physicsworld.com reported on a report with the title Collaborative yet independent: Information Practices in the Physical Sciences.
The report shows the variety of ways physicists find, use and disseminate information in seven case studies. Obviously only few researchers use innovative information search and retrieval strategies while they use complex and powerful technology for their research.

“Monica Bulger from the Oxford Internet Institute, who co-authored the report, says that one problem with getting scientists to change how they access information is that they tend to have picked up the “tools” of their field in the lab as graduate students and later only learn new techniques in response to the needs of a particular project.” (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/48446)