Request for the participation in “Survey on Use of Academic Information, 2011"

　　　　　　　　　　　　Standing Committee for Research on Academic Libraries

This survey is being conducted by the Standing Committee for Research on Academic Libraries (SCREAL) and some organizations concerned with academic libraries including the Japanese Coordinating Committee for University Libraries with the objective of assessing the specific effects on the demand of researchers and graduate students for information, and expectations and requirements toward academic libraries, which have been made by some changes, such as wider availability of e-journals and enhanced environment for accessing resources over the Internet.  For such assessment, a questionnaire is designed to know how researchers and graduate students discover, access and utilize scientific papers and journal articles for their work.

This survey retains some questionnaire items from the previous "Survey on Current and Future Use of E-Journals at Universities" developed by the Japan Association of National University Libraries (JANUL) and Public and Private University Libraries Consortium (PULC), and seeks to obtain some essential information that will help academic libraries upgrade their e-journal operations.

The appeal to participate in the survey is first sent out to all faculty affiliated with target institutions, then to all doctoral students enrolled at the universities. We know you are all extremely busy, but considering our objective is to enhance and improve access to academic information at your school/institution, we would strongly encourage everyone to make time to participate in the survey.

Once the results are in, we will publish the findings based on statistical analysis as well as qualitative assessment of free-answer questions, but no personal or specific information—individual names, names of universities, or departments—shall be disclosed, so we ask you to provide forthright candid opinions.

How to Take Part in the Survey

To participate in the survey, go to the survey instruction website and follow the instructions. The address (URL) of a dedicated survey server where you actually take the survey will be sent to your email address.

Survey instruction site: https://www.screal.jp/inst_survey-e.html

Note that the survey takes about 20 minutes to complete.

Handling of Personal Information in this survey

The Standing Committee for Research on Academic Libraries shall treat personal information of respondents as follows.  Please note that if you find any conditions unacceptable, you are free to leave without answering the questionnaire.

1) No personal information, such as the respondent's name or passport number that can tie the results back to an individual, is collected when individuals take the "Survey on Use of Academic Information" (hereafter, the Survey). While email is used to communicate with respondents and demographic data is included in some survey items (position, gender, age, etc.), this data is kept separate from information that can be associated with respondents and is immediately deleted when the survey is completed. If information is provided in free-answer comments that might identify an individual, the information is recast when this is detected to protect the anonymity of the respondent.

2) Information obtained through the Survey shall not be used for any purpose other than the stated objectives of the study.

3) All communication between respondents and the survey web server (a Qualtrics.com ASP server) is encrypted by TLS (Transport Layer Security) as well as HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer) to protect transmitted data against electronic eavesdropping. For an overview of Qualtrics.com's data security policies and practices, visit this site: http://webservices.itcs.umich.edu/mediawiki/qualtrics/sites/qualtrics/uploads/b/b2/Qualtrics_HIPAA_Data_Security_Documentation.pdf.