New arrival : a service quality evaluation by London Business School faculty, support staff and PhD students of Google Scholar and other electronic service delivering citation counts and academic literature'

Abstract

Because of Google Scholar's recent appearance, the expectations and perceptions of users of Google Scholar and related electronic services have not been investigated. This research paper describes, and draws conclusions from, a survey of faculty, staff and students of London Business School. The survey asked respondents about their expectations and perceptions of academic literature and citation counts electronic services, primarily Google Scholar and Web of Knowledge. Respondents were also asked to recall academic literature and citation count electronic services brands. Survey data was compared to library server session log data. The survey design and data analysis is based upon service quality and gap theory theoretical frameworks largely developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry. Vavra scores describe the data collected in order to quantify the gap between expected level of service and level of service respondents perceived they had received. Results support the conclusion that academic users of electronic service at London Business School are pragmatists in their search for academic literature and citation counts, but not at the expense of intellectual rigour. For example, Google Scholar was rated very highly by users for possessing the 'ease of use' characteristic but users rated the service poorly for benchmark status, peer-reviewed content and content disclosure. The research also showed that members of different user groups have differing expectations and perceptions of delivered services. PhD students, for example, rated 'citation counts' as