What is Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey?
The Ithaka S+R 2021 Faculty Survey is a web-based survey that allows faculty at USF, as well as faculty at other participating academic institutions, to express their attitudes and practices related to research, teaching, Scholarly Communications. In addition, the survey results will provide local and comparative information regarding how faculty use and perceive the library in their scholarly efforts. The survey was developed by Ithaka S+R, a non-profit research and consulting service, which includes JSTOR. The survey will be launched by the University of South Florida (USF) Libraries to all specifically defined faculty on October 12th, 2021 and will close after a run of five (5) weeks.
What kinds of questions are on the survey?
The Ithaka S+R 2021 Faculty Survey focuses on discovering how faculty conduct research and teaching activities, as well as the types of support and information resources they desire from the libraries. Survey questions are related to:
- faculty use of library collections and services
- scholarly communication and publishing
- faculty use of library materials to assist in undergraduate and graduate instruction
How will the survey results and findings be used?
The survey responses and data will assist the USF Libraries in making evidence-based decisions regarding the collections, programs, and services we provide to faculty. The results will also contribute to benchmarking the perceptions and experiences of faculty with national and regional data from other institutions that participate in the Ithaka S+R 2021 Local Surveys.
How will the privacy of participants be protected?
The survey is completely anonymous. USF Office of Decision Support (ODS) produced the email addresses for potential faculty participants to the USF Libraries, which were then provided to the Ithaka staff. Once the survey is distributed, the USF Libraries will have no ability to connect responses to the participants’ email addresses, or any information that might be used to link to individuals. In addition, the Ithaka S+R staff will be responsible for distribution and will create unique URLs for each voluntary respondent. Only a small amount of identifiable information, such as rank and department, will be captured through the survey and other demographic information is optional. It would be very difficult to identify an individual based on responses.
Once the survey is completed, voluntary participants will be notified, and this page will be updated to include publicly available summaries of results and survey findings.
For any questions & comments:
If you have additional questions, or comments, please contact survey lead Matt Torrence, Associate Librarian, Research & Instruction, USF Libraries, Tampa Library (torrence@usf.edu), or Kaya Van Beynen, Interim Campus Library Dean, USF Libraries, St. Petersburg Library (kayatown@usf.edu).