Coming across information serendipitously – Part 1

Development of a scale for measuring individual propensity for serendipitous information encounters in an online environment

This article reports the development of a scale designed to measure an individual’s tendency to engage in serendipitous information encountering behaviour online. We relied on the simplified process model of information encountering to derive an initial item pool. In Study 1, a total of 3037 participants completed a preliminary 24-item scale. Using a split-half principal components analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to determine the underlying factor structure, we reduced the scale to 12 items. In Study 2 ( N = 66), we demonstrated the revised scale’s test–retest reliability and showed that it distinguishes between information encountering and other conceptually related constructs. In Study 3, behavioural data from 304 participants showed that the information encountering scale is associated with various indicators of online information-seeking, such as page visits and visit duration. Collectively, these studies yield a valid and easily implemented scale to better understand online information encountering. We describe the development of this scale and discuss its implications for both the measurement and study of serendipity in online information behaviour.

Designing for serendipity: a means or an end?

Purpose

This article aims to gain a better understanding of the reasons why serendipity is designed for in different kinds of environments. Understanding these design intents sheds light on the value such designs bring to designers, in contrast to the users of the environment. In this way, the article seeks to contribute to the literature on cultivating serendipity from a designers’ point of view.

Design/methodology/approach

An extensive review of the literature discussing designing for serendipity was conducted to elicit the different motivations to design for serendipity. Based on these findings and a thorough analysis, a typology of design intents for serendipity is presented.

Findings

The article puts forward four intents to design for serendipity: serendipity as an ideal, common good, mediator and feature. It also highlights that the current academic discourse puts a strong emphasis on two of them. It is argued that this academic abstraction could be problematic for how we deal with designs for serendipity, both in theory and practice.

Originality/value

The novelty of this article is that it addresses the question of why to design for serendipity from a designer’s point of view. By introducing the notion of directionality it opens up the opportunity to discuss serendipity from multiple perspectives, which contributes to gaining a firmer understanding of serendipity. It allows to more explicitly formulate the different functions of a design for serendipity and thereby expands our knowledge on the value of designing for serendipity. At the same time, it sheds light on the potential threats to designing for serendipity.

Serendipity in human information behavior: a systematic review

Purpose

Serendipitous information discovery has become a unique and important approach to discovering and obtaining information, which has aroused a growing interest for serendipity in human information behavior. Despite numerous publications, few have systematically provided an overview of current state of serendipity research. Consequently, researchers and practitioners are less able to make effective use of existing achievements, which limits them from making advancements in this domain. Against this backdrop, we performed a systematic literature review to explore the world of serendipity and to recapitulate the current states of different research topics.

Design/methodology/approach

Guided by a prior designed review protocol, this paper conducted both automatic and manual search for available studies published from January 1990 to December 2020 on seven databases. A total of 207 serendipity studies closely related to human information behavior form the literature pool.

Findings

We provide an overview of distinct aspects of serendipity, that is research topics, potential benefits, related concepts, theoretical models, contextual factors and data collection methods. Based on these findings, this review reveals limitations and gaps in the current serendipity research and proposes an agenda for future research directions.

Originality/value

By analyzing current serendipity research, developing a knowledge framework and providing a research agenda, this review is of significance for researchers who want to find new research questions or re-align current work, for beginners who need to quickly understand serendipity, and for practitioners who seek to cultivate serendipity in information environments.

Information Encountering at the Opera: What Donizetti and Romani’s Opera Buffa L’elisir d’amore Can Teach Us About Pseudo-Serendipity in Human Information Behaviour

This study connects two purportedly unrelated disciplines: information studies and opera, by examining what can be learned about information encountering, and in particular on pseudo-serendipity in human information behaviour, through analysing selected scenes of the nineteenth century opera buffa L’elisir d’amore (“Elixir of love”). As part of the emergent “information studies in the arts” framework, the study uses a hermeneutic interpretation of the libretto through informational perspective and analysis of the musical treatment of the text. All choices and sense-making are subjective. Analysis of L’elisir d’amore’s first six scenes uncovers valuable descriptions and insights regarding information encountering within a nineteenth century south-west Europe temporal culture. Findings augment the current knowledge on pseudo-serendipity in human information behaviour, and provide a more profound understanding of this nonlinear information behaviour. Operatic works have not yet served the development of information studies. This study establishes that opera can be a meaningful scholastic source for developing information research and discourse. It provides both valuable insight, from an operatic angle, into information encountering in the context of a bygone era, and an original information-behavioural layer of analysis to the Italian opera L’elisir d’amore.

Information encountering re-encountered

Purpose

In order to understand the totality, diversity and richness of human information behavior, increasing research attention has been paid to examining serendipity in the context of information acquisition. However, several issues have arisen as this research subfield has tried to find its feet; we have used different, inconsistent terminology to define this phenomenon (e.g. information encountering, accidental information discovery, incidental information acquisition), the scope of the phenomenon has not been clearly defined and its nature was not fully understood or fleshed-out.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, information encountering (IE) was proposed as the preferred term for serendipity in the context of information acquisition.

Findings

A reconceptualized definition and scope of IE was presented, a temporal model of IE and a refined model of IE that integrates the IE process with contextual factors and extends previous models of IE to include additional information acquisition activities pre- and postencounter.

Originality/value

By providing a more precise definition, clearer scope and richer theoretical description of the nature of IE, there was hope to make the phenomenon of serendipity in the context of information acquisition more accessible, encouraging future research consistency and thereby promoting deeper, more unified theoretical development.

Toward a description framework of information encountering experiences

Purpose

One of the primary challenges of conducting information encountering (IE) research is the difficulty in capturing people's IE experiences. The purpose of this paper is to develop a general description framework of IE experiences as guidance for participants to record diary entries in diary studies of IE.

Design/methodology/approach

340 descriptions of IE incidents were collected from 18 previous IE studies as secondary data. A thematic analysis of the secondary data engendered a general description framework of IE experiences composed of 9 main themes and 31 sub-themes. The framework was then applied in a diary study to investigate Generation Z's online IE behavior.

Findings

The nine main themes of the framework, including “environment”, “foreground activity”, “stimulus noticed”, “reaction to stimulus”, “content examined”, “interaction with encountered information”, “value of experience”, “pre-encountering emotional state”, and “post-encountering emotional state”, were used to create a diary questionnaire for collecting IE incidents. The sub-themes were refined and organized into a coding scheme for the content analysis of the incidents collected. The diary study collected 255 valid IE incidents which were analyzed based on three phases, that is, pre-encountering, encountering, and post-encountering.

Originality/value

The value of this study consists in its methodological contributions. First, it makes creative use of secondary data accumulated in the literature and derives from the thematic analysis a general framework which people follow to describe their IE experiences. Second, it demonstrates the great potential of diaries for data collection in IE research through the successful application of the general description framework of IE experiences in a diary study. Third, the diary questionnaire created based on the framework provides sufficient guidance in eliciting complete and detailed IE incidents.

Sustainability in Online Video Hosting Services: The Effects of Serendipity and Flow Experience on Prolonged Usage Time

Online video hosting services have been a highly competitive e-commerce application in recent years. The service providers constantly seek viable ways for users to prolong usage time as a model for sustainable business development. In this study, we propose a framework to verify the impact of perceived serendipity on flow experience and prolong usage time. In addition, we verify the factors of online video platforms that affect perceived serendipity, such as enabled connections, introduced unexpected information, and induced curiosity. This study used questionnaires to survey YouTube users and analyzed 405 samples using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) method. The result shows that enabled connections and introduced unexpected information significantly affect perceived serendipity, which significantly impacts on the flow experience. Although induced curiosity does not significantly affect perceived serendipity, it directly affects the flow experience. Moreover, both perceived serendipity and flow experience positively affect intentions to prolong usage time. The results validate that serendipity is another antecedent of flow experience, and support the assumption that increasing the likelihood of perceived serendipity will affect users’ intention to prolong usage time in online video hosting services. The implication of research and discussions provides references for online video hosting service providers in marketing and operations.

Catch that word: interactivity, serendipity and verbal fluency in a word production task

Problem solving outside of the cognitive psychologist’s lab unfolds in an environment rich with bodily gesture and material artefacts. We examine this meshwork of internal mental resources, embodied actions and environmental affordances through the lens of a word production task with letter tiles. Forty participants took part in the study which contrasted performance in a high interactivity condition (where participants were able to move letter tiles at will), a low interactivity condition (where movements were restrained) and a shuffle condition (where participants could not move the tiles but were allowed to randomly rearrange the array). Participants were also video recorded to facilitate coding of behaviour. While aggregate performance measures revealed a marginal impact of interactivity on performance, when the participants’ behaviour was taken into account, interactivity had a consistent and statistically significant beneficial effect. Detailed, exploratory examination of a subsample of participants informed the formulation of additional hypotheses tested across the full sample: the luckiness of the shuffle in that condition significantly predicted the number of words produced and a more efficient strategy was significantly easier to enact in the high interactivity condition. Additionally, two detailed case studies revealed several moments when accidental changes to the letter tile array offered unplanned words reflecting a serendipitous coagency as well as many moments when environmental chance was ignored. These data and observations indicate that interactivity, serendipity, and internal cognitive resources determine problem-solving performance in this task.

Evaluating physicians’ serendipitous knowledge discovery in online discovery systems

Purpose

A new approach to investigate serendipitous knowledge discovery (SKD) of health information is developed and tested to evaluate the information flow-serendipitous knowledge discovery (IF-SKD) model. The purpose of this paper is to determine the degree to which IF-SKD reflects physicians’ information behaviour in a clinical setting and explore how the information system, Spark, designed to support physicians’ SKD, meets its goals.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed pre-experimental study design employs an adapted version of the McCay-Peet’s (2013) and McCay-Peet et al.’s (2015) serendipitous digital environment (SDE) questionnaire research tool to address the complexity associated with defining the way in which SKD is understood and applied in system design. To test the IF-SKD model, the new data analysis approach combining confirmatory factor analysis, data imputation and Monte Carlo simulations was developed.

Findings

The piloting of the proposed novel analysis approach demonstrated that small sample information behaviour survey data can be meaningfully examined using a confirmatory factor analysis technique.

Research limitations/implications

This method allows to improve the reliability in measuring SKD and the generalisability of findings.

Originality/value

This paper makes an original contribution to developing and refining methods and tools of research into information-system-supported serendipitous discovery of information by health providers.

The role of serendipity in the story ideation process of print media journalists

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to build upon the studies of journalism from an LIS perspective by exploring and differentiating the purposive behavior of newspaper reporters from their serendipitous encounters with information that lead to new story ideas. This paper also provides a path toward pedagogical improvements in training the modern journalism workforce in being more open to creative story ideas.

Design/methodology/approach

This study utilized semi-structured telephone interviews. Participants were recruited via e-mail after collecting contact information through the Cision database. The study sample was drawn from newspaper reporters who work at or freelance for the top 25 metropolitan newspapers in the USA, in terms of circulation size, based on data from the Alliance for Audited Media. A total of 15 participants were interviewed.

Findings

This paper provides insight into the story ideation process of journalists in that the study participants generally do not think about how they are coming up with story ideas as much as they are striving to place themselves in situations where, based on their experience and interests, they know they are more likely to encounter a good idea. Each encounter proved meaningful in some powerful fashion, which speaks to the historical importance of serendipity in achieving breakthroughs and discoveries in a wide variety of fields.

Research limitations/implications

The sampling frame for this study was relatively small, representing 8 percent of the total number of working newspaper journalists from the top 25 newspapers in the USA, in terms of circulation size. Therefore, the findings are not generalizable to the entire population of journalists in this country.

Practical implications

The findings point to the importance of a prepared mind in facilitating serendipitous episodes. In the case of journalism, that means developing a heightened news sense and cultivating routines where they place themselves in trigger-rich environments. Pedagogically, journalism education must include courses in creative storytelling to help train the modern newspaper workforce in an ever-expanding and competitive media landscape. These courses, ideally paired with techniques and models from the field of information science and learning technologies, could help train young journalists in methods that enhance their ability to identify, seek and pursue serendipitous stories.

Originality/value

This paper fulfills a need in journalism studies in finding variability in news routines by utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that combines journalism studies and library and information science models to probe how journalists encounter ideas incidentally. Previous research in this area has focused on how news consumers serendipitously encounter information. This paper takes a fresh approach to explore how creative ideas are encountered serendipitously in the construction of news.

A context-based study of serendipity in information research among Chinese scholars

Purpose

The current understanding of serendipity is based primarily on studies employing westerners as the participants, and it remains uncertain whether or not this understanding would be pervasive under different cultures, such as in China. In addition, there is not a sufficient systematic investigation of context during the occurrence of serendipity in current studies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the above issues by conducting a follow-up empirical study with a group of Chinese scholars.

Design/methodology/approach

The social media application “WeChat” was employed as a research tool. A diary-based study was conducted and 16 participants were required to send to the researchers any cases of serendipity they encountered during a period of two weeks, and this was followed by a post-interview.

Findings

Chinese scholars experienced serendipity in line with the three main processes of: encountering unexpectedness, connection-making and recognising the value. An updated context-based serendipity model was constructed, where the role of context during each episode of experiencing serendipity was identified, including the external context (e.g. time, location and status), the social context and the internal context (e.g. precipitating conditions, sagacity/perceptiveness and emotion).

Originality/value

The updated context model provides a further understanding of the role played by context during the different processes of serendipity. The framework for experiencing serendipity has been expanded, and this may be used to classify the categories of serendipity.

Unexpected findings and promoting monocausal claims, a cautionary tale

Stories of serendipitous discoveries in medicine incorrectly imply that the path from an unexpected observation to major discovery is straightforward or guaranteed. In this paper, I examine a case from the field of research about chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). In Norway, an unexpected positive result during clinical care has led to the development of a research programme into the potential for the immunosuppressant drug rituximab to relieve the symptoms of CFS. The media and public have taken up researchers' speculations that their research results indicate a causal mechanism for CFS - consequently, patients now have great hope that 'the cause' of CFS has been found, and thus, a cure is sure to follow. I argue that a monocausal claim cannot be correctly asserted, either on the basis of the single case of an unexpected, although positive, result or on the basis of the empirical research that has followed up on that result. Further, assertion and promotion of this claim will have specific harmful effects: it threatens to inappropriately narrow the scope of research on CFS, might misdirect research altogether, and could directly and indirectly harm patients. Therefore, the CFS case presents a cautionary tale, illustrating the risks involved in drawing a theoretical hypothesis from an unexpected observation. Further, I draw attention to the tendency in contemporary clinical research with CFS to promote new research directions on the basis of reductive causal models of that syndrome. Particularly, in the case of CFS research, underdetermination and causal complexity undermine the potential value of a monocausal claim. In sum, when an unexpected finding occurs in clinical practice or medical research, the value of following up on that finding is to be found not in the projected value of a singular causal relationship inferred from the finding but rather in the process of research that follows.

Information behaviors of elite scholars in the context of academic practice

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the information behaviors in which scholars regularly engage, in participants’ own words wherever possible, and discuss how those behaviors function in the broader landscape of scholars’ academic practice.

Design/methodology/approach

Scholars’ information behaviors were investigated using semi-structured interviews, along with document analysis. Three scholars recognized for significant contributions to their fields were identified from each of the three major divisions of academia (humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences) using intensity sampling, for a total of nine participants. Interviews asked each participant to describe a recent research project from conceptualization to completion, focusing on how scholars engaged with ideas, information resources, tools, and processes.

Findings

Information behaviors were found to permeate scholars’ work from conceptualization through publication, and included behaviors such as skimming, reading, data collection and analysis, and writing. Of particular interest are the specific information behaviors that fall into the broader category of information use.

Originality/value

This study uses established definitions of information behaviors to broaden the information behaviors conversation to include the entirety of academic practice. The study shows how scholars from across the academy engage with information throughout the course of their academic work, not just when they are engaged in more traditional information seeking activities.

The role of agency in historians’ experiences of serendipity in physical and digital information environments

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing research practices of historians, and to contrast their experiences of serendipity in physical and digital information environments.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 20 historians in Southwestern Ontario participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed employing grounded theory. The analytical approach included memoing, the constant comparative method, and three phases of coding.

Findings

Four main themes were identified: agency, the importance of the physical library experience, digital information environments, and novel heuristic forms of serendipity. The authors found that scholars frequently used active verbs to describe their experience with serendipity. This suggests that agency is more involved in the experience than previous conceptualizations of serendipity have suggested, and led us to coin the term “incidental serendipity.” Other key findings include the need for digital tools to incorporate the context surrounding primary sources, and also to provide an organizational context much like what is encountered by patrons in library stacks.

Originality/value

The increased emphasis on digital materials should not come at the expense of the physical information environment, where historians often encounter serendipitous finds. A fine balance and a greater integration between digital and physical resources is needed in order to support scholars’ continued ability to make connections between materials. By showing the active role that historians take in their serendipitous encounters, this paper suggests that historical training is critical for eliciting incidental serendipitous encounters. The authors propose a novel approach, one that examines verbs in serendipity accounts.

Serendipity in legal information seeking behavior

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of serendipity in legal information seeking behavior of family law advocates, whom act in a challenging information environment that lacks published court rulings.

Design/methodology/approach

– A quantitative research using a web-based structured questionnaire, among Israeli family law advocates. Single stage systematic sampling, with random starting point and no recurring pattern of each sixth family law advocate on the Israel Bar Advocates List, was applied. Data from 135 Israeli family law advocates were used for analysis.

Findings

– Electronic information sources were found as most serendipitous; family law advocates were identified as super encounterers; four types of professional background concerns and seven legal professional contributions of the unexpected encounters with court rulings, were identified. Furthermore, findings support several frameworks presented on earlier information encounter literature.

Research limitations/implications

– Data absence on demographic and professional variables distributions of Israeli family law advocates was a limiting factor, compensated by the systematic sampling method used, thus can be regarded to reflect the views of the entire study population. Surveys’ reliance on self-reporting recalls of serendipitous events is also a limiting factor, though predicted and acceptable in this matter since chance encounters occur unexpectedly and are complex to capture.

Practical implications

– Chance encounters may expose lawyers to meaningful information it is unlikely they were able to find because its limited publication, and assist them keep up with current law for better serves their clients.

Originality/value

– The study augments the current empirically based knowledge on serendipity and provides insights into legal information chance encounters among a little-studied group of knowledge workers: family law advocates.

Spark, an application based on Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery

Findings from information-seeking behavior research can inform application development. In this report we provide a system description of Spark, an application based on findings from Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery studies and data structures known as semantic predications. Background information and the previously published IF-SKD model (outlining Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery in online environments) illustrate the potential use of information-seeking behavior in application design. A detailed overview of the Spark system illustrates how methodologies in design and retrieval functionality enable production of semantic predication graphs tailored to evoke Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery in users.

Systematic and serendipitous discoveries: a shift in sensemaking

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to enrich the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of sensemaking where a conceptual shift was provoked by a serendipitous encounter.

Design/methodology/approach

– A theoretical framework consisting of three elements of reflexivity: the cognitive, the social, and the normative, all of which support the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the investigation of a serendipitous Episode that occurred in a larger research project. This Episode took place at a meeting between a social welfare officer and a psychologist in which they discussed the treatment of a psychiatric patient. When the psychologist left the meeting for a brief period, the researchers, unexpectedly, were able to interview the social welfare officer alone.

Findings

– This interview revealed a deviation from the institutionalized patient treatment procedure that was explained to the researchers in earlier interviews. The study shows that shifts in sensemaking are possible when researchers are open to serendipitous encounters. This shift in sensemaking in this Episode was strategic because it concerned the three most important aspects of the actor’s decision making: how to make diagnosis, treatments, and cooperate around the patient.

Research limitations/implications

– It is recommended that researchers use the theoretical framework of reflexivity to test their sensemaking processes as well as remain open to changes in planned, traditional methodological approaches.

Originality/value

– The study applies a post-hoc analysis with reflections on serendipitous events that may guide researchers when they encounter unanticipated events and make anomalous discoveries.

Online information encountering: modeling the process and influencing factors

Purpose

– Information encountering is the serendipitous acquisition of information that requires low or no involvement and expectation of users. The purpose of this paper is to model the explicit process and the implicit factors of online information encountering, i.e. how and why it occurs.

Design/methodology/approach

– The critical incident technique was adopted to collect qualitative data from 16 interview participants. They contributed 27 true incidents of online information encountering which were used to identify the key phases of the encountering process. They also commented on the factors that they thought had an influence on the chance of the occurrence of encountering.

Findings

– The macro-process of information encountering is composed of three phases. First, browsing, searching, or social interaction provides the context for encountering; second, the encountering occurrence consists of three steps – noticing the stimuli, examining the content, and acquiring interesting or useful content; and third, the information encountered will be explored further, saved, used, or shared. The 14 influencing factors of information encountering obtained divide into three clusters. User-related factors include sensitivity, emotions, expertise, attitudes, intentionality, curiosity, activity diversity; information-related factors include type, relevance, quality, visibility, and sources; and environment-related factors include time limits and interface usability.

Originality/value

– This study engenders useful implications for designing information encountering experience. The changeable nature of some influencing factors suggests that encountering can be elicited through the purposive design of encountering support features or even encountering systems, and the macro-process depicts the natural occurring mechanisms of encountering for the design to follow.

Information encountering on social media and tacit knowledge sharing

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social media may support information encountering (i.e. where individuals encounter useful and interesting information while seeking or browsing for some other information) and how this may lead to the facilitation of tacit knowledge creation and sharing. The study employed a qualitative survey design that interviewed 24 physicians who were active users of social media to better understand the phenomenon of information encountering on social media. The data was analysed using the thematic analysis approach. The study found six main ways through which social media supports information encountering. Furthermore, drawing upon knowledge creation theories, the study concluded that information encountering on social media facilitates tacit knowledge creation and sharing among individuals. The study provides new directions for further empirical investigations to examine whether information encountering on social media actually leads to tacit knowledge creation and sharing. The findings of the study may also provide opportunities for users to adopt social media effectively or gain greater value from social media use.

The library as heterotopia: Michel Foucault and the experience of library space

Purpose

– Using Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a guide, the purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of considering the library as place, and specifically as a place that has the “curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (Foucault, 1986a, p. 24).

Design/methodology/approach

– The paper draws upon a range of literary examples and from biographical accounts of authors such as Alan Bennett, Michel Foucault, and Umberto Eco to show how the library space operates as a heterotopia.

Findings

– The paper finds that drawing together the constructs of heterotopia and serendipity can enrich the understanding of how libraries are experienced as sites of play, creativity, and adventure.

Originality/value

– Foucault’s concept of heterotopia is offered as an original and useful frame that can account for the range of experiences and associations uniquely attached to the library.

Moving beyond sequential design: Reflections on a rich multi-channel approach to data visualization

We reflect on a four-year engagement with transport authorities and others involving a large dataset describing the use of a public bicycle-sharing scheme. We describe the role visualization of these data played in fostering engagement with policy makers, transport operators, the transport research community, the museum and gallery sector and the general public. We identify each of these as `channels'--evolving relationships between producers and consumers of visualization--where traditional roles of the visualization expert and domain expert are blurred. In each case, we identify the different design decisions that were required to support each of these channels and the role played by the visualization process. Using chauffeured interaction with a flexible visual analytics system we demonstrate how insight was gained by policy makers into gendered spatio-temporal cycle behaviors, how this led to further insight into workplace commuting activity, group cycling behavior and explanations for street navigation choice. We demonstrate how this supported, and was supported by, the seemingly unrelated development of narrative-driven visualization via TEDx, of the creation and the setting of an art installation and the curating of digital and physical artefacts. We assert that existing models of visualization design, of tool/technique development and of insight generation do not adequately capture the richness of parallel engagement via these multiple channels of communication. We argue that developing multiple channels in parallel opens up opportunities for visualization design and analysis by building trust and authority and supporting creativity. This rich, non-sequential approach to visualization design is likely to foster serendipity, deepen insight and increase impact.

Serendipity and its study

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of serendipity and approaches to its study particularly in relation to information studies.

Design/methodology/approach

– The origins of the term serendipity are described and its elaboration as an exploratory and explanatory concept in science and the social sciences are outlined. The distinction between serendipity and serendipity pattern is explained and theoretical and empirical studies of both serendipity and the serendipity patterns are explored. The relationship between information encountering is described. Empirical studies of serendipity using Citation Classics and other research approaches in information studies are described.

Findings

– The discrepancy between occurrences of serendipity in studies using Citation Classics and reported serendipity in philosophy of science, research anecdotes, information encountering and information seeking by inter-disciplinary researchers is highlighted. A comparison between a process model of serendipity and serendipity as an emergent behavioural characteristic are indicates directions for future research.

Originality/value

– The paper provides and original synthesis of the theoretical and empirical literature on serendipity with particular reference to work in information studies and an indication of the methodological difficulties involved in its study.