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Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics (FRMA) is an open-access journal that was launched in 2016. Its mission is to provide a platform for scholars to learn, evaluate, and improve research and scholarship in various disciplines. The journal aims to advance meta-knowledge of research and innovation and promote new ways of conducting high-quality research. FRMA consists of six sections that cover topics such as assessment, evaluation, scholarly communication, and strategic management of research and innovation. The journal has published 369 articles so far and has been cited by other journals in related fields. The article provides an overview of the intellectual neighborhood of FRMA and highlights exemplary works published in the journal. [Extracted from the article]

Biomedical research reporting guidelines provide a framework by which journal editors and the researchers who conduct studies can ensure that the reported research is both complete and transparent. With more than 16 different guidelines for the 11 major study types of medical and health research, authors need to be familiar with journal reporting standards. To assess the current endorsements of reporting guidelines for biomedical and health research, this study examined the instructions for authors (IFAs) of 559 biomedical journals by 11 prominent publishers that publish original research or systematic reviews/meta-analyses. Data from the above original sources were cleaned and restructured, and analyzed in a database and text miner. Each journal's instructions or information for authors were examined to code if any of five prominent reporting guidelines were mentioned and what form the guideline adherence demonstration took. Seventeen journals published the reporting guidelines. Four of the five reporting guidelines listed journals as endorsers. For journals with open peer review reports, a sample of journals and peer reviews was analyzed for mention of adherence to reporting guidelines. The endorsement of research guidelines by publishers and their associated journals is inconsistent for some publishers, with only a small number of journals endorsing relevant guidelines. Based on the analysis of open peer reviews, there is evidence that some reviewers check the adherence to the endorsed reporting guidelines. Currently, there is no universal endorsement of reporting guidelines by publishers nor ways of demonstrating adherence to guidelines. Journals may not directly inform authors of their guideline endorsements, making it more difficult for authors to adhere to endorsed guidelines. Suggestions derived from the findings are provided for authors, journals, and reporting guidelines to ensure increased adequate use of endorsed reporting guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The order of co-authors in a publication can follow different criteria that vary according to the diversity of structural dynamics of the field. This study proposes a methodology to gain insight into the meaning of each position in the by-line, working with a sample of publications from the Journal of Informetrics, based on the similarity between the discourse of an article and the citation identity of each co-author according to their position in the by-line, evaluated by the bibliographic coupling. In addition, we compare these similarities with the level of the contribution of the author to the essential activities for the development of the published research, also by their position in the by-line. We conclude that, for the analyzed area of informetrics, bibliographic coupling portrays different patterns of participation by the authors, especially in relation to the first author, which are not evaluated by other mechanisms and metrics. Therefore bibliographic coupling provides an objective and quantitative perspective to the assessment of author contributions to collaborative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journals that adopt open peer review (OPR), where review reports of published articles are publicly available, provide an opportunity to study both review content characteristics and quantitative aspects of the overall review process. This study investigates two areas relevant to the quality assessment of manuscript reviews. First, do journal policies for reviewers to identify themselves influence how reviewers evaluate the merits of a manuscript based on the relative frequency of hedging terms and research-related terms appearing in their reviews? Second, is there an association between the number of reviews/reviewers and the manuscript's research impact once published as measured by citations? We selected reviews for articles published in 17 OPR journals from 2017 to 2018 to examine the incidence of reviewers' uses of hedging terms and research-related terms. The results suggest that there was little difference in the relative use of hedging term usage regardless of whether reviewers were required to identify themselves or if this was optional, indicating that the use of hedging in review contents was not influenced by journal requirements for reviewers to identify themselves. There was a larger difference observed for research-related terminology. We compared the total number of reviews for a manuscript, rounds of revisions, and the number of reviewers with the number of Web of Science citations the article received since publication. The findings reveal that scrutiny by more reviewers or conducting more reviews or rounds of review do not result in more impactful papers for most of the journals studied. Implications for peer review practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the information needs and seeking behaviors of African refugees in the Midwest United States. The research also investigates the sources participants consulted and their satisfaction with their information seeking and the information found. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative research study recruited 18 African refugees to participate in one or more data collection modes used in the study (questionnaire, interview, focus group). The data were analyzed using qualitative open, axial and selective coding approaches to identify themes. Findings: The analysis of the data collected provides evidence that refugees had specific information needs centered on housing, health care, employment and education. They were not necessarily satisfied with the information they were able to find. Participants reported initially relying heavily on their caseworkers as sources of information when they first arrived in the United States until they were able to establish larger networks of contacts, which then expanded their information behaviors. Research limitations/implications: The number of participants and regional focus of the study do not allow for generalization of the findings to all African refugees in the United States. Still, the findings shed light on how to better serve the information needs of African refugees to help them adjust to life in their new environment. Practical implications: The findings of the study provide guidance for agencies that assist African refugees in adjusting to life in the United States. Originality/value: This study represents one of the few investigations of the information needs and seeking behaviors of African refugees in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open peer review (OPR), where review reports and reviewers' identities are published alongside the articles, represents one of the last aspects of the open science movement to be widely embraced, although its adoption has been growing since the turn of the century. This study provides the first comprehensive investigation of OPR adoption, its early adopters and the implementation approaches used. Current bibliographic databases do not systematically index OPR journals, nor do the OPR journals clearly state their policies on open identities and open reports. Using various methods, we identified 617 OPR journals that published at least one article with open identities or open reports as of 2019 and analyzed their wide-ranging implementations to derive emerging OPR practices. The findings suggest that: (1) there has been a steady growth in OPR adoption since 2001, when 38 journals initially adopted OPR, with more rapid growth since 2017; (2) OPR adoption is most prevalent in medical and scientific disciplines (79.9%); (3) five publishers are responsible for 81% of the identified OPR journals; (4) early adopter publishers have implemented OPR in different ways, resulting in different levels of transparency. Across the variations in OPR implementations, two important factors define the degree of transparency: open identities and open reports. Open identities may include reviewer names and affiliation as well as credentials; open reports may include timestamped review histories consisting of referee reports and author rebuttals or a letter from the editor integrating reviewers' comments. When and where open reports can be accessed are also important factors indicating the OPR transparency level. Publishers of optional OPR journals should add metric data in their annual status reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the content of questions and responses about the Zika virus on Yahoo! Answers as a recent example of how public concerns regarding an international health issue are reflected in social media. We investigate the contents of posts about the Zika virus on Yahoo! Answers, identify and reveal subject patterns about the Zika virus, and analyze the temporal changes of the revealed subject topics over 4 defined periods of the Zika virus outbreak. Multidimensional scaling analysis, temporal analysis, and inferential statistical analysis approaches were used in the study. A resulting 2‐layer Zika virus schema, and term connections and relationships are presented. The results indicate that consumers' concerns changed over the 4 defined periods. Consumers paid more attention to the basic information about the Zika virus, and the prevention and protection from the Zika virus at the beginning of the outbreak of the Zika virus. During the later periods, consumers became more interested in the role that the government and health organizations played in the public health emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Brazilian Journal of Information Science is the property of Brazilian Journal of Information Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Data citation, where products of research such as data sets, software, and tissue cultures are shared and acknowledged, is becoming more common in the era of Open Science. Currently, the practice of formal data citation—where data references are included alongside bibliographic references in the reference section of a publication—is uncommon. We examine the prevalence of data citation, documenting data sharing and reuse, in a sample of full text articles from the biological/biomedical sciences, the fields with the most public data sets available documented by the Data Citation Index (DCI). We develop a method that combines automated text extraction with human assessment for revealing candidate occurrences of data sharing and reuse by using terms that are most likely to indicate their occurrence. The analysis reveals that informal data citation in the main text of articles is far more common than formal data citations in the references of articles. As a result, data sharers do not receive documented credit for their data contributions in a similar way as authors do for their research articles because informal data citations are not recorded in sources such as the DCI. Ongoing challenges for the study of data citation are also outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large scale of scholarly publications poses a challenge for scholars in information seeking and sensemaking. Bibliometric, information retrieval (IR), text mining, and natural language processing techniques can assist to address this challenge, but have yet to be widely used in digital libraries (DL). This special issue on bibliometric-enhanced information retrieval and natural language processing for digital libraries (BIRNDL) was compiled after the first joint BIRNDL workshop that was held at the joint conference on digital libraries (JCDL 2016) in Newark, New Jersey, USA. It brought together IR and DL researchers and professionals to elaborate on new approaches in natural language processing, information retrieval, scientometric, and recommendation techniques that can advance the state of the art in scholarly document understanding, analysis, and retrieval at scale. This special issue includes 14 papers: four extended papers originating from the first BIRNDL workshop 2016 and the BIR workshop at ECIR 2016, four extended system reports of the CL-SciSumm Shared Task 2016 and six original research papers submitted via the open call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the impact of open-access (OA) articles published by China and the USA by using Web of Science (WoS) data covering a period of 5 years (2011-2015), five indexes (citation and four altmetric indexes), five disciplines, and three types of articles. With regard to article type, Type I papers are those wherein the authors are all from China or the USA. Type II are those in which the first author is from China or the USA. Type III includes those in which the first author is not from China or the USA. We found that the proportion of OA papers in WoS has been growing in recent years. In terms of citations and altmetric indexes, the mean value of the USA is larger than that of China in general; Type II articles possess the highest value among all papers in the USA, whereas Type III has the highest value in China. Compared with the scenario in citations, social sciences and humanities possess larger altmetric values in China and the USA. The correlation among indicators is similar for the OA papers from China and the USA. Generally, citations cannot effectively represent the altmetric indexes. The gap between China and the USA is the largest in the altmetric attention score and Type I, and the smallest in citations and Type III. Measuring the international impact of OA papers using only citations underestimates the gap between China and the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to the discussion on authorship in contemporary science from Foucauldian and Kuhnian perspectives, highlighting the social aspects of science and the role of authorship in scientific revolutions. Thus, it describes the functions of the 'author' discussed by Foucault that can assist to reveal the characteristics of the scientific practice and examples of how theories are materialized. As a result, it identifies the ways in which modern science is developed and how knowledge is construed by multiple authors, group authors, the merit that is attributed by citations, etc. This article highlights the complexity of authorship attribution and the need to rethink generalized bibliometric techniques to evaluate science considering other aspects that go beyond the mere listing of the authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms, search engine transaction logs, Web portal transaction logs, large text corpora, and other data sources offer users a variety of invaluable data sources. Data generated based on social media platforms and other data sources have become important sources of big data for researchers in information science. Big data provide not only challenges but also opportunities for information science. Emerging big data trends inevitably have an impact on research methods in information science. The authors of this paper discuss the impact of big data on research methods in information science. This paper addresses these challenges and opportunities through the lens of research methods, ranging from data processing, to sampling, to information visualization, to temporal analysis, to sentiment analysis, to correlation, to cause-effect relationship, to data accessibility, to data privacy, and data ethics issues. The discussions on related aspects of research methods provoke a healthy reflection and debate for the information science research community, which can help researchers in the field produce sound research designs for big data-oriented research studies and assist information practitioners in solving problems they face in the big data age. Research methods are fundamental and essential for any research studies. Big data analysis has a natural relationship with research methods. The paper discusses an emerging and important research topic big data from the unique angle of research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines characteristics of data sharing and data re-use in Genetics and Heredity, where data citation is most common. This study applies an exploratory method because data citation is a relatively new area. The Data Citation Index (DCI) on the Web of Science was selected because DCI provides a single access point to over 500 data repositories worldwide and to over two million data studies and datasets across multiple disciplines and monitors quality research data through a peer review process. We explore data citations for Genetics and Heredity, as a case study by examining formal citations recorded in the DCI and informally by sampling a selection of papers for implicit data citations within publications. Citer-based analysis is conducted in order to remedy self-citation in the data citation phenomena. We explore 148 sampled citing articles in order to identify factors that influence data sharing and data re-use, including references, main text, supplementary data/information, acknowledgments, funding information, author information, and web/author resources. This study is unique in that it relies on a citer-based analysis approach and by analyzing peer-reviewed and published data, data repositories, and citing articles of highly productive authors where data sharing is most prevalent. This research is intended to provide a methodological and practical contribution to the study of data citation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author byline is an indispensable component of a scientific paper. Some journals have added contribution lists for each paper to provide detailed information of each author's role. Many papers have explored, respectively, the byline and contribution lists. However, the relationship between the two remains unclear. We select three prominent general medical journals: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Annals of Internal Medicine (Annals), and PLOS Medicine (PLOS). We analyze the relationship between the author byline and contribution lists using four indexes. Four main findings emerged. First, the number, forms, and names of contribution lists significantly differed among the three journals, although they adopted the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Second, a U-shaped relationship exists between the extent of contribution and author order: the participation levels in contribution lists were highest for first authors, followed by last and second authors, and then middle authors with the lowest levels. Third, regarding the consistency between author order in the contribution list and byline, every contribution category has a high consistency in JAMA and Annals, while PLOS shows a low consistency, in general. Fourth, the three journals have a similar distribution for the first authors in the contribution category; the first author in the byline contributes the highest proportion, followed by the middle and second authors, and then the last author with the lowest proportion. We also develop recommendations to modify academic and writing practice: implement structured cross-contribution lists, unify formats and standards of contribution lists, draft the author contribution criteria in the social sciences and humanities, and consider author contribution lists in scientific evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three months of server transaction logs containing complete clickstream data for an image collection digital library were analysed for usage patterns to better understand user searching and browsing behaviour in this environment. Eleven types of user actions were identified from the log content. The study is novel in its combined analytical techniques and use of clickstream data from an image-based digital library. Three analytical techniques were used to analyse the data: (a) network analysis to better understand the relationship between sequential actions; (b) sequential pattern mining to identify frequent action sequences; and (c) k-means cluster analysis to identify groups of session patterns. The analysis revealed strong ties between several pairs of actions, relatively short pattern sequences that frequently duplicate previous actions and largely uniform session behaviour with little individual item browsing within sessions, indicating users are primarily engaged in purposeful and directed searching. Developers of image-based digital libraries should consider design features that support rapid browsing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informetrics and information retrieval (IR) represent fundamental areas of study within information science. Historically, researchers have not fully capitalized on the potential research synergies that exist between these two areas. Data sources used in traditional informetrics studies have their analogues in IR, with similar types of empirical regularities found in IR system content and use. Methods for data collection and analysis used in informetrics can help to inform IR system development and evaluation. Areas of application have included automatic indexing, index term weighting and understanding user query and session patterns through the quantitative analysis of user transaction logs. Similarly, developments in database technology have made the study of informetric phenomena less cumbersome, and recent innovations used in IR research, such as language models and ranking algorithms, provide new tools that may be applied to research problems of interest to informetricians. Building on the author's previous work (Wolfram in Applied informetrics for information retrieval research, Libraries Unlimited, Westport, ), this paper reviews a sample of relevant literature published primarily since 2000 to highlight how each area of study may help to inform and benefit the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of citer analysis investigated earlier by Ajiferuke and Wolfram (In: B. Larsen, J. Leta (eds.) Proceedings of the 12th international conference of the international society for scientometrics and informetrics (ISSI) pp. 798-808, , Scientometrics 83:623-638, ) is extended to journals where different citing units (citers, citing articles, citing journals) are compared with the journal impact factor and each other to determine if differences in ranking arise from different measures. The citer measures for the 31 high impact journals studied from information science and library science are significantly correlated, even more so than the earlier citer analysis findings, indicating that there is a close relationship among the different units of measure. Still, notable differences in rankings for the journals examined were evident for the different measures used, especially from either 5-year impact factor or number of citing articles per publication to the number of citing journals per publication. The journals that are adversely affected seem to be those whose citations are concentrated in a few journals. This informed the need to develop a journal citation concentration index, which can serve as a complementary measure to the existing journal impact indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationships between authors based on characteristics of published literature have been studied for decades. Author cocitation analysis using mapping techniques has been most frequently used to study how closely two authors are thought to be in intellectual space based on how members of the research community co-cite their works. Other approaches exist to study author relatedness based more directly on the text of their published works. In this study we present static and dynamic word-based approaches using vector space modeling, as well as a topic-based approach based on latent Dirichlet allocation for mapping author research relatedness. Vector space modeling is used to define an author space consisting of works by a given author. Outcomes for the two word-based approaches and a topic-based approach for 50 prolific authors in library and information science are compared with more traditional author cocitation analysis using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis. The two word-based approaches produced similar outcomes except where two authors were frequent co-authors for the majority of their articles. The topic-based approach produced the most distinctive map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Information & Library Sciences is the property of Canadian Association for Information Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article defines different perspectives for citations and introduces four concepts: Self-expected Citations, Received Citations, Expected Citations, and Deserved Citations. When comparing permutations of these four classes of perspectives, there are up to 145 kinds of equality/inequality relations. From these numerous relations, we analyze the difference between the Matthew Effect and the Matthew Phenomenon. We provide a precise definition and point out that many previous empirical research studies on the Matthew Effect based on citations belong primarily to the Matthew Phenomenon, and not the true meaning of the Matthew Effect. Due to the difficulty in determining the Deserved Citations, the Matthew Effect is in itself difficult to measure, although it is commonly believed to influence citation counts. Furthermore, from the theoretical facts, we outline four new effects/phenomena: the Self-confidence Effect/Phenomenon, the Narcissus Effect/Phenomenon, the Other-confidence Effect/Phenomenon, and the Flattery Effect/Phenomenon, and we discuss additional influencing factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author research impact was examined based on citer analysis (the number of citers as opposed to the number of citations) for 90 highly cited authors grouped into three broad subject areas. Citer-based outcome measures were also compared with more traditional citation-based measures for levels of association. The authors found that there are significant differences in citer-based outcomes among the three broad subject areas examined and that there is a high degree of correlation between citer and citation-based measures for all measures compared, except for two outcomes calculated for the social sciences. Citer-based measures do produce slightly different rankings of authors based on citer counts when compared to more traditional citation counts. Examples are provided. Citation measures may not adequately address the influence, or reach, of an author because citations usually do not address the origin of the citation beyond self-citations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investigators studied author research impact using the number of citers per publication an author’s research has been able to attract, as opposed to the more traditional measure of citations. A focus on citers provides a complementary measure of an author’s reach or influence in a field, whereas citations, although possibly numerous, may not reflect this reach, particularly if many citations are received from a small number of citers. In this exploratory study, Web of Science was used to tally citer and citation-based counts for 25 highly cited researchers in information studies in the United States and 26 highly cited researchers from the United Kingdom. Outcomes of the tallies based on several measures, including an introduced ch-index, were used to determine whether differences arise in author rankings when using citer-based versus citation-based counts. The findings indicate a strong correlation between some citation and citer-based measures, but not with others. The findings of the study have implications for the way authors’ research impact may be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longstanding area of study in indexing is the identification of factors affecting vocabulary usage and consistency. This topic has seen a recent resurgence with a focus on social tagging. Tagging data for scholarly articles made available by the social bookmarking Website CiteULike (www.citeulike.org) were used to test the use of inter-indexer/tagger consistency density values, based on a method developed by the authors by comparing calculations for highly tagged documents representing three subject areas (Science, Social Science, Social Software). The analysis revealed that the developed method is viable for a large dataset. The findings also indicated that there were no significant differences in tagging consistency among the three topic areas, demonstrating that vocabulary usage in a relatively new subject area like social software is no more inconsistent than the more established subject areas investigated. The implications of the method used and the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated 11 sports-related query keywords extracted from a public search engine query log to better understand sports-related information seeking on the Internet. After the query log contents were cleaned and query data were parsed, popular sports-related keywords were identified, along with frequently co-occurring query terms associated with the identified keywords. Relationships among each sports-related focus keyword and its related keywords were characterized and grouped using multidimensional scaling (MDS) in combination with traditional hierarchical clustering methods. The two approaches were synthesized in a visual context by highlighting the results of the hierarchical clustering analysis in the visual MDS configuration. Important events, people, subjects, merchandise, and so on related to a sport were illustrated, and relationships among the sports were analyzed. A small-scale comparative study of sports searches with and without term assistance was conducted. Searches that used search term assistance by relying on previous query term relationships outperformed the searches without the search term assistance. The findings of this study provide insights into sports information seeking behavior on the Internet. The developed method also may be applied to other query log subject areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Session characteristics taken from large transaction logs of three Web search environments (academic Web site, public search engine, consumer health information portal) were modeled using cluster analysis to determine if coherent session groups emerged for each environment and whether the types of session groups are similar across the three environments. The analysis revealed three distinct clusters of session behaviors common to each environment: “hit and run” sessions on focused topics, relatively brief sessions on popular topics, and sustained sessions using obscure terms with greater query modification. The findings also revealed shifts in session characteristics over time for one of the datasets, away from “hit and run” sessions toward more popular search topics. A better understanding of session characteristics can help system designers to develop more responsive systems to support search features that cater to identifiable groups of searchers based on their search behaviors. For example, the system may identify struggling searchers based on session behaviors that match those identified in the current study to provide context sensitive help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multidimensional-scaling approach is used to analyze frequently used medical-topic terms in queries submitted to a Web-based consumer health information system. Based on a year-long transaction log file, five medical focus keywords (stomach, hip, stroke, depression, and cholesterol) and their co-occurring query terms are analyzed. An overlap-coefficient similarity measure and a conversion measure are used to calculate the proximity of terms to one another based on their co-occurrences in queries. The impact of the dimensionality of the visual configuration, the cutoff point of term co-occurrence for inclusion in the analysis, and the Minkowski metric power k on the stress value are discussed. A visual clustering of groups of terms based on the proximity within each focus-keyword group is also conducted. Term distributions within each visual configuration are characterized and are compared with formal medical vocabulary. This investigation reveals that there are significant differences between consumer health query-term usage and more formal medical terminology used by medical professionals when describing the same medical subject. Future directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this article is to examine interindexer consistency on a larger scale than other studies have done to determine if group consensus is reached by larger numbers of indexers and what, if any, relationships emerge between assigned terms. Design/methodology/approach - In total, 64 MLIS students were recruited to assign up to five terms to a document. The authors applied basic data modeling and the exploratory statistical techniques of multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) and hierarchical cluster analysis to determine whether relationships exist in indexing consistency and the coocurrence of assigned terms. Findings - Consistency in the assignment of indexing terms to a document follows an inverse shape, although it is not strictly power law-based unlike many other social phenomena. The exploratory techniques revealed that groups of terms clustered together. The resulting term cooccurrence relationships were largely syntagmatic. Research limitations/implications - The results are based on the indexing of one article by non-expert indexers and are, thus, not generalizable. Based on the study findings, along with the growing popularity of folksonomies and the apparent authority of communally developed information resources, communally developed indexes based on group consensus may have merit. Originality/value - Consistency in the assignment of indexing terms has been studied primarily on a small scale. Few studies have examined indexing on a larger scale with more than a handful of indexers. Recognition of the differences in indexing assignment has implications for the development of public information systems, especially those that do not use a controlled vocabulary and those tagged by end-users. In such cases, multiple access points that accommodate the different ways that users interpret content are needed so that searchers may be guided to relevant content despite using different terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Index modeling and computer simulation techniques are used to examine the influence of indexing frequency distributions, indexing exhaustivity distributions, and three weighting methods on hypothetical document spaces in a vector-based information retrieval (IR) system. The way documents are indexed plays an important role in retrieval. The authors demonstrate the influence of different indexing characteristics on document space density (DSD) changes and document space discriminative capacity for IR. Document environments that contain a relatively higher percentage of infrequently occurring terms provide lower density outcomes than do environments where a higher percentage of frequently occurring terms exists. Different indexing exhaustivity levels, however, have little influence on the document space densities. A weighting algorithm that favors higher weights for infrequently occurring terms results in the lowest overall document space densities, which allows documents to be more readily differentiated from one another. This in turn can positively influence IR. The authors also discuss the influence on outcomes using two methods of normalization of term weights (i.e., means and ranges) for the different weighting methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many informetric data types lend themselves to ready adaptation to relational DBMS environments for storage and processing. SQL, the standard language used for constructing and querying relational databases, provides useful tools for processing informetric data. The author demonstrates the applications and some limitations of SQL for efficient organization and tabulation of raw informetric data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Air pollutants can affect lung function and also the immune system. In a study about lung function of salt miners in relation to the complex exposure in a salt mine, we also analysed selected immunological parameters and inflammation markers in the blood of miners. Effect of salt dust, diesel exhaust, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and smoking on the biomarkers was analysed. Methods: Blood was drawn from 286 salt miners, and the soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (s-ICAM), monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP-1) and clara cell protein (CC16) were analysed by an immunoassay, blood profile was done and lymphocyte subpopulations (CD3, CD3/CD4, CD3/CD8, CD19, NK-cells, CD3/HLA-DR) were determined by flow cytometry. Salt dust was measured by two-step gravimetry (personal sampling). Diesel exhaust was measured as elemental carbon concentration by coulometry. NOx were determined by an electrochemical cell method. Differences between non-smokers, former smokers and active smokers were analysed by analysis of variance. Linear regression analysis to describe exposure-response relationships was done with regard to confounding factors [smoking, inflammatory diseases, time of blood drawing, respiratory infection and body-mass index (BMI)]. Results: Significant differences between non-smokers and active smokers were found for most of the leukocyte types (e.g. granulocytes P = 0.000, lymphocytes P = 0.002, T-cells P 0.033) and for some soluble parameters (ICAM P=0.000, IgM P=0.007, IgE P=0.035). Increasing numbers of total lymphocytes, T-cells and HLA-DR positive T-cells in relation to exposure were found by linear regression analysis (e.g. for inhalable dust:total lymphocytes P = 0.011, T-cells P = 0.061, HLA-DR positive T-cells P = 0.007). Conclusion: Comparison of immunological markers in non-smokers and active smokers confirms leukocytosis and inflammation following tobacco consumption. The combined exposure of salt dust, diesel exhaust and NOx seems to influence the immune system. Together, the results suggest that the analysis of leukocytes and their subsets can complete other investigations (lung function, questionnaire) to monitor exposure-response relationships in occupational studies investigating the effect of inhaled substances. Longitudinal studies will be necessary to determine the predictive value of the immunological changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Information & Library Sciences is the property of Canadian Association for Information Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract  Using data sampled from top-level Web pages across five high-level domains and from sample pages within individual websites, the authors investigate the frequency distribution of outlinks in Web pages. The observed distributions were fitted to different theoretical distributions to determine the best-fitting model for representing outlink frequency across Web pages. Theoretical models tested include the modified power law (MPL), Mandelbrot (MDB), generalized Waring (GW), generalized inverse Gaussian-Poisson (GIGP), and generalized negative binomial (GNB) distributions. The GIGP and GNB provided good fits for data sets for top-level pages across the high level domains tested, with the GIGP performing slightly better. The lumpiness and bimodal nature of two of the observed outlink distributions from Web pages within a given website resulted in poor fits of the theoretical models. The GIGP was able to provide better fits to these data sets after the top components were truncated. The ability to effectively model Web page attributes, such as the distribution of the number of outlinks per page, paves the way for simulation models of Web page structural content, and makes it possible to estimate the number of outlinks that may be encountered within Web pages of a specific domain or within individual websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usage and user feedback about a state digital library, in which the developers/designers, content providers, different types of libraries and their staffs, and a variety of user groups represent a loose federation of separate organizations with diverse expectations and needs, are investigated. Through corroboratory evidence from usage statistics of Internet-based database services available through the digital library, responses to a statewide-administered library survey, and a Web-based survey of end users, the authors identify contributing factors for the organizational usability of state digital libraries. The authors refine and enhance an organizational usability model for the unique environment of state digital libraries and identify three modes of interaction (influence, communication, activity) and the challenges each interaction presents: in addressing diverse player needs and expectations; the unequal awareness and training in using state digital libraries; and the lack of sufficient communication channels among players. In addition, the findings highlight the double-edged impact of physical libraries on the state digital library. The term and notion of the "half-life" index-number of literature obsolescence, as well as their borrowing from nuclear physics and adaptation into the literature of literature obsolescence, have up to now been attributed to the librarian Burton and the physicist Kebler and to their famous 1960 journal article. In this article it is documented that (1) Burton and Kebler in their 1960 article were not the first to use the term literature "half-life"; (2) it was not Burton and Kebler who borrowed the conception of "half-life" from nuclear physics and not them who adapted it into the literature of literature obsolescence; (3) in their 1960 article Burton and Kebler first made critical and later ambiguous statements, and finally attributed only "some validity" to the idea of literature half-life; (4) Burton and Kebler stated and... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the influence of index term distributions and indexing levels on the document called DARE. Areas of information science research; Importance of term distribution on the density of document spaces; Impact of document clusters on different indexing environments.

Investigates the impact of term frequencies, term distributions, and indexing exhaustivity on the representation of document spaces in a visual, vector-based retrieval environment. Comparison of document-space densities resulting from combinations of indexing characteristics with the inclusion or exclusion of index terms of a given frequency; Significance of information visualization techniques in information retrieval (IR) systems; Features of IR systems.

Presents a visual term discrimination value analysis method which uses a density space within a distance-angle-based visual information retrieval environment. Information visualization; Term discrimination capacity analysis; Term density space analysis; Advantages of the method.

Analyzes Web queries by users of the Excite search engine in order to study actual Web searching by the public in the United States. General interest of users in recreation and entertainment; Modification of queries; Use of advanced search queries; Use of relevance feedback.

Focuses on queries submitted to the Excite search engine for subject content based on the concurrence of terms within multiterm queries. Categorization of the most frequently co-occurring term pairs into developed subject areas; Use of hierarchical cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling; Well-defined high-level clusters of broad subject areas.