Current awareness survey - preliminary results and call to participate
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

We reveal the initial findings from this year's current awareness research, and there's still time to participate and give your views.

Item

Data collection is underway for Jinfo's survey on "Trends in current awareness 2018" - you can complete the survey in less than 15 minutes and get a summary report upon publication in September.

I've been tracking initial results as they come in. With just under 50 completed surveys, respondents represent the fields of consulting, finance, pharma, government, legal and manufacturing and information teams ranging from 1 FTE up to 100.

Our goal is to better understand and share:

• Which premium content sources (Factiva, Nexis and other licensed sources) are in use
• Technology, platforms or tools used to enhance and streamline the process of providing current awareness
• Plans for change in the next two years
• Approach to measurement.

Here's a taste of what we've learned so far, based on this initial dataset:

Individually licensed sources more common than aggregators

Figure 1 shows the percentage of respondents who report that the named components are part of their provision of current awareness. Note that 77% report that they are incorporating individually licensed sources, whilst only 70% report using a major news aggregator like Factiva or Nexis.

Figure 1: Which of the following components are part of your provision of current awareness to your organisation?

Just under half use either a content-agnostic platform (e.g. InfoDesk) or a custom-built platform for their systems and processes. 

Content source changes

Figure 2 shows a set of named premium sources (both aggregators and sources for individual licensing). For each, we ask if it's in use now, was in use in the past or is under consideration for the future.

Figure 2: Do you license any of the following premium products for current awareness content?

Every named source has been dropped by around 10% or more of respondents; only a handful are under consideration for future additions.

Factiva is the most-used source, with 62% of respondents, followed by the FT with 55%.

Priorities for change

Our initial analysis of team size against the time respondents invest in providing current awareness indicates an average capacity usage of 9%. That's nearly half a day per person per week.

This fact underscores the motivation for 63% of respondents reporting that they plan to work on streamlining and automating their process for current awareness provision in the next 2 years (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Do you expect to make any of the following changes in the next 2 years?

However, only 11% plan to increase their investment in technology, which may make that goal difficult to achieve.

Participate today

These results are just a taste of the many areas we explore in this project. When you include your email address with your survey submission, you'll get a copy of the report in September. 

The survey will be open for one more week - take 15 minutes to complete it today.

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