JISC Survey: National Serial Requirement Survey

Preamble

At the commencement of the project, it was understood that following an e-mail survey (survey instrument at http://www.nesli.ac.uk/survey.html) of over 200 institutions, JISC staff would enter data into an Excel spreadsheet by 11/12/2002. Journal names and institution names would be standardised at data entry. The JISC require analysis of this data to provide a ranked listing of journals and publishers by popularity. Additionally, some cross-tabulation of data by type of institution, etc. was expected. A brief report that summarises findings was to be prepared.

Consideration

The JISC originally asked for the report to be delivered by 13 January 2003 but as this time scale takes in the Christmas and New Year holiday period, the completion date was negotiated to 31 January 2003.

Methodology

It was requested that data would be entered with cases in rows and separate columns for each questionnaire field (Job title, Department/Subject Area, Institution, etc.). Physical returns should be numbered and the number repeated in the spreadsheet as column 1, Case number. A combined field, Department/Subject Area, should be entered using only the subject term (e.g. ‘Statistics’ from “Department of Statistics”) and, where possible, this should be standardised and grouped in preparation for analysis (i.e. it was supposed that the JISC would probably not want more than c.20 subject cross-tabulations so all the constituent subjects of e.g. biosciences might be grouped together). Where respondents can enter up to 10 journal names or publishers, these should be entered in the spreadsheet as up to ten rows (lines) with the other data (job title, department/subject, institution) repeated on each line (see example appended). Additional columns should be completed by the JISC for any standardised data to be used for cross-tabulation, for example: type of institution (HE/FE/etc), size of institution, geographical area, etc. and these will also need to be repeated for all journal titles/publishers of a single case/respondent.

Analysis

Due to the nature of the questionnaire, which allowed multiple inputs to two questions, some manipulation of data was required before analysis could take place. Analysis was based on simple frequencies and cross tabulations. Tables were prepared listing up to the top 100 journal titles and the top 100 publishers. Additionally, cross tabulation was undertaken to determine top journals for the major subject disciplines and for type of institution. A brief report and commentary was produced.