Current Issue: May 2026
Article • May 2026
Publish or Perish? A Content Analysis of Scholarship Criteria in R1 Academic Libraries’ Promotion and Tenure Documentation
Teresa Schultz, Emily E. Boss, and Elena Azadbakht
This study sought to understand how R1 libraries define scholarship and creative activities and how they address quality of scholarship through a content analysis of promotion and tenure documentation. Peer review is the most common indicator of quality mentioned in the documents, followed by the geographical reach of scholarship and originality of the research. Other common scholarship criteria included the need to demonstrate sustained scholarship activity, while discussions of open access research were rare ...
Article • May 2026
Not Just Monetary: Arts and Humanities Scholars’ Perspectives on the Costs of Open Access Publishing
Lindsey S. Skaggs, Rachel Elizabeth Scott, and Colby Cilento
Bibliometric and survey-based studies have documented different open access (OA) publishing practices among scholars across academic disciplines. This article reports on interviews conducted with arts and humanities scholars from the United States, and it explores how OA intersects with their research and publication practices. Beyond the considerable financial costs of OA publishing, findings demonstrate that arts and humanities scholars contend with opportunity, reputational, equity, and ...
Article • May 2026
Librarian IRB Participation
Emmett Lombard
While Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are crucial for research integrity, the amount of librarian membership is limited. This study examines IRB rosters and membership criteria to describe librarian involvement. Surveys of IRB members assessed their views on the value of librarian membership and importance of literature review evaluation within IRB process. Results indicate low librarian representation and a de-emphasis on ...
Article • May 2026
Three Discovery Tools: A Comparative Analysis of Retrieval Scope, Ranking Effectiveness, and Topic Diversity
Can Ekşi and Yurdagül Ünal
Discovery tools facilitate access to large-scale academic collections, yet their retrieval performance varies. This study presents a comparative analysis of three discovery tools—EBSCO Discovery Services (EDS), EKUAL Discovery Services (EKUAL DS), and Piri Discovery Services (Piri DS)—evaluating retrieval scope, ranking quality, and topical diversity index. The iSearch test collection, derived from arXiv articles, was used with predefined search queries. To assess coverage, the full arXiv corpus was queried to ...
Article • May 2026
Academic Success and Campus Engagement: Insights from Library Usage at Two Universities
Jung Mi Scoulas, Sandra L. De Groote, Kimberly Shotick, Ian Christensen, and Yishan Yu
This paper presents the findings from a survey distributed at two academic institutions, exploring undergraduates’ campus engagement, self-regulated learning, and definitions of academic success. The library was the most frequently visited campus service, and students used it for both academic and nonacademic activities. Students identified obtaining good grades as their top definition of academic success. Participation in ...
Book Review • May 2026
Careers in Library and Information Services: First-Hand Accounts from Working Professionals
A. Blake Denton
Careers in Library and Information Services: First-Hand Accounts from Working Professionals, Priscilla K. Shontz (ed.), Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025. 392pp. eBook, $53.95. 9798216185765. Nearly 20 years after publishing A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library and Information Science, editor Priscilla K. Shontz offers Careers in Library and Information Services: First-Hand Accounts from Working Professionals as ...