Academic Libraries and Scientific Research

“Collectively,” writes the Institute for Scientific Information’s Dmytro Filchenko in a recent report, “U.S. universities are by far the largest source of research cited by inventors worldwide.”

The report, titled Research in the United States as a Driver for Economic Growth and Global Impact, announces that 30 of the top 50 universities with academic papers cited in patent applications—and 7 of the top 10—are based in America. Biomedicine, healthcare, agriculture, computer technology—all are industries in which the United States leads the world, and all are powered by the research conducted by American universities, either solo or in partnership with foreign institutions.

This research has been funded largely by US government agencies—funding that has turned academic research into its own industry. One analysis showed that the $36.94 billion awarded to US researchers in 2024 supported 407,782 jobs and $94.58 billion in new economic activity nationwide. That works out to $2.56 for every $1 invested—an ROI of 156 percent. Many components contribute to such success: outstanding faculty, top-notch facilities, and oversight that is neither draconian nor laissez-faire.

One vital component that is not often discussed: libraries.

Academic librarians support university research in a number of ways. One way, of course, is maintaining collections. In 2022, for example, US academic libraries spent $65 billion on acquisitions, according to the Library and Book Trade Almanac. Almost $17 billion of that (26 percent) was dedicated to serials and electronic resources, both the lifeblood of scientific research.

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Librarians also help faculty locate resources, both in their own collections and via interlibrary loan. Many academic librarians have both a graduate degree in library science and one in another subject area, enabling them to specialize in materials published in that area. Librarians also teach information literacy and research techniques, which are crucial for faculty research assistants. It can also be valuable to faculty themselves in a “teach the teacher” capacity.

And there are other roles that academic librarians can play. At Harvard University, for example, librarians:

• Offer in-depth research project review and consultation;
• Maintain software like DMPTool, which helps faculty manage funding requirements;
• Provide data visualization support;
• Assist with the preparation of scholarly manuscripts; and
• Manage datasets and other empirical collections.

They also help faculty promote their research, a skill that often doesn’t come easily to researchers. In one survey, 81 percent of researchers admitted that “conveying their work to wider, non-science audiences was an area they found difficult.” Librarians help with this in a number of ways, including:

• Maintaining institutional repositories of research,
• Leveraging publisher support, and
• Leading workshops on communication techniques.

A brand new area ripe for librarian intercession is generative AI. Faculty are, in the words of one writer, “increasingly turning to librarians to help cultivate AI literacy, discussing AI and its impact on literature searching and citations.”

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I teach academic writing at a private college in the South, and I have seen instances of AI “hallucination”—e.g., assigning the wrong author or date to a citation or sometimes inventing a source wholesale. (One of the most famous examples of this was the recent Make Our Children Healthy Again report prepared by the US Department of Health and Human Services.) There is also the blowback some professors receive for using AI software in the classroom—something with which librarians, who often have training in instructional technology, are positioned to assist.

Frighteningly, the American research dominance that Filchenko describes is being threatened, not by foreign powers, but by our own president. From his first day in office, Donald Trump has sought to stanch all manner of federal funding. Over $400 billion has been blocked, jeopardizing research into Alzheimer’s disease, women’s health, cancer, and diabetes, among other things. Since April, the administration has canceled more than 1,600 National Science Foundation grants that were worth over $1.5 billion. Nearly 2,500 grants from the National Institutes of Health have been ended or delayed.

Many of these grants would have gone to American universities. Trump’s war with Harvard has gotten the most publicity, with over $2 billion worth of cancellations. Yet it is far from his only target. A University of Massachusetts professor lost a six-year, $3 million grant that would have supported 35 graduate students. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was forced to pause construction on a $228 million building, “citing growing concerns about the reliability of federal funding.” Worst of all, CNN reports that Trump is “considering a full termination of federal grant funding for the University of California and California State University systems.”

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(The libraries of these universities will be indirectly affected, though the Trump administration has also been targeting libraries directly. I’ve written about those attacks here.)

In 1965, writes Filchenko, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his intention to

marshal our resources and our wisdom to the fullest to assure the continuing strength and leadership of American science and to apply the information yielded by its inquiry to the problems which confront our society and our purposes in the world.

Since then, our nation has led the world in discovery and innovation. Here’s hoping the Trump administration reverses course on its endangerment of those efforts, continuing America’s scientific leadership role. Librarians can help by being clearinghouses of information, by using their networks to keep the issues top-of-mind, and by being good academic partners. 

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