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There is a recent trend toward university libraries to actively participate in research information management (RIM). This study examines Chinese researchers' RIM practices. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 researchers from 16 Chinese scholarly institutions to identify which RIM systems they used, how and why they used those systems, and their levels of participation. This study develops a typology of 11 activities involving Chinese researchers' use of RIM systems, including finding relevant literature and patents, knowing about other researchers, interacting with peers, applying for grants, and identifying conferences to attend. The findings indicate that Chinese researchers use international RIM systems to obtain English literature, build ties with researchers worldwide, and meet the requirements of English journals. This may result from the impact of China's national and university policies to encourage publishing in Anglophone journals. This study offers academic libraries and university RIM systems suggestions on how to support Chinese researchers' needs for RIM and engage them in curating research information on personal and community-wide levels, such as providing instructions on profile creation, assisting in self-archiving copyright-compliant full-text articles, allowing assignment of Chinese and English tags to publications, and promoting the norms of altruism and reciprocity.
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