USEFULNESS OF CITATION OR BIBLIOGRAPHIC MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE: A CASE STUDY OF LIS PROFESSIONALS IN INDIA

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1 USEFULNESS OF CITATION OR BIBLIOGRAPHIC MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE: A CASE STUDY OF LIS PROFESSIONALS IN INDIA Lambodara Parabhoi Professional Assistant Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla suresh @gmail.com Ramani Ranjan Sahu Assistant Librarian Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar sahu.ramaniranjan0@gmail.com Nabakumar Bhoi Senior Library Information Assistant LB Central Library, IIT Guwahati nabakumarbhoi@gmail.com Abstract: Citation/Bibliographic management software s has become popular tool among the LIS professionals. The main focus of this paper is to evaluate the use of citation management/bibliographic management software among the LIS professional of India. And also discuss how they are using in their research work and awareness of citation management software s. It is also highlights what extend they use. The paper also reveals the awareness of citation management software s among the different LIS Professionals and discusses which citation management software popular among the LIS working professionals in India. The study found that APA 122 (76.25 %) citation style is most popular among the LIS working professionals of India. Mendeley 46 (28.75 %) and Zotero 45(28.12 %) are the most frequently used citation management software. Keywords: Citation management software, Bibliographic management software, Case study, LIS Professionals of India, Mendeley, Zotero, Reference management software s 1.0 Introduction: Citing and reference are two most important tasks in every research work. Proper citing of a particular document is also significant task for a researcher if not it will be come under plagiarism. The researcher has to proper cite (in-text citation) of an outside source with proper citation style. When a researcher going to publish a research paper in a reputed academic journal they need to follow the citation style. As the academic research journal has strictly followed the rule of citation style. Now a day variety of commercial and freely available reference management software s come in to the market so that the citing or referencing a particular document has become easy. Reference management software s are frequently used by faculty, researchers, scholars and others in their research works. In the internet era information has search, retrieve and store are very easy. Bibliographic management software s are used to gather, store, retrieve and organize and generate bibliography. In last few year back a lots of citation management software are available in the markets. Some are freely available in the markets like Zotero and Mendeley up to limited features. Researcher can easily store their information using these software s. Now a day s LIS Professionals are using citation management software s for his/her research works. These software s facilitates to the user to store, organize, cite, import and export bibliographic information. User can read the full text data. It helps in writing a research papers. 2.0 Related Research: Mendeley is a desktop software for collaborating and organizing and it offers a platform for discover of research and expertise(gunn, 2014).Students and researchers depend on computer-based reference management software for organize the collection of documents and reading materials and also used for compiling citations and references for their research papers, grant applications(glassman & Sorensen, 2012). (Francese, 2012a) made an attempt at the University of Torino to identify the use Reference Management Software. He found that researchers and academics 55 P a g e

2 are used RMS to manage the bibliographic citations and keep track with their research papers and used for editing research papers. Another online study done in May 2011 at Tallinn University (TLU), Estonia by (Francese, 2012b) to examine the usages RMS at an academic environment. The author discovered that lack of awareness about RMS among academicians. (Zaugg, West, Tateishi, & Randall, 2011) has reviews the feature of Mendeley references managements software.(steeleworthy& Dewan, 2013) the authors stated that Librarians and researchers have been using since long time to organizing and help to scholars for organize, improve workflow and save the time of scholars. They have found that, RefWorks has been used by librarians and researchers in many parts of Canada. 3.0 Objectives: To understand and explore the awareness of citation management software among the LIS professionals of India. To find out the weakness of citation management software s among LIS professionals of India To identify how they are using citation management software. To determine the usefulness of citation management software. To discover to what extent they are using citation management software. To identify the need of citation management software. To verify which citation management software s are most used by LIS professionals. 4.0 Methodology: The data was collected using Google docs online survey. The maximum number of techniques has been used to collect the responses from the LIS Professionals of India. The questionnaire sent through different LIS groups, Mailing list, individual ID and use of social networking site Facebook. Finally received only 160 responses from the different LIS Professionals of India. The data was interpreted using MS-Excels. 5.0 Limitation: The following limitation of this study has given below: The study only concentrates on citation management software using only online survey. Secondly it is only limited to LIS professionals of India. 6.0 Data Analysis: 6.1 Gender wise Distribution: The study was on different LIS professionals of India. From the collected it shows that majority of the respondents 111 (69.4%) were come under male category whereas only 49 (30.6%) come under female category. Table -1:- Gender Wise Distribution Sex No. of Responses Percentage Female % Male % 6.2 Occupation Wise Distribution: Table 2 shows occupation-wise distribution of respondents. Majority of the respondents 123 (76.87%) are from the occupation 'Library working Professionals' such as Librarian, Deputy Librarian, Assistant Librarian, Professional Assistant, Library information assistant etc so it can be considered that LIS working professionals of India likely to use CMS (Citation Management Software). It was followed by Research Scholars 16 (10 %), Students 12(7.5%) and Faculty 9 (23%). Table-2:- Occupation Wise Distribution Occupation No. of Responses Percentage Students % Research Scholar 16 10% Faculty % LIS working Professionals % 56 P a g e

3 6.3 Citation Style: The question asked to respondents that which citation style most frequently used. From the collected it was found that, the library professionals of India were well aware with APA (American Psychological Association) citation style. About 112 (76.25%) of respondents has use APA citation style it was followed by MLA (Modern Language Association) 22 (13.75 %) and Harvard citation style 9(5.62 %) and other are 7 (4.37 %) respectively. Table 3:- Citation Style Percentage % % 5.62 % 4.37 % 100 No. of Responses Citation Style APA MLA Harvard others Total Figure Used Citation Management Software: The below data indicate that, 95 (59.37 %) of the respondents are used citation management software whereas 65 (40.62 %) of respondent not used any citation management software. So that, they need some awareness about the citation management software: Table 4:- Citation Management Software used Used Citation Management Software No. of Responses Percentage Yes % No % 6.5 Awareness of Citation/Bibliographic Management Software: The figures inform that, 127 (79.37 %) of the respondents know about the citation/bibliographic management software whereas 33 (20.62%) of the respondent don t know about the citation/bibliographic management software. Table 5:- Citation/Bibliographic Management Software Know about the Citation/Bibliographic Management Software No. of Responses Percentage Yes % No % 6.6 Types of Citation Management Software used: Table 6 and figure 2 the frequently used of citation management software of the respondents. It is clear from the form below given data that 29% of the respondents 57 P a g e

4 used Mendeley citation management software followed by Zotero (28%), Ref Work (7%), Endnote (14%) and others (18%). It is observed that most of the respondents have used the Mendeley & Zotero citation management software. Table 6:- Citation Management Software Citation Management Software No. of Responses Percentage Mendeley % Zotero % Endnote % Ref Work % Others % Blank % Figure Frequency of used Citation Management Software: The collected presented in the following table which indicates that, most of the respondents use citation management software on monthly basis 54 (33.75 %). About 28 (17.5 %) of respondents were used weekly basis and fewest of them 26 (16.25 %) of the respondents use daily basis and other 44 (27.5 %) and 5% of the respondents filled with blank because they never use CMS. Table 7:- Frequency of used Citation Management Software Use of the Citation Management Software No. of Responses Percentage Monthly % Others % Weekly % Daily % Blank 8 5% 6.8 Purpose of Using Citation Management Software:It is indicates that the LIS Professionals of India use citation management software for different purposes which are interpreted in below table and figure. The analysed data informs that the use of citation management software for research purpose with 102 (63.75 %) and education purpose with 34 (21.25 %) and 3 (1.87 %) use for both researcher and educational purposes and 21 (13.12 %) use for other purposes. 58 P a g e

5 Table 8:- Purpose of Using Citation Management Software Purpose of using No. of Responses Percentage Research % Education % Both % Others % Figure Do you think that Library should purchase paid version of Citation or Reference Management Software? The above question asked to the respondents. The data reveal that, most of the respondent reported that library should purchase a paid version of citation or reference management software with 95 (59.37 %) whereas 65 (40.62 %) respondents say no. Table: 9- Library should purchase paid version of Citation or Reference Management Software or Not Paid version should be purchased No. of Responses Percentage Yes % No % 6.10 Satisfaction level of Citation Management Software: From the below table it is found that, 62 (38.75%) of respondents said that, they have very fairly satisfied with using Citation management software and (35 %) of respondents said that, they very satisfied and (42 %) respondent said that they don t know. Table 10:- Satisfactory Level Of The Citation Management Software Satisfactory Level No. of Responses Percentage Very Satisfy 56 35% Fairly satisfied % Don t Know % 59 P a g e

6 6.11 How Citation Management Software has affected to your work/study? The above question asked to the respondents to known about the impact CMS among the LIS professional. According to the data, the 62 (38%) respondents declares that citation management software has considerably affected his /her work/study. 54 (33.75 %) respondents give answers that, to some extent and 44 (27.5 %) respondents answer with don t know. Table 11:- Citation Management Software Has Affected to Your Work/Study Affected to your work/study No. of Responses Percentage Considerably % To some extent % Don t Know % 6.12 The below table show the Do you need of training in connection with the use of Reference/Citation Management Software? The above question ask to the respondents it is found that, majority of respondents 123 (76.9 %) says that, Yes and 37 (23.1 %) of the respondents answer with no. so we can say that, they are well hand on knowledge about the reference/citation management software. Table 12:- Need of Training Training No. of Responses Percentage Yes % No % 6.13 Have you ever attended a course or a workshop about Reference/Citation Management Software? The LIS professionals of India 113(70.6 %) were not attended any workshop or training programme and however 47 (29.4 %) of respondents reported that they attend work and training related to reference/citation management software. Table 13:- Attend Any Course/ Training/ Workshop Attended a course or a workshop No. of Responses Percentage 7.0 Findings: Yes % No % The library professional of India well aware about reference/citation management software. The study reveals that most of the respondents are male category and Majority of the respondents are from the occupation of Library Professional. American Psychological Association (APA) 122 (63.75 %) citation style is the most preferred citation style among the library professional of India Mostly use citation management software Mendeley 46 (28.75 %) and Zotero 45 (28.12 %) The CMS are used for mostly research purpose with 102 (63.75 %) 76.9 % of respondent says they need of training in connection with the use of Reference/Citation Management Software? 8.0 Conclusion: 60 P a g e

7 The study indicates awareness and use of citation management software/bibliographic management software among the LIS Professionals of India. Selecting of any reference management software depends on the need of the user. Almost all the citation management software has same features some of the software s has greater advantages among others. It was found from the study that LIS professionals of India well aware about citation management software and use this software s for his/her research works. The library and information science professionals of India think that they need training to operate the citation management software. As a whole APA is the most popular citation style which is use frequently by the LIS professionals i.e. 122 (63.75 %). 9.0 Reference: 1. Francese, E. (2010). The Usage of Reference Management Software (RMS) in an academic environment : a survey at Tallinn University. Retrieved from 2. Francese, E. (2012). Enrico Francese as Digital Libraries : a survey at the University of Torino. Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. Retrieved from 3. Gunn, W. (2014). Mendeley : Enabling and understanding scientific collaboration. Information Sevices and Use, 34, Haustein, S., &Larivière, V. (2014). Mendeley as a source of global readership by students and postdocs? evaluating article usage by academic status. In Proceeding of the ITUL Conference. Retrieved from 5. Steeleworthy, M., & Dewan, P. (2013). Web-based Citation Management Systems : Which One Is Best? Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 8(1), Zahedi, Z., Costas, R., &Wouters, P. (2014). Assessing the impact of publications read ( saved ) by the different Mendeley users : is there any different pattern among users? In IATUL Annual Conference Proceedings (pp. 1 13). 7..Zaugg, H., West, R. E., Tateishi, I., & Randall, D. L. (2011). Mendeley: Creating communities of scholarly inquiry through research collaboration. TechTrends, 55(1), y. 61 P a g e