The structure and priorities of researchers' scholarly profile maintenance activities: A case of institutional research information management system

Research information management systems (RIMS) have become critical components of information technology infrastructure on university campuses. They are used not just for sharing and promoting faculty research, but also for conducting faculty evaluation and development, facilitating research collaborations, identifying mentors for student projects, and expert consultants for local businesses. This study is one of the first empirical investigations of the structure of researchers' scholarly profile maintenance activities in a nonmandatory institutional RIMS. By analyzing the RIMS's log data, we identified 11 tasks researchers performed when updating their profiles. These tasks were further grouped into three activities: (a) adding publication, (b) enhancing researcher identity, and (c) improving research discoverability. In addition, we found that junior researchers and female researchers were more engaged in maintaining their RIMS profiles than senior researchers and male researchers. The results provide insights for designing profile maintenance action templates for institutional RIMS that are tailored to researchers' characteristics and help enhance researchers' engagement in the curation of their research information. This also suggests that female and junior researchers can serve as early adopters of institutional RIMS.