Readers, Personal Record Managers, and Community Members: An Exploratory Study of Researchers' Participation in Online Research Information Management Systems

Abstract

ABSTRACT Prior studies have identified a need for engaging researchers in providing and curating their identity data. This article reports findings from a qualitative study exploring how researchers use and participate in online research information management (RIM) systems and their requirements for information quality in RIM systems. The purpose of the study was to enhance the knowledge of how to design scalable and reliable solutions for research-identity data curation by examining researchers' motivations for participating in online RIM systems and contributing to research-identity data curation. The findings identify nine activity-related motivations for using RIM systems, five types of information-quality problems in RIM systems, and 12 information-quality criteria that researchers perceived to be important in RIM systems. This study also identified three levels of participation in RIM systems: Readers, Personal Record Managers, and Community Members. Design recommendations were suggested for institutional repositories and RIM systems to provide improved services.