Factors and outcomes of collaborative information seeking: A mixed studies review with a framework synthesis

Despite being necessary, keeping up to date with new information and trends remains challenging in many fields due to information overload, time constraints, and insufficient evaluation skills. Collaboration, or sharing the effort among group members, may be a solution, but more knowledge is needed. To guide future research on the potential role of collaboration in keeping up to date, we conducted a systematic literature review with a framework synthesis aimed to adapt the conceptual framework for environmental scanning to a collaborative context. Our specific objectives were to identify the factors and outcomes of collaborative information seeking (CIS) and use them to propose an adapted conceptual framework. Fifty-one empirical studies were included and synthesized using a hybrid thematic synthesis. The adapted framework includes seven types of influencing factors and five types of outcomes. Our review contributes to the theoretical expansion of knowledge on CIS in general and provides a conceptual framework to study collaboration in keeping up to date. Overall, our findings will be useful to researchers, practitioners, team leaders, and system designers implementing and evaluating collaborative information projects.