Study in Grey and White: Measuring the Impact of the 8Rs Canadian Library Human Resources Study

Abstract

Objective – To use the 8Rs Canadian Library Human Resources Study (the 8Rs Study) as a test case to develop a model for assessing research impact in LIS.

Methods – Three different methods of citation analysis which take into account the changing environment of scholarly communications. These include a ‚manual‛ method of locating citations to the 8Rs Study through a major LIS database, an enhanced-citation tool Google Scholar, and a general Google search to locate Study references in non-scholarly documents

Results – The majority of references (82%) were found using Google or Google Scholar; the remainder were located via LISA. Each method had strengths and limitations.

Conclusion - In-depth citation analysis provides a promising method of understanding the reach of published research. This investigation’s findings suggest the need for improvements in LIS citation tools, as well as digital archiving practices to improve the accessibility of references for measuring research impact. The findings also suggest the merit of researchers and practitioners defining levels of research impact, which will assist researchers in the dissemination of their work.