This report draws upon two data sets to examine the gender wage gap among member institutions of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). The first data set consists of 35 years of salary survey data collected by ARL and is used to provide trend data on the gender wage gap from 1980 to 2014 as well as present an in-depth look at the wage gap…

This study investigates how article downloads from ScienceDirect changed after Temple University Libraries downsized its all-inclusive Elsevier big deal bundle to a selective custom package. After the libraries lost current-year access to nearly half of Elsevier's active journals, the total downloads from Elsevier journals declined by 16.2 percent…

In order to fully appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of energy resources, there is a need to understand pertinent issues from other viewpoints besides a purely chemistry perspective. In this paper, the teaching of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and business databases as part of CM4282: Energy Resources at the Department of Chemistry, National…

Objectives: To study the influence of a multi-component poster-based intervention to promote stair climbing in a library on a Canadian university campus. Participants: Adults who ascended to upper levels via staircase/elevator. Methods: Individuals who used the staircase/elevators were counted by observers for 28 days, while either in the…

Science communication has taken center stage in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines in the context of public outreach and citizen science. Developing practical communication skills is imperative for all scientists to be highly successful in their careers and more so for underrepresented and Black, Indigenous, and People…

Systematic reviews, and other forms of knowledge synthesis, are an increasingly popular research methodology being used in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Librarians are being called upon to support this work through consultation, instruction, and/or performing the systematic search on behalf of the research team. Professional…

Student employees are essential to academic libraries on college and university campuses. The employment programme at this mid-sized university library intentionally seeks to engage students in work that not only benefits the library, but also provides students the opportunity to learn and hone skills that can contribute to academic and…

In 2018, after a failed search for the Executive Director of the American Library Association (ALA), ALA members put forth a ballot initiative to determine whether the educational requirements for the position should be modified, in part, to expand the potential applicant pool. With this research, the authors examined if current ARL administrators…

Following the examples of SCOAP3, in which libraries fund open access, and eLife, in which funding agencies have begun to directly fund open access scholarly publishing, this study presents an analysis of how creatively combining these two models might provide a means to move toward universal open access (without APCs). This study calculates the…

This study surveyed librarians and staff at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions to determine who assembles social justice guides (that is, LibGuides), what motivated the creation of such guides, and how these guides are deployed. Additionally, the survey gauged employee perceptions of library and institutional responses to…

Challenging, unprecedented, and extraordinary in almost every way, 2021 even surpassed the previous "annus horribilis," 2020. Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to ripple humanity-wide, ceaselessly rebounding off, and cruelly amplifying, almost every kind of inequity and social challenge. A long overdue reckoning with the…

While many LIS publications have focused on Wikipedia, no LIS study has used intersectional class analysis to consider the site as a transmitter and reproducer of hegemonic ideology. Using both Antonio Gramsci and LIS theorist Michael Harris as starting points, this paper argues that Wikipedia is predicated on a philosophy of pluralism that serves…

This issue of Research Library Issues looks at the critical role and participation of libraries and librarians in supporting the data science revolution. The articles contained in this issue are: (1) Data Literacy as a Pathway to Data Science at Georgia Tech (Catherine Murray-Rust, with Ameet Doshi, Jay Forrest, Ximin Mi, and Alison Valk); (2) New…

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) seeks to understand and engage the research library community and others in the research and learning ecosystem on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of knowledge production, dissemination, and preservation. Furthermore, it seeks to inform the adoption of AI in…

Research Libraries UK is a consortium of 37 of the UK and Ireland's largest research libraries with the purpose of convening its members around the key issues that affect them, to represent their collective voice, to support them as they face shared challenges, and to be an effective advocate on their behalf. In fulfilment of these roles, RLUK…