A Study of Search Practices in Doctoral Student Scholarly Workflows

Search, especially library search, is a distinct part of the research process which can be taught and supported separately from the scholarly processes of knowledge creation. We interviewed eight early career researchers (ECRs) composed of doctoral students or recent graduates about their overall scholarly workflows including not only search but also social networking around scholarly information and production of scholarly works. Evidence suggests that search itself is less discrete and library-centric than prior models may have suggested, and that students use both social resources and non-library technologies to discover and locate scholarly works. We argue that taking a workflow-centric and collaboration-centric view, rather than a search-centric view, should inform design of tools and training for search of scholarly resources.