Looking Hard at <i>JASIS&T</i>: Results of a Series of Surveys, Focus Group Interviews and Other Studies (2004)

In the summer of 2000, we began a series of studies to better understand the readership of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIS&T), as well as the membership of its sponsoring Society. Those studies, completed in 2003, included two focus group interviews with ASIS&T members and former members, an archival study of 380 JASIS&T authors, an online survey of non-member contributors to the Journal, and a mail survey of 1,121 readers of other information technology publications. Altogether, the surveys include responses from a total of 1,265 people. These investigations offer empirical confirmation of some observations made earlier by long-time ASIS&T members. For example, many ASIS&T members may be aware that non-members are unsure of the Society's makeup and identity. They also know that many ASIS&T members find JASIS&T to be "too technical." Yet the research results may also provide ASIS&T leadership with a clearer picture of the dynamic relationships that exist within ASIS&T membership and between ASIS&T and other associations. This information is beneficial as it adds perspective on how to build on the strengths of ASIS&T, such as JASIS&T, and how to address other areas that may require additional attention. A number of questions guided our efforts. Some of these reflect ideas that we developed, some came from JASIS&T Editorial Board members, and yet others from the Journal's publisher, John Wiley & Sons. The questions, along with sources for answers, are reflected in Table One. Each of the guiding questions is addressed in some depth below. We present our findings in two parts: the first section describes the series of four small-scale investigations of JASIS&T readers, members, former members and contributors. The second section presents results of a large-scale mail survey of readers of other IT journals, only 4% of whom were ASIS&T members (hence we characterize them as chiefly "non-members"). ASIS&T is a highly diverse society. It is composed of information professionals from many walks of life: librarians, database searchers, information architects, knowledge managers, vendor representatives, corporate information specialists, industry researchers and university faculty, to name just a few groups. Neither the public nor the private sector dominates ASIS&T membership. We interviewed 25 ASIS&T members and two former ASIS&T members, mostly from private firms and public universities, many of whom were also members of the Special Libraries Association. Some members have characterized the ASIS&T membership as being split between "practitioners" and "academics," with the former in the majority. Whatever the validity of the "practitioners" versus "academics" characterization, this report will make use of that distinction, because it is one that many respondents tended to make and explains some of the divergent opinions we documented. JASIS&T is a flagship for the Society. Most practitioners are proud of it but few of them read much of it. JASIS&T is perceived as a highly technical, research publication, but with limited value to practitioners and most of the membership. Most do not want to see JASIS&T changed but they'd like to receive a different kind of publication in addition, even if only in electronic form. ASIS&T should consider means by which they can reinforce the value of JASIS&T to the practitioner members of ASIS&T, who, after all, are in the majority. For example, emphasize in published statements and advertising the various ways that JASIS&T promotes the profession and highlights the hottest topics and latest trends. Practitioners use JASIS&T to keep up with current trends and jargon so they can communicate with technical personnel within their organization and justify expenditures for new services, technology or projects. Academics get a respected, refereed journal that contains research and evidence of interest to them. It is also an outlet for publishing their own research. Practitioners prefer industry- and professionally-oriented publications like Library Journal, Information Outlook, KM World, Knowledge Management and Information Today. Many read general publications like Wired and Fast Company. Some also read Communications of the ACM. Academics read Communications of the ACM and Information Processing and Management, among other publications. Relatively few practitioners read JASIS&T articles, unless they are part of a Special Topics issue of particular interest. Some read book reviews and letters to the editor, which they find to be in plain language and more applicable. They do see JASIS&Tas covering the right topics, simply at more theoretical level than they can use. Academics read some of the feature articles. Non-member contributors to JASIS&T, for example, on average read two or three articles per year. We assume that contributors who are members are likely to read articles more frequently. Practitioners are most interested in practical information about information architecture, digital libraries, knowledge management, Internet and database searching, information retrieval and usability issues. Contributors were not asked a parallel question, but judging by other responses are interested in research and development on similar topics. Many practitioners endorse the idea of an online journal aimed at their needs — something searchable and immediate in content. They do not, however, want any electronic publication to be a vehicle for a lot of advertising. Only about a third of JASIS&T contributors are members of ASIS&T, and that ratio has been steady for many years. Contrary to a perception among practitioners that most JASIS&T articles have been written by authors affiliated with library and information science programs, only about 20% are written by LIS faculty. A similar proportion of authors are from computer science departments. On the whole, JASIS&T authors are heavily "academic" — nearly 90% of 311 respondents to the online survey were from academic organizations, a slight overrepresentation of their actual numbers. Contributors who are not members of ASIS&T typically belonged to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Non-member contributors typically read Communications of the ACM (CACM), Information Processing & Management (IP&M) and Proceedings of ACM SIGIR. Some also read IEEE Computer, the Journal of Information Science (JIS), and the Journal of Documentation (JDoc).Presumably this pattern is similar for contributors who are ASIS&T members. Non-member contributors also publish in IP&M, Proceedings of ACM SIGIR, CACM, and the JDoc.The chief competitor for readers is ACM, while the major competitor for contributions is IP&M. Many say they do not see JASIS&T as having an identity that is distinct from some other journals. It is notable that many non-members nevertheless see JASIS&T as an important place to publish their research. Most non-members note that there are other associations that better reflect their interests. Some also cite the cost of ASIS&T membership and conference fees, while those living outside North America think that other associations give them more opportunities to be involved. About 10% of those we contacted were currently considering joining ASIS&T. Among these contributors the chief competitors were the Special Libraries Association and the ACM. About five years ago ACM realigned the focus of their Communications to better serve the 80% of ACM members who are practitioners rather than academics. Perhaps ASIS&T could do the same with a new publication (not JASIS&T). Clearly JASIS&T is a highly successful journal in the eyes of both academics and practitioners. However, many practitioners suggest that ASIS&T could publish more content of interest to them. The Bulletin is seen more as "membership news" than as content geared to practitioners. A new type of publication could address this need and serve as a vehicle for "branding" the Society. We wanted to learn about the attitudes and reading habits of individuals who were not ASIS&T members but whose professional interests suggest that they were potential JASIS&T readers. We were particularly interested in readers of various professional journals in information technology. Finding a good sampling frame for such a population turned out to be challenging. For over a year we explored various subscriber and membership lists and discovered two things: There is no "perfect" marketing list for the scope and interests of ASIS&T members. Some of the better matches (e.g., lists of subscribers/buyers of Idea Group journals and books) were not available to competing organizations. Eventually we pulled together a combined sampling frame made up of several subscriber lists, including 7,169 subscribers to Online and KM World, plus a contingent of 17,797 ACM members with self-described interests in digital libraries and information retrieval. These readers were the population for the mail survey. In Fall 2002, a service bureau hired by the Professional/Trade Group of John Wiley & Sons mailed out a survey questionnaire to these 24,966 readers of information technology journals. The survey instrument had been designed over the previous two years, based on a series of focus groups with, and surveys of, ASIS&T members and JASIS&T contributors. To encourage completion, respondents were offered a chance to win one of three prizes (a notebook computer or one of two models of PDA) if they responded by December 15, 2002. Return postage for the survey was prepaid. A total of 1121 completed surveys (a 4.5% response rate) were received by late January 2003. Although the response rate may seem low, it was higher than that usually obtained in publisher surveys of this sort, in which returns typically run from a high of six percent (with hefty incentives) to a low of two percent (more typical). In any event, the results are valuable because they do represent a substantial number of people and they provide an in-depth look at individual reader attitudes beyond simply knowing the names of publications to which they subscribe. The typical respondent held either a Master's or Ph.D. degree in computer science and worked either as an educator/researcher or as a programmer/analyst — although a wide variety of other degree fields and job titles were also present in the sample. The sample was approximately 80% male. The majority (55%) were between the ages of 35 and 54, and another 28% were under 35 years of age. Respondents were widely distributed across the United States. A summary of their responses follows. Respondents were asked to indicate reading frequency for a list of print and electronic publications. Among the print publications, CACM, IEEE Computer, IEEE Spectrum and Information Week were the most frequently read. This result is not surprising considering these serials are general-membership journals for two extremely large associations that were among the samples in this survey. Information science journals were not so widely read: JASIS&T was read by 10% of the sample within the last year, and 8% had read IP&M. However, 35% of the respondents had "never heard of" JASIS&T, and 37% were not familiar withIP&M. A number of more general interest publications, ranging from Info World to Wired, augmented the professionally oriented ones. Only a few electronic publications were important to respondents, and the most common ones indicated were distinct from one another — slashdot.org, ACM DL/Portaland cnet.com, for example, are not much alike. When respondents were asked to identify their favorite publication read for work and describe why it was their favorite, they emphasized publications that had broad appeal, had currency and were well written and readable. However there was not much agreement regarding a "favorite" IT publication. CACM was the most popular by a wide margin, yet was identified by only 15% of the respondents as their favorite. Several questions were asked about changes in reading habits. These results were interesting in that some of the same publications were highly ranked as "recently started reading" or "recently stopped reading." Apparently publications like Business 2.0, Wired, Dr. Dobbs Journal and Fast Company have a high turnover of readership. In addition there has been general turmoil in both the IT and the business publishing arenas. Respondents reacted to a list of topical areas, taken from the JASIS&T scope and other publications such as a list of ACM membership interests. Overall, the most popular topics named by these respondents had to do with computing — computer programming, software engineering and systems design. However, within the last three months at least a third of the respondents had read about many topics currently covered by JASIS&T. High to moderate levels of interest were expressed in articles about Internet searching, HCI, usability, information policy (for example, privacy, copyright), multimedia, information architecture, data mining, visualization of data, electronic publishing, document retrieval and digital libraries — in that order. Computer security and wireless/mobile computing were thought to be "hot topics," while the most frequently indicated "stale" topics were "e-commerce" and "Web-page design." Respondents were asked to indicate the degree of appeal of various features of publications. They favored reports of research, along with thematic issues of journals. Extended abstracts and reviews of books and software were also popular features. Less than half of the respondents replied to requests for their impressions of ASIS&T and JASIS&T. Some of their answers about ASIS&T appear to apply to JASIS&T, rather than the Society itself. Regarding ASIS&T, many expressed a vague awareness of the association; most thought it was an organization mainly for librarians, to which some others added "academics," "researchers" and "information scientists." Not many saw the Society's relevance to computer science or business. As a test of their knowledge and perceptions, we asked respondents how large they thought ASIS&T was. Their estimates of the Society's size varied from 400 to 10,000 members. Many simply said "small." The most common guesses about membership size were "2,000" and "4,000" — not too far off from the actual figure in recent years. Many respondents had positive things to say about the organization, including praise for members they had met, ASIS&T conferences and JASIS&T. The criticisms made of ASIS&T are probably already familiar to many members even if not very well founded: mainly for librarians, too theoretical, too narrow in scope. More disturbing is that some respondents had heard of ASIS&T but did not know it was the new name for the old "ASIS," suggesting that the organization needs to publicize the name change. The majority of comments about the Journal were very positive, praising the quality of the articles. The criticisms typically had to do with being too esoteric, academic and theoretical, or too focused on information retrieval, digital libraries and the like. It was apparent from some comments that many respondents had not looked at an issue of JASIS&Tin a long time. What can we take away from these investigations? This research did not address basic membership issues, yet the results do, indirectly, raise issues about the Society's image. More concretely the research points out some publication-related improvements that could be made. These might in turn favorably impact the membership. In conjunction with the Society's recent membership survey, ASIS&T leadership now has more evidence to work with in making improvements. The overall conclusion that we have reached is that the Society has a very healthy flagship publication, JASIS&T, but that the Society itself needs reinvigoration and publicity. The most positive news is that the Society's journal, JASIS&T, is widely respected, both by members and non-members who know of it. Even ASIS&T members who find JASIS&T of limited practical value do not wish to see it change. Publications could play a role in addressing the key issues of membership and identity, which are more fundamental. ASIS&T should consider ways to increase the value of the society to existing practitioner members, means of attracting new members and of making the concerns of the Society known to a larger audience. As it is, many people in the IT workforce do not know of the Society or they misunderstand what it is about. Potential reactions include doing a better job of advertising the Society, what it stands for and who should join. In terms of attracting a wider audience, it is critical that prospective members understand that the Society includes computer scientists and professionals from the business sector. Current impressions that ASIS&T is mainly an organization for librarians and information retrieval specialists are a major barrier to recruiting members from other groups. ASIS&T should consider developing a magazine that attracts a wider, non-technical readership. Such a publication would be about the topics that concern ASIS&T, rather than about the organization itself, and would be geared more towards practitioners. If a new ASIS&T publication is pursued it should include regularly appearing features and columns — for example, interviews with prominent ASIS&T members and current JASIS&T authors, pointing readers toward their full work in recent JASIS&Tissues. Perhaps the current JASIS&T book reviews section could be moved to a new publication, or, alternatively, a new venue for shorter reviews could be included in a new publication. Another vehicle, successfully used at times in the Bulletin, would be short articles about research being conducted, or trends, services or applications in development. Such items would not provide the detailed descriptions of results that normally appear in JASIS&T. However the market for information technology publications has been in decline, so efforts in the direction of a new publication may need to await improvements in the general economy. Nevertheless, the slump in IT represents an opportunity for ASIS&T to make it self more relevant to a broader audience, some of whom are searching for new jobs and associations.