Innovative Research in Academic Libraries: Do Editorials, Agendas, or Think Tanks Make a Difference?

Do practitioners and scholars of a profession still pause for a few moments and scan the editorials at the fronts of journals? In the digital environment, anecdotal evidence suggests that most readers come to a journal through a specific indexing tool or search term that links to an individual article; or, if a reader is looking at a table of contents for the latest issue of a journal, he or she scans all the titles but probably only looks at one or two articles that have specific resonance. It is rare that a reader goes systematically through the journal contents from front to back, as was common with printed journals even if it was done hurriedly. It has never been a given that people would peruse editorials; the value of such opinion pieces is too unpredictable. That opening essay might be a summary of the current themes, or an opinionated harangue, or a bland rumination on a topic unrelated to the rest of the journal articles. Only once in a while might it be a fresh report conveying new information. The “personal opinion” function that editorials used to fulfill, allowing an editor to convey the tone of a journal and lead the direction of its content, is being taken over by personal and disciplinary blogs that are a vehicle almost entirely devoted to this type of individual writing. The concept that a journal might incorporate several different sections of formal and informal writing is gradually giving way to a more granular approach to the professional literature. We are more likely to turn to different brands of digital media depending on what we want—if, for example, we want opinion, or formal empirical research, or simple practical examples, or field-defining syntheses.

portal is nearing the fifteen-year anniversary of its creation. Its goals then were the same as they are now: to showcase solid research as well as substantive narrative and timely feature opinions; to demonstrate the impact of partnering across the campus to deliver and create information services; and to embed librarianship in the context of higher education, technological innovation, evolving pedagogical theories, and discipline-driven revolutions in scholarly communication. Every issue has had an editorial, either from the primary editor or from a guest author, and most of these pieces have treated specific topics and have not simply rehashed the other articles. Download statistics reveal that the editorials that get read most are those with clever titles, or titles that perhaps lead readers to think they will actually get a full review article and not just a brief sketch. It is not clear whether much attention goes to the many editorials that outline research agendas that the editors would love to see explored. The content of the submission queue only barely reflects some of the newer areas that we and other leadership organizations have sketched. The topics of the manuscripts arriving at portal remain largely dominated by small-scale studies of frontline operations.

Looking back at the editorials I have written since becoming editor in 2009, there have been at least six that explicitly encouraged authors to conduct research on initiatives that are reshaping librarianship and that are transforming the leadership roles of information services departments on campus. Almost every piece gives examples of research topics that are still relevant, and only partially explored, today. Here is a recap of some of these promising areas for investigation:

• • The changing structures of libraries, higher education, and the scholarly enterprise: An editorial highlighting the research agendas articulated by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the ITHAKA organization identifies a number of fruitful topics for research. These topics include reconceiving research libraries, studying multi-institutional services, understanding faculty disciplinary behaviors, redesigning instruction, and developing new career paths for professionals in the area of scholarly communication and collaborative research.¹

• • Repositioning special collections: New programs of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and CLIR call for research on digital tools and cost-effective forms of description for the materials in special collections, exploration of the synergies between print...