Page 104 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.45, 2019

CHEN Bikun, ZHOU Huixian, ZHONG Zhouyan & WANG Yuefen / Exploring the user platform preference and 103
user interest preference of Chinese scholarly articles: A comparison based on usage metrics

research interest preferences (channel selection affects information resources). In addition, current
research shows that usage counts reflect users’ attention and interest to some extent (such as paper
topics, authors, institutions, etc.). More usage counts probably mean more user interests (Moed
& Halevi, 2016; X.W. Wang et al., 2016; Zhao, 2017). In this study, we were interested in the
following research questions:
(1) What are the differences in user platform preferences between academic journals official
websites and information integration platform?
(2) What are the differences in user interest preferences between academic journals official
websites and information integration platform?
(3) What are the factors that affect user usage patterns?
The research framework used to pursue our goals is shown in Figure 2. In brief, descriptive
statistics and Spearman correlation analysis are conducted to explore characteristics and factors
of user platform preferences. Jaccard similarity coefficient and co-word analysis are used to
investigate characteristics and factors of user interest preferences at indicator level and content
level respectively. Descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation analysis and user interest analysis
(indicator level) are implemented by R language, and user interest analysis (content level) is
implemented by VOSviewer (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010).

Figure 2. Research framework