Citation Tracking in Academic Libraries. An Overview

74 Pages·1963·0.749 MB·English

by  Judith Mavodza

Citation Tracking
in Academic Libraries
CHANDOS
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL SERIES
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Chandos’ new series of books is aimed at the busy information
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Citation Tracking
in Academic Libraries
An Overview
Judith Mavodza
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DEDICATION
For my entire family who cheer me on, my daughter Grace
Rugare Mavodza-Nyakabau for her input, comments, and
encouragement, and my husband Chrispen T. Mavodza for his
unfailing support.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Judith Mavodza is Associate Professor, Instruction
Reference Librarian at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi
Campus. She has more than 20 years’ experience as an aca-
demic librarian in Zimbabwe, Austria, the United States,
and the UAE. Her current work includes instruction, sup-
porting research needs of the academic community, and pro-
fessional development. Her areas of research interests
include reference and information literacy instruction, public
library services, marketing and assessment of library services,
professional development of librarians, and knowledge
management.
SheisaneditorialadvisortotheEvidenceBasedLibraryand
Information Practice Journal (https://ejournals.library.ualberta.
ca/index.php/EBLIP), A MOUSAION: South African Journal
of Information Studies (http://www.upjournals.co.za/index.php/
LIS) reviewer, a published author of several scholarly journal
articles, a presenter at numerous professional/academic confer-
ences, and is an external examiner of masters and doctoral
theses from the University of South Africa. Her ORCID is at
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7739-7841.
FOREWORD
This book is a result of experience working in the library of
a university that was originally a teaching-centered facility,
but is gradually altering its model to increasingly include
research-oriented priorities. Accompanying this change is the
requirement for university faculty to develop, increase, and
produce more scholarly work. This has caused anxiety and
stress for several reasons. While investigating more about
scholarly publishing, I was able to discover more informa-
tion from a librarian and researcher perspective. That
resulted in my desire to communicate my understanding of it
to colleagues who may be feeling overwhelmed.
The challenge with writing about this topic is that there
are always changes and developments happening, but I am
confident that what I have put on paper reflects a certain
moment in the evolving scholarly research environment. My
overview included reading a wide variety of literature
sources. When it came to the perceptions of a budding
researcher, I gained a lot of insight from my daughter whose
perceptions coincided with those of some colleagues from
my workplace, especially those who were anxious and
nervous about starting to be involved with scholarly
publishing. This book is special in that it is very brief and
communicates to people who have a huge workload, besides
the (sometimes new) publishing expectation that they are
confronted with.
xii Foreword
I acknowledge and appreciate the invitation and guidance
I received from Dr. Glyn Jones and the Chandos-Elsevier
Editorial Team (UK) from the proposal stage of this book,
to its gradual development, completion, and production.
This book assures the reader of being brief and concise, but
highly informative.
11
CHAPTER
Background Discussion
1.1 INTRODUCTION
This book is a result of experience working at Zayed
University (ZU) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The
university was originally a teaching-centered facility, as with
many in the region (Mrad, Hanafi, & Arvanitis, 2013).
However, it is gradually altering its model to increasingly
include research-oriented priorities, with a learner-centered
approach as the way to educate students. This is very similar
to the situation in many universities across the world, and
particularly in the developing world. It is in line with coun-
tries’ vision to enable education institutions to undertake
research and enhance the probability of innovativeness and
creativity among both faculty and students for strengthening
the chances of making smart decisions. Accompanying this
policy is the requirement for university faculty to develop,
increase, and produce more scholarly work. This means that
educators who previously did not have an inclination to do
research are now required to do so, causing a lot of anxiety
and stress for several reasons.
1.2 DEALING WITH CHANGE AND
REORIENTATION IN TEACHING PRACTICE
The learner-centered teaching that many universities are now
putting into practice is a consequence of research and experi-
ence over a long time, and an inevitable result of/reaction
to current changes in the information communication
CitationTrackinginAcademicLibraries.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101759-3.00001-7
©2016ElsevierLtd.Allrightsreserved.
2 Citation Tracking inAcademic Libraries
technology arena and global trends. ZU is no exception in
adopting this approach. In fact, according to Doyle (2011,
p. 7), “the traditional model of teacher-centered instruction,
where teachers do a lot of the work, is less effective and can
be detrimental to students’ learning.” But then, learner-
centered approaches do not happen on their own. The edu-
cators have to learn, research, and study what it takes to
adopt the approach, so that it is possible to move toward
where research is taking the education profession. The
approach also encourages them to undertake research in a
wide variety of academic fields.
Mentioning this comes easy, but putting it into practice
has many hurdles. For example, educators now have to
appreciate that life does not have a syllabus, and that many
classroom projects may not necessarily have real-life situa-
tions built into them if they are not deliberately thought out
to achieve that. That means a student who attains an “A”
grade is successful only if that is relevant to actual life situa-
tions rather than only to the exam as an end in itself. On the
part of the student, learner-centered approaches require
what Sternberg (2011) refers to as current students being
expected to be creative, analytical, and use practical intelli-
gence. Zhang, Sternberg, and Rayner (2011) postulate that
there is a relationship between culture and learning, and this
is a fact that educators at ZU and in other places where the
background of the majority of educators and that of students
are varied have to bear in mind.
While getting involved with research enhances the scholar’s
image, it also helps avoid having the numerous expatriate
educators being unconsciously incompetent (Bradley, 1997),
in the sense that they genuinely try to offer services only
according to what they have been trained but unaware of