International Survey Of Medical Other Life Sciences Faculty

The report presents data from a survey of 180 medical and life sciences faculty from more than 50 research universities and medical schools in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland. The study gives highly detailed data on how faculty evaluate medical and other life sciences oriented libraries in medical and dental schools, schools of public health, and university departments of chemistry and biology, among others. Data is presented separately for evaluation of interlibrary loan services, databases, eBook collections and services, journals collections, data curation and archiving services, general reference services, knowledge and service of library subject specialists and other areas of library services. The study also presents commentary on what survey participants most like and dislike about their medical or academic libraries, how often they visit, and how productive their library is compared to other departments or services that serve the life sciences at their universities and medical schools.Data is broken out by more than 10 criteria, and is presented separately for public and private universities, by age, gender, academic title, country, academic field, university ranking, level of tuition and other variables. Just a few of the report¿s many findings are that: ¿24.24% of those sampled were highly satisfied with their library¿s interlibrary loan services. Only 4.88% of faculty sampled in universities with a US News & World Report ranking below 135 were highly satisfied with their eBook collections, much lower satisfaction ratings than for more highly ranked universities. Medical school faculty were much happier than those in other schools or faculties with their library¿s data curation and archiving services; 27.66% of medical school faculty were highly satisfied.For library information technology, men were in general easier to please than women; nearly 26% of the men were highly satisfied with the library¿s information technology vs. only 16.44% of women.

The report presents data from a survey of 180 medical and life sciences faculty from more than 50 research universities and medical schools in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland. The study gives highly detailed data on how faculty access scholarly and scientific journals, including data on preferences for paper or print journals, use of Google Scholar, pre-print services and digital repositories. The report also reports on the frequency of asking librarians to add new journal titles, and on satisfaction levels with access to secondary data that supports scientific findings but may not be actually be part of the text of a journal article.Data is broken out by more than 10 criteria, and is presented separately for public and private universities, by age, gender, academic title, country, academic field, university ranking, level of tuition and other variables. Just a few of the report¿s many findings are that: ¿Journals in paper format was preferred to online format by 10.92% of respondents¿Age strongly and positively correlated with the tendency to have requested that the library add a journal title; the older the faculty member the more likely he or she was to have made such a request.¿Faculty satisfaction with access to supplementary data related to journal articles but not necessarily appearing in them was by far the greatest in Canada, where all survey participants were either satisfied or quite satisfied, and lowest in Australia/New Zealand where only 10% were satisfied and none quite satisfied.¿Institutional digital repositories accounted for a higher percentage than Google Scholar of time spent accessing journals from sources that do not charge ¿Approximately 47% of faculty in university departments of biology had ever accessed a journal article from a pre-print service.

This study presents data from a survey of medical and other life sciences postdocs from major medical schools and science faculties at major universities in the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and Ireland. Postdocs in medicine and other life sciences give their opinions on what are the best universities to work for in the English-speaking world. The study surveys opinions on salaries and working conditions, tenure track and "superdoc" position prospects, and the overall quality of the postdoc experience in leading medical schools and life sciences faculties and major research universities. Postdocs present their opinions of postdoc career affairs offices, career counseling, information technology, opportunities to attend scientific conferences, mentoring services, grant search support, housing policies, assistance with visa/immigration issues and much more about their postdoc experience. Just a few of the report's many findings are that: *More than two thirds of survey participants said that their universities offered a postdoc affairs office.*The mean salary for all postdocs surveyed was $53,107; the median,$46,000.*Respondents felt they had the best prospects of obtaining permanent positions after serving as postdocs in the USA or Canada.*External funding accounted for 77.1% of the total compensation for female postdocs in the sample.*22.09% of all postdocs surveyed said that their institution offered "superdoc" positions, permanent staff positions similar to postdocs but with greater pay and stability. Males and females reported with nearly the same frequency that "superdoc" positions were available. *59.99% of postdocs outside of the USA and UK were satisfied with their current salaries, slightly higher than the 53.84% in the USA but much greater than 36.85% in the UK.*22.64% of respondents listed Naturejobs as a useful website for finding postdoc and other scientific job prospects, making it the most frequently used website among respondents. Some of the institutional affiliations of the postdocs interviewed were: Australian National University, Brown Medical School, Columbia University, Columbia University Medical Center,Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University College Dublin, University of Connecticut, University of Idaho, University of Leeds, Yale University

The same technologies that fuel scientific advances also pose potential risks-that the knowledge, tools, and techniques gained through legitimate biotechnology research could be misused to create biological weapons or for bioterrorism. This is often called the dual use dilemma of the life sciences. Yet even research with the greatest potential for misuse may offer significant benefits. Determining how to constrain the danger without harming essential scientific research is critical for national security as well as prosperity and well-being. This book discusses a 2007 survey of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) members in the life sciences about their knowledge of dual use issues and attitudes about their responsibilities to help mitigate the risks of misuse of their research. Overall, the results suggest that there may be considerable support for approaches to oversight that rely on measures that are developed and implemented by the scientific community itself. The responses also suggest that there is a need to clarify the scope of research activities of concern and to provide guidance about what actions scientists can take to reduce the risk that their research will be misused by those with malicious intent.