Blanca Rodriguez-Bravo

University of Leon | UNILEON · Library and Information Science

Presents the results of a study of the impact of artificial intelligence on early career researchers (ECRs). An important group to study because their millennial mindset may render them especially open to AI. We provide empirical data and a validity check of the numerous publications providing forecasts and prognostications. This interview‐based st...

The Harbingers study of early career researchers (ECRs), their work life and scholarly communications, began by studying generational—Millennial—change (c.2016), then moved to pandemic change (c.2020) and is now investigating another potential agent of change: artificial intelligence (2024–). We report here on a substantial scoping pilot study that...

During the COVID pandemic, some commentators thought that early career researchers (ECRs) would become a ‘lost generation’. Yet the Harbingers (H‐2) longitudinal study, which followed ECRs for 2 years during the pandemic found that ECRs took things in their stride. More than 2 years on, we returned, as part of the AI stage of the Harbingers study (...

This extensive literature review is not a stand‐alone paper, as it was conducted to help set the scene for the third and current stage of the Harbinger of Change project (H‐3), which is focusing on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on early career researchers (ECRs). Its purpose is to inform the design, scope and question‐forming of the on...

This paper comes from the third stage (H‐3) of the long‐running Harbingers of Change project (2015), which has investigated the scholarly communication beliefs and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) for a decade. The first stage (H‐1) focussed on generational (Millennial) change; the second (H‐2) on the impact of COVID; and, currently, th...

Em pouco mais de seis décadas, a Análise do Discurso (AD) tem desempenhado relevante contribuição teórico-metodológica para pesquisas nas áreas das Ciências Humanas, Sociais e da Informação. A partir do aprofundamento sobre a linguagem, não como sistema independente, mas meio de produção e disseminação de sentidos, dotado de material simbólico e id...

Resumen Se expone la situación de los Early Career Researchers (ECRs) españoles durante la pandemia atendiendo a los principales cambios originados por el confinamiento en sus hábitos de trabajo y en sus prácticas de comunicación académica. A partir de la información extraída de entrevistas y encuestas se analizan las transformaciones experimentada...

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la producción científica del personal docente e investigador de la Universidad de Salamanca durante el periodo 2010-2015. Sobre la base de dos conjuntos de datos que contienen esta producción y las referencias bibliográficas citadas en ella, se determinaron los siguientes indicadores: a) las áreas de conocim...

In this, the second iteration of our continuing ‘Harbingers of Change’ project, over 160 early career researchers (ECRs) from eight countries were questioned about their scholarly communications. Three repeat in‐depth interviews were conducted over 2 years of the pandemic to chart changes in attitude and behaviour. This paper provides interview fin...

Se aplica la metodología de diseño de personas a la experiencia investigadora de las jóvenes académicas españolas a partir de los datos recabados en las entrevistas realizadas en los proyectos “Harbingers”. Se identifican varios perfiles de investigadoras que se analizan con atención a la evolución observada en las actitudes y prácticas de comunica...

This review study is based on original research studies investigating how scientific information is discovered and accessed. The study highlights the role of various platforms, including search engines, databases, repositories, web-scale discovery services, academic social media, and illegal platforms like Sci-Hub in this process. The results indic...

The Harbingers project, which studied the working lives and scholarly communication behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs) over 6 years, found evidence of changing attitudes to questionable (grey) publishing. Thus, whilst predatory publishers have come to be treated with equanimity, as a problem easily dealt with, there was growing concern w...

Investigates whether junior researchers believe that the scholarly communication system is changing in a significant way, whether they have contributed to the changes they envisaged, whether the pandemic has fast‐forwarded change and what they thought a transformed system might look like. The data are drawn from the Harbingers‐2 project, which inve...

Explores science and social science early career researchers' (ECRs) perceptions and experiences of peer review, seeking also to identify their views of any pandemic-associated changes that have taken place. Data are drawn from the Har-bingers-2 project, which investigated the impact of the pandemic on scholarly communications. Peer review, one of...

After two‐years of repeat interviewing early career sciences/social sciences researchers from around the world about their work life and scholarly communications in pandemic‐times, the Harbingers‐2 project is in a position to release quantitative data on the pandemic's overall impact. The data comes from around 50 questions asked in the third and f...

Key points 170 early career researchers interviewed three times over 2 years, have uniquely contributed towards a stress test of scholarly communications and cracks have been identified. The perfect storm created by the convergence of millennial values and the pandemic appears to have fast‐forwarded the cracking process, perhaps, for the good. The...

We analyse the relationship between downloads of electronic journals included in four big deal bundles subscribed to by public university libraries affiliated to two library consortia in Spain (Castile and León and Galicia) and citations of the same journals by researchers at these universities. Download data on the big deals analysed (Emerald, Sci...

Introduction As part of the Harbnger-2 project, this study aimed to discover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on junior researchers’ work-life, career prospects, research and publishing practices and networking. Methods An online international survey of 800 early career researchers (ECRs) was conducted in 2022. A questionnaire was developed bas...

Presents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic‐era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci‐Hub. The study is a part of the Harbingers project that has been exploring the work lives a...

Around 170 early career researchers (ECRs) from 8 countries were interviewed about the whole range of their scholarly communication attitudes/behaviours during pandemic times and this paper analyses what they said about predatory journals in a wide range of scholarly communication contexts. Because of the delicacy of the topic there was just one qu...

The relationship between early career researchers and academic libraries This article examines the evolving attitudes and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) towards the library, in particular its role as a source of discovery and access to information, the use of institutional repositories, and their predicted future for the library. The...

Considerando la universalidad una característica intencionada pero no exenta de problemas en los sistemas de clasificación como la Clasificación Decimal Universal (CDU), se presenta una propuesta de aplicación informática que capacite la creación de adaptaciones locales de la CDU, según los intereses de las comunidades de diversos contextos, y que...

We present the results of the Harbinger project, carried out between 2016 and 2022 in several countries on three continents, which focused on the use that early career researchers make of the resources available through university libraries. These include catalogs, databases, and big deals, as well as alternative platforms such as Google search eng...

After two-years of talking to around 170 early career science/social science researchers from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US about their work life and scholarly communications during the pandemic, the Harbingers-2 project is in possession of a mountain of verbatim data. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the kinds...

After two-years of repeat interviewing around 170 early career science/social science researchers from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US about their work life and scholarly communications in pandemic-times, the Harbingers project is now in possession of a mountain of data on what constitutes a very important academic topic....

Early career researchers have both been the most directly effected by the COVID-19 pandemic and responsible for some of the most innovative responses to it. Reporting on findings from the Harbingers-2 study, Discusses how the international cohort followed by the study has adapted to an emerging ‘new scholarly normality’

Presents early data from an investigation of the work lives and scholarly communication practices of 177 early career researchers (ECRs) from eight countries. Utilizing mainly coded and textual data from interviews, the paper reports on the findings that pertain to publishing papers in peer reviewed journals. We examine which factors are taken into...

We present a case study to analyze the bibliographic references used in the scientific production on psychology in Scopus of the four universities that make up a library consortium in Spain and compare this with downloads of journals included in the Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, and Emerald big deals subscribed to by this consortium. A majority use jo...

The Degree in Library Science and Documentation of the University of León started during the 1990–1991 academic year. This first curriculum suffered from a strong presence of subjects from the humanities, with a low fraction of experimental work in many subjects because of its inclusion within the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. The first years...

In a blogpost from this time last year, we introduced Harbingers-2, a longitudinal qualitative research project, which seeks to understand the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the early career researcher (ECR) community. One year on, halfway into the project, it seems appropriate to revisit the oft-heard 'horror' scenario: the predi...

El artículo presenta el relevamiento realizado con el fin de localizar los portales y repositorios que contienen datos primarios de investigación en Argentina. Para llevarlo a cabo, se consultaron directorios y registros de repositorios, tanto de datos como de publicaciones, se revisaron los repositorios incluidos en el Sistema Nacional de Reposito...

The study presents comparative qualitative findings from a longitudinal exploration of the impact of the pandemic on early career researchers (ECRs) from the sciences and social sciences. Using qualitative methodologies, it focuses on the increasing demands of remote teaching made on ECRs and the potentially negative effects these had on their rese...

The study presents comparative qualitative findings from a longitudinal exploration of the impact of the pandemic on early career researchers (ECRs) from the sciences and social sciences. Using qualitative methodologies, it focuses on the increasing demands of remote teaching made on ECRs and the potentially negative effects these had on their rese...

Abstract: The aim is to investigate the attitudes and practices of Spanish Early Career Researchers (ECRs) towards open science. Their interest in sharing openly publications and data, in collaborating with other researchers and stakeholders, in disseminating their research and in looking for results’ impact is analyzed. The methodology is based...

Se indaga en la utilidad de las revistas electrónicas de los big deals contratados por las universidades públicas de la Comunidad Autónoma de Castilla y León (Universidad de Burgos, Universidad de León, Universidad de Salamanca y Universidad de Valladolid) a partir del análisis de las descargas y citas realizadas por sus investigadores. El análisis...

Se indaga en la utilidad de las revistas electrónicas de los big deals contratados por las universidades públicas de la Comunidad Autónoma de Castilla y León (Universidad de Burgos, Universidad de León, Universidad de Salamanca y Universidad de Valladolid) a partir del análisis de las descargas y citas realizadas por sus investigadores. El análisis...

The paper draws on evidence of predatory publishing obtained from the 4 year-long Harbingers research study of the changing scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). The project featured longitudinal interviews for its first 3 years with 116 ECRs researching science and social sciences who came from China,...

El presente trabajo propone contribuir al estudio del término compuesto en la indización de imágenes, a través del análisis y evaluación de su uso en la indización de una colección de postales fotográficas e ilustradas sobre el patrimonio histórico-cultural de la Biblioteca General de la Universidad de Coímbra (Portugal) fechadas entre 1940-1960, c...

span>A description of documents from Mansilla de las Mulas' parochial archive.</span

span>It deals with libraries and readers' situation during Modern Age in León, paying attention to ecclesiastic libraries. After an historic introduction of the Inmaculada Concepción Monastery in León, its antique books are studied: number, date of edition, main printing houses, chief authors, subjects, languages, origins and illustrations.</span

Resumen. El estudio analiza las opiniones y prácticas de los investigadores españoles noveles (Early Career Researchers o ECRs) respecto a la coautoría y a la revisión por pares según datos obtenidos de una encuesta. Se observa que los ECRs contribuyen a todas las tareas de una investigación aunque no siempre se les reconozca suficientemente el mér...

Discusses the challenges facing early career researchers as a result of the pandemic and outlines how a new longitudinal, qualitative study involving 160 Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from 8 countries will seek to understand how they fare over the next two years.

This study explores early career researchers’ (ECRs) appreciation and utilisation of open access (OA) publishing. The evidence reported here results from a questionnaire-based international survey with 1600 participants, which forms the second leg and final year of a four year long, mixed methods, longitudinal study that sought to discover whether...

This study explores early career researchers’ (ECRs) appreciation and utilisation of open access (OA) publishing. The evidence reported here results from a questionnaire-based international survey with 1600 participants, which forms the second leg and final year of a four year long, mixed methods, longitudinal study that sought to discover whether...

The paper draws on evidence of predatory publishing obtained from the 4 year-long Harbingers research study of the changing scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). The project featured longitudinal interviews for the first 3 years with 116 international ECRs researching science and social sciences who cam...

The scientific communication habits and practices of the new wave of Spanish researchers are analyzed based on the results of an international survey (2019). The results obtained from 100 participants support those previously obtained from interviews conducted between 2016 and 2018 in Spain under the Harbingers Project, and show similarities to and...

Transparency in the management of 50 Spanish public university libraries was analysed using information available on their websites. The method consisted of checking the websites to identify a set of 18 evaluation indicators associated with the specific case of libraries and the Spanish Transparency Act, notably the chapter on active publishing. Th...

The paper compares the scholarly communication attitudes and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) in eight countries concerning discovery, reading, publishing, authorship, open access, and social media. The data are taken from the most recent investigation in the 4‐year‐long Harbingers project. A survey was undertaken to establish whether t...

Sección Debate (revista PH 100, junio 2020) Debate 16: Repositorios y redes sociales académicas para la transferencia del conocimiento abierto Textos provisionales [pre-prints] La consideración y utilización de las redes sociales académicas por los investigadores noveles españoles Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, catedrática de Biblioteconomía y Documentaci...

Se presentan las opiniones y prácticas de los jóvenes investigadores en relación con las redes sociales académicas recabadas por medio de entrevistas y de un cuestionario entre 2016 y 2019, resultados del proyecto internacional Early Career Researchers: the Harbingers of Change?

The study investigates the attitudes and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to citation-based metrics and altmetrics, providing the findings in the light of what might be expected of the millennial generation and in the context of what we already know about researchers in today’s ‘culture of counting’ governed scholarly world. T...

This article describes an international study informed by a 3‐year‐long qualitative longitudinal project, which sought to discover the scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). Using a combination of small‐scale interviews and a larger‐scale survey, ECRs were questioned on their searching and reading behavi...

This article reports on the findings of an international online survey of early career researchers (ECRs) with regard to their authorship and peer review, attitudes, and practices, which sought to discover how the new wave of researchers were utilizing these key aspects of the scholarly communications system. A questionnaire was developed on the ba...

A study from the Harbingers research project provides a comprehensive assessment of the main features of the scholarly communications system as viewed by early career researchers (ECRs) in the final year of the study (2018). Aspects covered are: discovery and access, authorship practices, peer review, publishing strategies, open access publishing,...

This paper examines changes in attitudes and behaviours of the new wave of researchers (early career researchers) regarding the academic library and its functions in seven countries around the world. It documents trends and establishes the direction in which things are heading. Data were collected from over 100 researchers from the sciences and soc...

The evolution of the use of electronic scientific journals in the 2007-2018 period by the academic communities of the public universities of Castilla and Leon, members the Bucle consortium, is studied. Downloads of articles distributed by four broad-spectrum providers are analyzed: Emerald, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, and Wiley. Unexpectedly, in s...

Reports on the findings on the open science attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers (ECRs) from the Harbingers research project, which sought to determine whether they are the agents of change when it comes to scholarly communications. Nearly 120 science and social science researchers from 7 countries were questioned, longitudinally ov...

Motivar la colaboración. • Potenciar la capacidad cognitiva y de reflexión. • Desarrollar la capacidad análisis-síntesis. • Involucrar a los estudiantes en el aprendizaje conceptual.  Glosario, blogs, wikis • Interactuar • Modificar • Evaluar • Feedback  Generar y edita contenidos: estudios de caso, simulaciones, resoluciones de problemas, juegos...

The paper analyzes the evolution of the use of electronic scientific journals in the period between 2007 and 2018 by the academic communities of to the BUCLE Consortium (Spain). The time period of the study has been limited to allow the analysis from the moment of the consolidation of the use of journals in electronic format by the academic communi...

El objetivo general de esta investigación se dirige a conocer la circulación de los materiales tradicionales en las bibliotecas de la ULe, para observar la evolución del préstamo en el momento de auge de la colección electrónica, indagar sobre los principales usuarios de la colección y averiguar qué tipos documentales son los más prestados. En espe...

Presenting evidence from the Harbingers Study, a three-year longitudinal study of Early Career Researchers (ECRs), David Nicholas assesses the extent to which the new wave of researchers are driving changes in scholarly practices. Finding that innovative practices are often constrained by institutional structures and precarious employment, he sugge...

The chapter addresses the general problem of assessing the integration of knowledge from different scientific disciplines joined in interdisciplinary settings and its specific application to the study of information. The method is based in the development of Interdisciplinary-Glossaries as tools for the elucidation of the network of concepts involv...

Three years ago, the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) commissioned a highly ambitious, international study, the like of which has not been seen in the scholarly communications field. More than a hundred science and social science early career researchers (ECRs) from seven countries were depth-interviewed annually for three-years (2016-2018) in...

This article provides the final results of a 3‐year study that sought to discover whether early career researchers (ECRs) were the harbingers of change with respect to scholarly communications. Over a hundred science and social science ECRs from seven countries, spanning three continents, were depth‐interviewed annually for 3 years (2016–2018) abou...

The situation of Spanish early career researchers is investigated based on the results obtained from the international project: Early career researchers: The harbingers of change? The project sought to discover their habits in scientific communication, what role Science 2.0 plays in their behaviour and to what extent the indicators of evaluation of...

How do early career researchers (ECRs) use Sci-Hub and why? In this post David Nicholas assesses early career researcher attitudes towards the journal pirating site, finding a strong preference for Sci-Hub amongst French ECRs. He raises the question, will Sci-Hub prove the ultimate disruptor and bring down the existing status quo in scholarly commu...

The paper presents the early findings from the first two years of the Harbingers research project , a 3-year-long study of early career researchers (ECRs), the new wave of researchers, which sought to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to scholarly communications. The study recruited a convenience sample of 116 researchers from...

Se estudia la evolución del uso de revistas científicas electrónicas en el período 2007-2018 realizado por las comunidades académicas de las universidades públicas de Castilla y León adscritas al consorcio Bucle. Se analizan las descargas de artículos distribuidos por cuatro proveedores de amplio espectro: Emerald, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink y Wil...

En texto se presenta un proyecto de investigación en fase de desarrollo destinado a evaluar el rendimiento de la inversión en paquetes de revistas electrónicas que hacen dos consorcios bibliotecarios españoles: el de Galicia y el de Castilla y León. Este rendimiento se analizará en función de la relación entre coste de las suscripciones y el uso qu...

A three year research study of early career researchers (Harbingers study) recently completed provides solid evidence that commentators are right to think that ECRs could be disadvantaged by Plan S.

Three years ago, the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) commissioned a highly ambitious, international study, the like of which has not been seen in the scholarly communications field. More than a hundred science and social science early career researchers (ECRs) from seven countries were depth-interviewed annually for three-years (2016-2018) in...

ABSTRACT The dynamics and emergence of new knowledge requires building new knowledge organization systems and reviewing others for the location and access of knowledege. In this process the structures of knowledge organization assume particular relevance, as effective instruments to accomplish these purposes. For its longevity, the bibliographical...

The Harbinger project was a 3‐year‐long international study of the changing attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers (ECRs). One of the aims of the project was to discover if ECRs were adopting disrupting platforms that, legitimately or illegitimately, promote openness and sharing. It has been alleged that such an adoption appeals to th...

Early-career researchers—that is, those without tenure and typically in their 20s and 30s—make up the largest group of researchers in most countries and universities. They are the fuel that powers the world’s research projects. They are tomorrow’s Nobel prizewinners. They were born digital, and bring with them the millennials’ belief in openness, s...