and Nicholas (2008) commented “ … that, although similarities exist among subfields of physics and astronomy with regard to information-seeking behaviour, there are significant differences as well” (458). These studies fail to describe these differences in how physicists choose, feel about, and ultimately seek information.

Tamar Sadeh in a City University of London dissertation (2010) titled A Model of Scientists’ Information Seeking and a User-interface Design investigated information-seeking behaviors of High Energy Physics (HEP) researchers. HEP physicists are a distinct physics subdiscipline, research within highly cooperative communities, and utilize similar disciplinary groundings, needs, and research personas. HEP researchers are characterized by a long tradition of innovation, community-based endeavors, current edge access to knowledge, highly-defined needs, and a collective desire to exchange information, ideas, data, and sources in open and free environments. It is difficult to convey how representative HEP researchers are representative of other physicists, but this study was enlightening in describing their needs, choices, and physicists’ information-seeking behaviors.

HEP physicists in Sadeh’s study were found to use open databases such as arXiv, INSPIRE (formerly SPIRES), ADS, CSD, and Google Scholar to share and document research (Gentil-Beccot, Mele, and Brooks 2009). This subdisciplinary community was described to be highly-focused on research, open to change, always on the lookout for new information, and distinct in its information-seeking patterns. HEP physicists were depicted to highly value collaboration, and when appropriate created discipline-specific databases and tools to track new developments. Sadeh (2010), reflecting on these findings, commented that “ … researchers are in constant need of information; however, with the increasingly rapid pace of publishing, immense quantities of information to explore, and many new types of materials to discover, obtain, and evaluate, researchers must use a variety of tools … Information systems available today do not optimally address the information-seeking behaviour of scholars, particularly those who belong to scientific communities – which are the focus of this research; as a result, scholarly discovery is often cumbersome and incomplete” (215).

Gordon et al. (2018, 2020), researching academic chemists and mathematicians, found that academic researchers were overcome by the explosion of the number of papers to incorporate into their research, knew that they could do better in keeping up to date with new, emerging and disciplinary tools, felt inadequate incorporating new behaviors, “ … struggle to stay current with the literature, are constantly making choices, and feel incomplete especially outside of their area of expertise” (2018, 142). Physicists, although having unique needs, also share information-seeking similarities with chemists, mathematicians, and presumably other researchers in scientific communities.

This study of physicists and their information-seeking choices, behaviors, and resources is a limited and situational body of research. Research questions include: How do physicists do research, seek information, and share new findings? What disciplinary information-seeking behaviors do they use? Do physicists share information-seeking behaviors of chemists, mathematicians or other scientists? The short answer is yes, but these peculiarities and observations are difficult to identify and articulate. This study does not interpret, reflect on, nor discuss the relative merits of information-seeking theories and models and how they may help interpret physicists’ information-seeking behaviors.

Methodology and data collection

Research design

This study involved a two-phase, mixed-method design conducted by academic librarians at seven Ontario universities. The first phase of this study involved collecting data on physicists’ information-seeking behaviors, attitudes, and choices using an online survey tool, Qualtrics. The second phase of the study, initiated shortly after the completion of the first phase survey, involved individual interviews and focus groups of physicists at participating institutions. Each interview or focus group collected participants’ insight into survey findings, discussed how physicists seek information, and resultant behaviors and feelings on staying up to date with the literature in their field. Data from interviews and focus groups informed co-investigators of subdisciplinary normative practices and resources used, and what physicists found important and how they felt about their choices.

Although physics as a discipline includes a wide variety of subdisciplines and subject areas, the term “physics” is intentionally used throughout this research study to include all types of applied, experimental, and theoretical fields of physics research, teaching, and learning. All participants were linked to a physics department and program at their institution irrespective of the interdisciplinarity of research practiced.

Participants

Physicists as faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, teaching staff, lecturers, masters, and doctoral students were affiliated with one of the following seven Canadian institutions: Brock University, Queen’s University, University of Guelph, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Western University, or Wilfrid Laurier University. All institutions except Wilfrid Laurier offer physics-related graduate programs. Each co-investigator, through mass e-mail invitations, recruited participants for both phases of this study. Survey participants were informed of follow up interviews or focus groups by an additional invitation embedded in the preface of the online survey instrument.

Survey design and research questions

The online survey instrument included introductory comments, instructions, ethics-related guidelines, and co-investigator contact information. The first question asked participants how successful they are with keeping up to date and directed physicists to choose from a scale of three responses: 1) Not really successful, I could do better, 2) Somewhat successful, I use a variety of resources, and 3) Successful, I believe I keep on top of new and changing developments. Follow up questions provided opportunities to collect a range of replies and other responses in addition to personal comments. Survey information-seeking questions included:

1. How successful are you in keeping up to date with physics news and scholarly information in your field?

2. How do you keep up to date with physics new developments and scholarly information in your field?

3. Which databases do you most often use when searching the physics scholarly literature?

4. Do you use a citation management system to capture, track and document research findings and citations?

Additional demographic questions asked participants to identify their institution, position or status, what type of physics best describes their research (applied or theoretical), and the subject(s) that best define their research and teaching. Participants were also invited to answer questions about their day-to-day practices tracking, documenting, and keeping up to date with physics news and scholarly information.

Interview design and research questions

Participants who agreed to participate in a follow up 60-minute audio-recorded interview or focus group session were initially asked to read and sign an ethics consent form. This consent form documented procedures, ethics clearance information, appropriate contact information, rights, and responsibilities of all participants. Each session was conducted by a co-investigator and involved presenting selective survey findings while asking a series of semi-structured questions. Co-investigators followed ethical guidelines when conducting sessions, recording, transcribing and vetting data, asking participants to review transcriptions for possible errors or omissions, and analyzing aggregated data for emergent trends and patterns.

Each session followed a series of structured questions. Each question presented aggregated summaries of survey results as a means to elicit feedback from participants and further discussion. Co-investigators had the flexibility to skip questions, ask different follow-ups, and additional open-ended questions. The goal of each session was to capture data on how physicists seek, capture, evaluate, use, and feel about information-seeking behaviors and activities.

Selective interview or focus group questions included:

1. Why do physicists feel that being successful in keeping up to date with scholarly information is important?

2. What are the barriers to remaining current with physics information?

3. What factors may contribute to students feeling less successful than faculty in keeping up to date with information in their field?

4. Survey data suggests that physicists rely on different strategies and databases to keep up to date with information needs. Why these choices?

5. How do physicists use citation management systems to capture, track, and document research findings and citations?

Analysis

Using Qualtrics software, researchers tracked survey responses to multiple-choice questions, obtaining aggregated numerical counts, percentages, basic statistical measures, and capturing participants’ comments. Co-investigators analyzed all survey responses and performed benchmarking with all questions to identify trends. Survey data benchmarking reports were used to compare varying demographics’ responses to one of the study’s central questions: “How successful are you in keeping up to date?”

Aggregated survey data was analyzed using simple quantitative measures to determine totals, averages, and percentages. Similarities, differences, and patterns observed in survey data responses were calculated and selectively shared with participants during interview and focus group sessions to encourage more in-depth conversations and dialogue. Sessions were structured to move through survey responses, elicit conversations, share personal perspectives, and help to better understand physicists’ collective information-seeking behaviors, attitudes, and choices.

Session transcripts were vetted and pooled into a single textual database. Analysis of session data was performed independently by co-investigators using established qualitative methods (Ravitch and Carl 2021). This analysis involved the “ … systematic and contextualized research processes to interpret the ways that humans view, approach, and make meaning of their experiences, contexts, and the world” (4). Co-investigators utilized descriptive coding strategies to cluster emergent themes into similar categories to detect such patterns as frequency, interrelationships, and language. Similarly, co-investigators also utilized values coding strategies to identify emergent values, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs of participants. Codes and resulting themes were shared as a group to construct summative phenomenological meanings from the data through extended passages of text. This analysis was supplemented by the use of the qualitative data analysis software NVivo to discover trends and patterns. Themes and supporting data were shared between co-investigators, discussed, and consensus was built around several emergent themes of possible interest to researchers and practitioners.

Limitations of this mixed method research design, collection, and analysis of data are acknowledged. Although this naturalistic study attempted to recognize the influence of personal and professional bias, the active involvement of several different co-investigators, different data-collection locations, open dialogue and engagement with participants, relationships and causality between researchers as librarians and participants, and varying qualitative analytical measures may have contributed to limit the generalizability and validity of themes and findings.

Results and interpretation

Survey findings

The online survey received 182 replies between September and November 2019 from an estimated potential target population of 1138 physicists. Not all participants responded to every question so total responses per question varied. Participation rates at the seven institutions also varied resulting in an estimated overall survey response rate of 16%. Participants self-reported their rank as postdoctoral fellows (4.4%), teaching/research/other staff (5.5%), masters’ students (20.3%), doctoral students (33.5%), and faculty/emeritus (36.3%). Survey participants self-identified themselves as applied (57.1%) or theoretical (42.9%) physicists.

When asked in the survey instrument to fill in the subject area(s) that best described their research and teaching, participants provided a surprisingly broad collection of 73 unique replies. The most prevalent subjects included: astrophysics, biophysics, cosmology, astronomy, photonics, condensed matter, quantum, atmospheric, energy, particle, soft matter, atomic, materials, mathematical, and solid-state physics. A WordItOut word cloud (see Figure 1) provides a visual representation of participants’ subject area responses. This visual representation of participants’ subject areas affirmed the co-investigators’ lived experiences, that physics encapsulates an extensive and eclectic array of classical, theoretical, applied, experimental, interdisciplinary, and emerging fields of research.

Figure 1. WordItOut word cloud.

Survey participants rated their success in keeping up to date in their field. A minority of physicists, 15.4%, indicated that they were successful in keeping on top of new developments in their field (see Table 1). Although most physicists, 71.4%, believed that they were somewhat successful or successful, a large number of participants, 28.6%, indicated that they were not successful and could do better.

Table 1. Success rate of physicists in keeping up to date benchmarked with position and with type.

How successful are you in keeping up to date with physics news and scholarly information in your field?
		Type of Physicist Percentage Survey Responses		Participant’s position Percentage Survey Responses
	All Participants Percentage of Survey Responses	Applied Physicists	Theoretical Physicists	Teaching/ Research/ Other Staff	Postdoctoral Fellow	Faculty/Emeritus	Doctoral Students	Masters’ Students
Not really successful, I could do better	28.6	28.9	28.2	20.0	12.5	18.2	36.1	40.5
Somewhat successful, I use a variety of resources	56.0	60.6	50.0	50.0	75.0	54.6	57.4	54.1
Successful, I believe I keep on top of new developments	15.4	10.6	21.8	30.0	12.5	27.3	6.6	5.4
Number of responses	182	104	78	10	8	66	61	37

Note: A total of 182 responses were received for the ‘how successful’ question, percentages rounded to the nearest tenth, 31 comments received, but not displayed.

Though similar numbers of applied physicists and theoretical physicists reported feeling successful with remaining current on research in their field, further benchmarking found that more theoretical physicists (21.8% vs. the overall response rate of 15.4%) than applied physicists (10.6% vs. the overall response rate of 15.4%) selected not really successful.

Generally, more faculty perceived themselves as being more successful in keeping up to date than physics graduate students, with only 18.2% of faculty reporting they were not successful, but 40.5% of masters’ students and 36.1% of doctoral students reporting they were not successful. Although a minority of faculty (27.3%) indicated that they were successful in keeping up to date, an even smaller minority of masters’ (5.4%) and doctoral students (6.6%) self-identified as successful in keeping on top of new developments in their field.

Benchmarking of participants perception of keeping up to date revealed that, when comparing to the overall response, fewer faculty feel unsuccessful (−10.4%), and more faculty (+11.9%) feel successful. While more doctoral students (+7.5%) and masters’ students (+12.0%) feel unsuccessful when compared to the overall response. Correspondingly fewer doctoral students (−8.8%) and masters’ students (−10.0%) feel successful when compared to the overall response.

Benchmarking analysis failed to uncover any notable trends or patterns of participant perceptions with respect to remaining current with self-identified subject areas, databases most often used to search the scholarly literature, use of citation management software to capture, track, and document research finding and citations, and institutional affiliation. Given the diversity of responses to field of study (see Figure 1.), survey participants were thought to be representative of all subjects areas of physics, though no subject area stood out as being notably more successful or less successful in keeping on top of information in their field. Survey participants selected a variety of resources to remain current with physics news and scholarly information (see Table 2).

Table 2. Success rate of physicists in keeping up to date benchmarked with resources consulted.

How do you keep up to date with new developments and scholarly information in your field?
	Percentage of Total Participants	Percentage Survey Participants Attend conferences, present papers, give lectures, participate in seminars, workshops, etc.	Percentage Survey Participants Consult and search known web/Internet resources on a regular basis, etc.	Percentage Survey Participants Search scholarly databases	Percentage Survey Participants Browse through a well-defined number of journals, magazines, scholarly resources, etc.	Percentage Survey Participants Link to known social media, forums, relevant e-mail listservs, open feeds, blogs, etc.	Percentage Survey Participants Converse with colleagues in person, by e-mail, phone, etc.	Percentage Survey Participants Other
Not really successful, I could do better	28.6	24.1	24.2	25.8	13.9	27.0	26.1	37.5
Somewhat successful, I use a variety of resources	56.0	59.1	57.9	59.7	63.3	63.5	55.8	25.0
Successful, I believe I keep on top of new developments	15.4	16.8	17.9	14.5	22.8	9.5	18.1	37.5
Percentage of participants who selected this option	100	75.3	52.2	68.1	43.4	34.6	75.8	8.8
Number times this response was selected	652	137	95	124	79	63	138	16

Note: A total of 652 responses were received by 182 participants, percentages rounded to the nearest tenth, 16 comments received, but not displayed.

Survey results indicated that physicists use a wide range of media to remain current including: in-person, communities, digital, internet, public, and subscribed resources. Whether self-identified as being successful, somewhat successful, or not really successful, physicists do not rely on a single or even very few resources to remain current in their field. Participants most frequently reported: 1) conversing with colleagues, 2) attending conferences, presenting papers, giving lectures, participating in seminars and workshops, etc., and 3) searching scholarly databases, respectively. A minority of participants reported subscribing to, or frequently using social media, online forums, relevant e-mail listservs, open feeds, blogs, etc. Interestingly, benchmarking of survey data found that physicists who selected browse through of a well-defined number of journals, magazines, scholarly resources, etc., selected not successful at a lower rate (−14.7%) than average. Physicists that indicated they also use other resources selected both feeling successful and not feeling successful more often (+22.1% and +8.9% respectively) than the averages.

Survey participants identified over 15 databases when searching the physics scholarly literature to stay on top of their field. The arXiv database and Google Scholar were each selected by 71.4% of respondents, Web of Science was selected by 23.1%, Scopus was selected by 4.4%, and Inspec by 1.7%. With most physicists utilizing multiple databases to find information, Google Scholar and arXix each received 33.0% of all responses, Web of Science received 10.6%, society and/or association publication databases received 8.6%, and other databases received 14.9%. These other databases identified included: Scopus, CERN document Server (CDS), MathSciNet, NASA’s Astrophysics Data System (ADS), INSPIRE High Energy Physics (SLAC), PubMed/MEDLINE, Microsoft Academic, SciFinder, and ScienceDirect.

The number of databases consulted, and number of methods used to remain current in their fields varied across respondents. Physicists selecting ‘not really successful’ used an average of 3.1 methods and 2.1 databases, while those selecting ‘successful’ used an average of 4 methods and 2.3 databases. While the deltas are not significant, variety was a minor theme derived from the interviews which may suggest that these could be an area for further study.

A slight majority of 182 survey participants 51.7% did not use a citation management system to capture, track, and document research findings and citations. Participants that reported using citation management software systems indicated the top three systems as BibTeX 41.4%, Mendeley 33.8%, and Zotero 17.2%. Other mentioned systems included EndNote, Papers, and JabRef.

Interview Findings

The second phase of this study involved 11 physicists who participated in one-on-one or small focus group interview sessions at their institution held from November 2019 to February 2020. Interviews were guided by a series of semi-structured exploratory questions. Interview participants identified by co-investigators included seven faculty members, three postdoc researchers and a single doctoral student. Interview participants self-identified from a full range of research areas included optics, photonics, quantum physics, astronomy, astrophysics, biophysics, condensed matter physics, materials science, mathematical physics, education, theory, applied, experimental, and theoretical physics. Transcription of audio recordings were aggregated and vetted, resulting in the creation of a dataset of 351 comments containing 25,807 words.

Emergent themes

Emergent themes were developed from focus group and interview transcripts, co-investigator discussions and resulting conversations. Using descriptive, values and computer generated qualitative coding methodologies co-investigators agreed on four major emergent themes pertinent to physicists’ information-seeking behaviors, including: (1) Too much information and not enough time to keep up to date; (2) Staying up to date is important especially in competitive research areas; (3) Graduate students seek information differently than faculty and experienced researchers; and, (4) The arXiv database is important to many physicists.

Co-investigators agreed on three additional minor themes: (1) Physics publishing is evolving e.g. proliferation of journals, importance of pre-print servers, use of academic social sites to host content, and measure impact; (2) Physicists use a variety of information-seeking behaviors, databases and ways to stay up to date; and, (3) Database selection and information-seeking methods differ between subdisciplines.

Major theme (1): too much information and not enough time to keep up to date

Physicists report difficulties in finding enough time to review an ever-increasing number of scholarly papers. A participant put it well: “ … time is definitely an issue, and then also just the fact that information is published in so many different places that it’s hard to keep track of all the different sources where people might publish.” There was a high level of agreement that there is a barrier finding enough time to sift through the huge amount of research. A physicist commented “ … one problem is just the overall explosion of material and the reduction of my time … . I think all of us never seem to have enough time, and that’s probably a universal.” Another participant commented “ … is that we try to do as much as we can give the time, but you can’t let it take over. And that’s the fundamental barrier. Time to read, it takes a long time and even fifteen minutes per day is actually a significant chunk of your day. So, you have to, if you’re lucky, you read one article per day on average. Not that I do it daily, but that’s probably realistic.”

Participants also report being concerned with the deluge of journal articles, increasing number of journals and varying quality of papers. A participant commented that “ … there seems to be both more information coming out and more places to look for it, information sometimes comes out on the web, through Twitter and places like that, where we never would have seen it appear in the first time before … it’s becoming increasing difficult.” Focus group participants report coping with these issues but at times felt overwhelmed and inadequate in the choices they have to make to stay current in their field. This dilemma results in researchers skimming papers, only reading abstracts, not feeling fully informed, and wondering whether they’ve missed important developments that may affect their own research.

This leads participants to ponder why information-seeking professionals and artificial intelligence designers aren’t creating smarter and more sustainable ways to identify, tag, track, package, and share new developments. One participant pondered “I wonder what’s going to happen in the longer term because it seems to me there’s just too much information for the ability of anybody to absorb it, and one can’t efficiently access it no matter what tools you use.” Another participant optimistically can see a role of artificial intelligence “Asking the experts, the computers are not experts yet, they don’t really know what we’re thinking when I say, oh yeah, I want to know more about quenching of galaxies, star formation in a cluster environment. I can’t, Google cannot parse that and know really what I’m talking about. AI has only gone so far. It’ll get there possibly.”

Unfortunately, most participants in this study whether they self-identified as successful or unsuccessful in remaining current felt frustrated, inadequate, dismissive, and sensitive to the possibility of not keeping up to date on the research in their area.

Major theme (2): staying up to date is important especially in competitive research areas

Physics encompasses a wide variety of research that involves niche subdisciplines and highly competitive communities. There is constant pressure within these communities to be first to publish new findings to prevent duplicating research and avoid being scooped by other scholars. This additional pressure makes it even more important for physicists to stay on top of information produced by academic, experimental, applied, and commercial researchers.

A co-investigator asked, “Is staying up to date necessary?” This evoked a series of replies. “The answer is unequivocally yes … unequivocally yes. … .Clearly, it’s important to know what’s happening. … .Yeah. I wonder what’s going to happen in the longer term because it seems to me there’s just too much information for the for the ability of anybody to absorb it, and one can’t efficiently access it no matter what tools you use. And a lot of effort’s been wasted because I’m sure there’s massive amounts of duplication.” Another participant commented that “There’s so much pressure nowadays to produce new results that it’s kind of damaging to the whole scientific enterprise because it pushes people to work on problems where they are pretty sure they can get a result as opposed perhaps to working on more significant or deeper or challenging problems.” Physicists in competitive areas need to know what is happening in real time to avoid duplicating work and wasting time and funds. A participant commented “ … we’re all doing sort of cutting-edge things and we need to know where we stand compared to others. If something has been done, we should know about it and not do the same thing.” This seems especially pertinent for researchers in smaller universities, their research teams, and academic units. A physicist commented that “Things are changing and developing all the time, and you can’t really, well it’s impossible to stay abreast of every development, but key papers in your field [are important], you still need to be aware of them, almost as soon as they come out, so it’s certainly very important.”

Physicists engaged in cutting-edge research exhibit information-seeking behaviors that involve searching for information more frequently and being highly selective in their use of search terms, authors searched, databases checked, and papers reviewed. There is a high level of agreement that remaining current in competitive research areas is important not only because it will affect research strategies, but also to remain current for teaching purposes. A physicist commented that “We are teachers … For researchers it is important to stay on top of theories and developments in our field then you need to keep up with them so it can inform your work. As a teacher it is important because you want the current research to inform your teaching plus for my own interest.”

Developing strategies and behaviors to remain current is important. It is even more important in competitive and applied areas of research. Physicists may benefit from leveraging online technologies, being more knowledgeable about how information and data is communicated, prioritized, and incorporated via new ways of seeking, evaluating, and managing information. Yet, the use of social media tools to help identify pertinent papers seems to evoke divergent views. A participant commented that “There is high level discussion on these … [yet] everybody knows that there’s a whole cesspool of nonsense there as well.”

Although most physicists (71.4%) believed that they were somewhat successful or successful in keeping up to date, physicists find it an ongoing struggle when balancing information seeking against other activities. This may lead physicists in competitive research areas to remain anxious when calculating the risks and opportunities of conducting research and remaining current.

Major theme (3): graduate students seek information differently than faculty and experienced researchers

Participants universally agreed that graduate students’ information-seeking behaviors differ from faculty. The examination of survey data suggests that there does not seem to be much consistency across demographics in how information seeking is happening and how these skills are developed. Yet, graduate student participants reported that they were more likely than average to feel unsuccessful, and less likely than average to feel successful in keeping up to date with their information needs.

Conversations during interviews and focus group session participants identified that graduate students lack experience, confidence, and knowledge about where and how to best satisfy their research needs. Participants as faculty members commented that “students don’t know the right places to look.” Students as new researchers may not be in a position to “understand the implications of what they’re reading about,” realizing that “students lack experience in getting to know the scholarly landscape, seek information broadly, don’t really know what yet to focus on, and refining information seeking takes time and testing to get better.”

Physicists realize that seeking information, evaluating sources, and reading new papers is hard work. A faculty member commented that “I can see a new paper and skim the abstract and look at the figures and I think I basically know what they did. But the student may have to spend four hours reading through it, or twelve hours … ”. Another faculty member responding to a comment about level of confidence in the research field commented that “I was going to say the same thing, that it’s just they don’t, it takes a long time to absorb the status of the field, to know what is important, what isn’t important, how things fit together. I mean, I’m still learning, right, after thirty plus years.” Another faculty member further commented that “The field is very confusing, and when you come into a new area, there’s a vast amount of literature you haven’t read, and it just takes time to absorb it and start to put the jigsaw puzzle pieces together.”

Participants didn’t identify specifically how they thought graduate students differed in their approach to information-seeking, but commented that behaviors change with more experience, confidence, and development of networks and contacts. A participant commented “ … for me, I think I’m in the early stage researcher, so maybe the way I look for new data or new articles related to my research is different from the people who are established researchers like faculty and professors.” A colleague commented “I feel like faculty probably already have a process that they’ve established that probably works the best for them and that’s why they believe they’re getting the most relevant information out of it. Students don’t necessarily have that based on their undergrad or previous backgrounds, I feel like we don’t necessarily, always teach those practices and protocols, so I can see why students don’t think that they’re successful sometimes.” Another participant faculty member commented “ … students are very tech savvy in some sense and plugged in more maybe than older faculty members they don’t necessarily know the right places to look or the places where you can sort of efficiently learn about things without having to wade through a lot of other material.”

Faculty that have full teaching loads, service and pressure to produce results are at times caught in the middle. A participant commented “There’s so much pressure nowadays to produce new results that it’s kind of damaging to the whole scientific enterprise because it pushes people to work on problems where they are pretty sure they can get a result as opposed perhaps to working on more significant or deeper or challenging problems. If you don’t get any results after a while, then you risk losing your grant … It’s the same for graduate students as well to produce weekly results … The whole comment about ‘we avoid too much deep reading’ is troubling, because one loses one’s historical sense, context, and one loses institutional memory. Things tend to get rediscovered, forgotten and then rediscovered, and also there is not enough effort put into verifying work that has been done.”

The plight of graduate students is tough and may lead to feelings of inadequacy when tackling physics research in all subdisciplines. Co-investigators note there may be opportunities in physics education and instructional efforts aimed at graduate students around information-seeking and research management which may help physicists learn how to leverage strategies to remain current, confident, informed, and organized.

Major theme (4): arXiv is important to many physicists and subdisciplines

A physicist commented that arXiv “ … bills itself as a preprint server and it really does serve that function … is important more as a first look … it provides some nice tools, like you can see networks of authors and all sorts of whizzy stuff … It’s actually a very good system, way better than Google.” Another participant commented that arXiv “ … is used by people to get results out quickly, especially if they are having issues with a journal. This happened to us when we submitted something to a journal, and it was taking so long that in the meantime someone else had published something … somewhat similar so we decided to put our article in arXiv because it was taking too long to get it published. You can often get the most recent papers there and/or you can get a paper that has had trouble getting published in a journal that may have some relevant information in it.” ArXiv seems particularly important to participants in relation to primacy and relevance of new research and research trends.

The development and dependency of arXiv and other preprint servers speaks to the changing nature of how physics information is published, evaluated, and shared. Although traditional journals continue to remain important and serve a function, many physicists are eager to seek non-traditional resources that aid information seeking and thus remaining up to date with new developments. A participant commented that in certain subdisciplines “ … arXiv has squeezed out the journals.” Another physicist commented that an author’s reputation and quality of research have become more important than where the information is published. “Everything goes on arXiv, you just look at arXiv, it doesn’t matter what journal it’s published in. If I was Nature, I’d be very worried right now. Astronomers don’t say oh, it’s in Nature it must be a good paper. In fact, there’s an in-joke that goes, just because it’s in Nature doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We don’t care about hierarchy of journals particularly.” Another participant commented that “Journals matter less and less. I picture something that gets rid of all the journals … I don’t see how the refereeing system as it now exists is going to be able to survive.”

Physicists are open to new developments, systems, and ways of remaining current. They want to learn new information-seeking strategies which reduce the number of places to review, papers to read, and time taken to remain up to date. Librarians may play an important role in making sense of this process. A participant commented “But if I’m looking to really learn about a research field, I want to figure out who the authority is, who the pioneers are. Maybe I already have some idea and maybe I don’t. So, after the initial search, my filtering might be largely based on who the authors are and if I know who to be looking for. So, if I do a search on Google and immediately some of the articles that popped up are by the people that I expect I should be looking for, that’s good. And if I do a Google search and I’m getting all sorts of articles by people I don’t know anything about, I’ve got to find a plan B because I don’t really know where to turn at that stage.”

The move to new systems and information resources, like the disciplinary move to arXiv, changed the information landscape. A participant commented that there are “ … multiple places to check and rare to rely on just one – usually a combination of about two … and that combination usually includes arXiv.” Searching behaviors include searching by citation, author, and keywords with limited browsing, tempered with the realization that Google/Google Scholar are not adequate and arXiv has better structure, yet “ … both databases are great places to start.”

Co-investigators acknowledge the ability of physicists to solve problems and create new tools and systems to improve their abilities to keep up to date with information. One successful development is the creation of preprint databases e.g. arXiv, ADS, CERN, INSPIRE … in a number of subdisciplines. Participants report that arXiv is the most important because it shares information in a systematic manner with more currency than journals. A participant commented “ … if you see a paper on the arXiv from a known person – it’s accepted that, ok, this is a reputable paper, I don’t need to wait for it to be peer reviewed in order to say (ok it is in a journal now and) I can trust it.”

This development has implications for how and where physics research is published. The move to AI-based discovery systems, metrics, and databases has been slow to develop. Measuring impact, value, relevancy, and validity continues to be a stumbling block to creating smart systems because information is neutral, situational, and dependent on author and researcher values. A participant noted the false premise that these smart systems change information-seeking behaviors. “It would be nice if it were better, but I don’t know how to make it better. It’s still inefficient, it’s still not … You need somebody who can get inside your head and say, you know, sometimes the most efficient way is if I have a colleague in our department who is an expert in some other area and I say, it’s much faster for me to go and bother him or her and say, so what’s the latest in this area? Who has done the best work in such-and-such, on this problem? If they have a comprehensive knowledge on the field then they’ll say oh you might want to check this, that, and the other thing. And that is more efficient often than using a search engine.” A colleague responded “ … that’s not happening. Does that matching system … exist? Maybe we need a whole new sort of AI-based learning system to match that.”

ArXiv as an open database provided a technology that helps many physicists share, communicate findings, build community, and remain current. This database fills a well-documented information need within many physics communities.

Minor themes

Co-investigators agreed on three additional minor themes: (1) Physics publishing is evolving e.g. proliferation of journals, importance of pre-print servers, use of academic social sites to host content, and measure impact; (2) Physicists use a variety of information-seeking behaviors, databases and ways to stay up to date; and, (3) Database selection and information-seeking methods differ between subdisciplines.

Participants individually commented on selective minor themes:

“The amount of information available is so [great] … there are so many channels through which one can get information. There’s so many online journals [the library is important there, we subscribe to many journals] so it is easy to get access to journals, there are other technical journals, more generalist periodicals including newspaper sites, there are newspapers that have science columns, there are blogs, all kinds of … after you have done this for a few years you zero in on reputable sources for their content. With a little bit of experience, you can locate good sources of information.”

“I check arXiv and embarrassingly enough, Facebook has become a primary source. When my network of friends gets excited about something someone posted. And even if that’s a popular article, that’s fine.”

“And there’s also, I think what actually is a barrier is having the amount of databases or ways that you can search for something, can actually be a barrier just because I’m not going to sit down and go through ten different databases to ensure I actually have all of the relevant current information. Although, like, you know, that would be the best way to, if that’s the best way to do it, right? Just the idea of time and effort that would be put in might be too much, is how I think about it. Even though Google Scholar pulls through a lot of databases so that it should, in my mind, remove that kind of barrier, I don’t know if it does it that well.”

“I think there is a growing use of blogs. There are a significant number of high-quality scholarly blogs. I think that this is new in the last fifteen years. If you read certain blogs, you will see high profile physicists and mathematicians … some that are Fields medalists either writing or commenting on blogs. I monitor physics and mathematics because I’m interested in both.”

“I think it is also for a significant number of physicists [using, commenting on and reading blogs and social media] because you have a high number of physicists commenting, attracting attention, and people are going to look at that. Even Twitter … sometimes I see links to people’s Twitter feeds, and I do check on these … I check links to web pages on blogs and Twitter feeds and might [comment] and say that’s great as an interesting source of information.”

“There’s a tendency to just try to throw something into Google Scholar without maybe understanding the sort of the underlying structure of the data sort of. All the things that you would learn by walking into the library and browsing through the shelves, and going on, and sort of by osmosis pick up some information about the way things are structured and things like that. And that doesn’t exist as much now, because of the power of the search engine. But at the same time, I’m not sure just throwing things into the search engine is really, I mean it improves information seeking at some level. But at other levels just sort of widens the distance, widens the gap between the information user and the information sources. I think that can’t be good. So, I don’t know exactly what this means, but some sort of training for physicists at all levels as to how to make best use of the ever-increasing amounts of information that are available would really be valuable.”

“I like Google Scholar because it encompasses almost everything … You get a very good idea of what’s been published and, the nice thing about it is that it lets you know if you can see the article … It’s convenient. I don’t always know if it catches everything, but it’s usually my first go to because it is convenient, and it gives me the links to download the article … immediately.”

“ … .And then for researching, when you’re writing a paper on a certain area and you want to find out more things that you’ve missed, again, astronomers, to my knowledge, use almost exclusively the NASA ADS system, over all the other tools.”

“So, the journals are almost irrelevant, almost everything that’s been submitted gets submitted to arXiv these days. Some people just look at arXiv and you can filter it now even by subfield, so … basically then you’re looking at maybe 30–40 articles a day, so that’s manageable to just scan it very quickly.”

Discussion and conclusions

Esther Landhuis (2016), in a Nature commentary titled Information Overload, commented that “Researchers have their hands full when it comes to keeping up with the huge increase in published scientific data” (457). Landhuis goes on to comment that the number of published scientific papers has climbed by almost ten percent each year over “the past several decades. For researchers who are already overwhelmed by bench and field work, grant-writing, publishing, and other time-eaters, trying to navigate the growing deluge of data … has become a second job” (457). Physicists are often overwhelmed by the amount, variety, placement, and the need to evaluate the relevance of current information.

Amanda Spink (2010) commented that our knowledge and understanding of information behavior within human, social, and cognitive frameworks is incomplete and underdeveloped scientifically. Spink and Heinström (2011) echoed these sentiments that “Information behaviour research currently stands at an interesting crossroads … new territories need to be conquered, new contexts of information behavior explored, and new dimensions discovered” (4). St. Jean, Gorham, and Bonsignore (2021) commented that information behavior research would benefit from an evolutionary and developmental framework “ … to include new approaches within the broader framework of social science theories and models” (297). Physicists too are waiting for information systems, modeling, and artificial intelligence to provide a means to improve human information-seeking behaviors, choice-making, and disciplinary practices. A participant hinted at these developments when commenting “ … there will be something that will appear that will work so well that little by little we’ll hit a tipping point and academics would just recognize this is the right thing to trust. I picture something that … just allows us to overlay on the arXiv some kind of community rating of how important or interesting do people think these different things are.” Information retrieval and seeking is a rapidly changing landscape driven by technologies and search algorithms that are constantly pivoting in different directions yet to be explored. Frederick (2019) makes an insightful comment that “ … there is a real possibility that humanity is shifting away from information seeking to having the information seek them” (9).

This study identified themes that are common to all physical sciences, but recognizes the uniqueness of physics research, its vast number of subdisciplines, theoretical, experimental and applied paradigms, competitive practices, formal and increasingly informal means of communication. A significant number of physicists (84.6%), mathematicians (87.5%; Gordon et al. 2020), and chemists (78.1%; Gordon et al. 2018) indicated that they were not really or somewhat unsuccessful in remaining current with information needs. This commonality together with the difficulty of dealing with an ever-increasing number of publications and not enough time to digest these research findings seems to be a universal experience for scientists in need of a technical, practical and innovative solutions. These challenges are of great interest to librarians, data specialists, and scientists who are trained to engage with and navigate the nuances of research, information, and data in variant forms, as well as an increasing velocity of change.

Physicists have mixed emotions about how successfully they remain up to date in discovering and analyzing new information. It could be that physicists are more optimistic about their own information-seeking skills than they really are. Most physicists remain optimistic and open to a variety of new databases and evolving information-seeking methods. Information specialists and librarians are well-positioned to support physicists to better understand, appreciate, and incorporate information-seeking behaviors through instruction and literacy initiatives. A direct result of this partnering is that physicists may become less anxious, more confident, and more effectively able to stay on top of the literature.

George Marx (1983) in an article titled “What is Physics?” makes an insightful comment that “ … physicists live on the moving frontiers … [and] are a peculiarly pioneer-minded race” (13). Physicists invent when necessary, unapologetically question normative ways of thinking, and tackle most problems with a technological zeal. Librarians and information professionals will be key partners in the next wave(s) of technological advancements and are eager to move forward to help physicists exhibit more effective information-seeking behaviors, make informed sustainable information choices, and feel more confident in remaining current and staying up to date.

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to colleagues as faculty, staff and students that participated in this study and continue to actively serve within our academic communities. A special acknowledgement to Kristin Hoffmann, Research and Scholarly Communication Librarian, The University of Western Ontario for assistance with initiating this research project and ethics clearance. Additional acknowledgements to the S&TL editorial and production team for their encouragement in the completion of this paper as a third in a series of investigations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).