Measuring campus engagement for scholarly communication services: A mixed methods study of U.S. public teaching institutions

Abstract

Over the past several decades, new technologies and paradigms have impacted the creation and sharing of work; scholars across all fields have seen changes in research output, publication, and preservation of the scholarly record, as well as emergent publishing models and an emphasis on the measurement of impact. Libraries have broadly defined their efforts to support the research and dissemination lifecycle as “scholarly communication” services. Despite investing significant resources -- personnel, technological investments, and budget -- to develop scholarly communication programs, evaluation of the outcomes and impact of these activities has largely consisted of quantitative measures, like consultation counts, workshop attendance, or repository growth and usage statistics. A more comprehensive or holistic approach to scholarly communication assessment has remained elusive.