Search

In the rapidly changing circumstances of our increasingly digital world, reading is also becoming an increasingly digital experience: electronic books (e-books) are now outselling print books in the United States and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, many readers still view e-books as less readable than print books. The present study thus used combined EEG and eyetracking measures in order to test whether reading from digital media requires higher cognitive effort than reading conventional books. Young and elderly adults read short texts on three different reading devices: a paper page, an e-reader and a tablet computer and answered comprehension questions about them while their eye movements and EEG were recorded. The results of a debriefing questionnaire replicated previous findings in that participants overwhelmingly chose the paper page over the two electronic devices as their preferred reading medium. Online measures, by contrast, showed shorter mean fixation durations and lower EEG theta band voltage density – known to covary with memory encoding and retrieval – for the older adults when reading from a tablet computer in comparison to the other two devices. Young adults showed comparable fixation durations and theta activity for all three devices. Comprehension accuracy did not differ across the three media for either group. We argue that these results can be explained in terms of the better text discriminability (higher contrast) produced by the backlit display of the tablet computer. Contrast sensitivity decreases with age and degraded contrast conditions lead to longer reading times, thus supporting the conclusion that older readers may benefit particularly from the enhanced contrast of the tablet. Our findings thus indicate that people's subjective evaluation of digital reading media must be dissociated from the cognitive and neural effort expended in online information processing while reading from such devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number and type of Web citations to journal articles in four areas of science are examined: biology, genetics, medicine, and multidisciplinary sciences. For a sample of 5,972 articles published in 114 journals, the median Web citation counts per journal article range from 6.2 in medicine to 10.4 in genetics. About 30% of Web citations in each area indicate intellectual impact (citations from articles or class readings, in contrast to citations from bibliographic services or the author's or journal's home page). Journals receiving more Web citations also have higher percentages of citations indicating intellectual impact. There is significant correlation between the number of citations reported in the databases from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, now Thomson Scientific) and the number of citations retrieved using the Google search engine (Web citations). The correlation is much weaker for journals published outside the United Kingdom or United States and for multidisciplinary journals. Web citation numbers are higher than ISI citation counts, suggesting that Web searches might be conducted for an earlier or a more fine-grained assessment of an article's impact. The Web-evident impact of non-UK/USA publications might provide a balance to the geographic or cultural biases observed in ISI's data, although the stability of Web citation counts is debatable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information from various aspects of the field of international serials and electronic resource management. Abstracts for several research articles are included on topics such as scholarly electronic books (e-books) and open source data in academic publishing. Additionally, awards and grants presented by the American Library Association (ALA) in 2011 are highlighted along with notes on the reorganization of the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG). Brief information regarding the 2012 conference for the UKSG and a list of online resources related to serials librarians are also included.

Recent terrorist attacks in the United States have generated significant attention in many countries to the threats posed by biological weapons. In response to these events and the specter of future attacks, bioscientists and professional organizations have begun or intensified asking questions about the possible malign applications of their research. Part II of this two-part article examines the emerging responses initiated by biomedical organizations and spokespersons in the US and the UK. In doing so it considers how scientific and medical research communities are defining and policing notions of professionalism, responsibility and accountability in the responses made. Through an examination of these issues, suggested lines for future social analysis are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]