Literature Search Habits of MIS Academics: Empirical Evidence on the Discovery of Impactful Research

The amount of academic literature published every year has increased at a steady 20% rate since the 1990s. With this impressive growth of available information, the discovery of relevant papers that are worth reading is recognized to be challenging. The search mechanisms of online archives are generally considered limited, as search keywords typically span multiple research areas and retrieve a large number of papers that are only partly pertinent to the user’s interests. The first research question of this paper is whether and to what extent academics perform their search online. The second research question is whether and to what extent academics use current advanced search mechanisms, as an indication of their commitment to online discovery. The third research question is on the role played by online search in different phases of the research process, that is choosing a research topic, finding readings on the topic, and selecting citations. To help answer these questions, the paper presents the results of an empirical survey conducted with academics in the MIS field. Findings from 326 respondents unveil interesting insights on the literature search habits of academics and, overall, indicate that despite the consensus on the low quality of current online search mechanisms, only a tiny minority of users seems to be willing to trade search simplicity for relevance.