A Study on the Digital Information Usage in Science & Technology Domain: In the Case of Korea

Dissemination of Science & technology information is being deemed critical in determining industrial productivity and academic competitiveness on a national level. Therefore the development and management of government supported information system is more important. What is notable is that the demands from researchers are becoming more specified and specialized as the information infrastructure has suddenly undergone digital transformation. So, it is vital to understand the behavior and characteristics of users to encourage for active usage and to fulfill user needs. This study aims to analyze information seeking behavior of Korean researchers in Science & technology domain. It is expected to contribute to developing optimized strategies for knowledge information service. The traditional studies on information usage can be largely divided into system-centered analysis and user-centered analysis. The system-centered analysis focuses on analyzing the use rate, user satisfaction, difficulties in the system usage, but the approach is limited in grasping the context of dynamic users' behavior. We presuppose that the start point of information retrieval is awareness of problems with a given task. And we select user goals, information types, information channel types, and determinants of channel selection to explain the information seeking behavior of researchers in Korea.