The world of research is changing rapidly. The  increasing proliferation of information and the arrival of AI bring great opportunities; and this also leads to  changes in the way research reaches new audiences.

Periods of change naturally lead to new questions, and in research many of those questions are about trust, particularly because data proliferation has the potential to enrich science but can also overwhelm researchers juggling multiple data sets while mining for trusted information.

We wanted to explore this phenomenon, understand the impact it’s having on trust, and talk about how best to harness the opportunities while avoiding the knock-on effects that come from navigating such complexity. So we worked with Sense about Science to focus our latest Trust in Research study on better understanding the impact of increased information volumes on workload and resultant coping mechanisms.

What did we find?

• Researchers now spend almost as much time searching for articles as reading them. On average, researchers spend just over 4 hours a week searching for research articles and more than 5 hours reading them.

• Reliability of research output is a contributory factor. While 62% of researchers regard all or a majority of the research outputs they see as reliable, over a third (37%) said they only viewed half or some of them as reliable.
• In response, researchers are developing new coping mechanisms to ensure the reliability of the research they use, which is adding to their workloads.