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Increasingly, e-books are becoming alternatives to print books in academic libraries, thus providing opportunities to assess how well the use of e-books meets the requirements of academics. This study uses the task-technology fit ( TTF) model to explore the interrelationships of e-books, the affordances offered by smart readers, the information needs of academics, and the 'fit' of technology to tasks as well as performance. We propose that the adoption of e-books will be dependent on how academics perceive the fit of this new medium to the tasks they undertake as well as what added-value functionality is delivered by the information technology that delivers the content. The study used content analysis and an online survey, administered to the faculty in Medicine, Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, to identify the attributes of a TTF construct of e-books in academic settings. Using exploratory factor analysis, preliminary findings confirmed annotation, navigation, and output as the core dimensions of the TTF construct. The results of confirmatory factor analysis using partial least squares path modeling supported the overall TTF model in reflecting significant positive impact of task, technology, and individual characteristics on TTF for e-books in academic settings; it also confirmed significant positive impact of TTF on individuals' performance and use, and impact of using e-books on individual performance. Our research makes two contributions: the development of an e-book TTF construct and the testing of that construct in a model validating the efficacy of the TTF framework in measuring perceived fit of e-books to academic tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the knowledge, skills and competencies demanded of early career information systems (IS) graduates in Australia. Online job advertisements from 2006 were collected and investigated using content analysis software to determine the frequencies and patterns of occurrence of specific requirements. This analysis reveals a dominant cluster of core IS knowledge and competency skills that revolves around IS Development as the most frequently required category of knowledge (78% of ads) and is strongly associated with: Business Analysis, Systems Analysis; Management; Operations, Maintenance & Support; Communication Skills; Personal Characteristics; Computer Languages; Data & Information Management; Internet, Intranet, Web Applications; and Software Packages. Identification of the core cluster of IS knowledge and skills -- in demand across a wide variety of jobs -- is important to better understand employers' needs for and expectations from IS graduates and the implications for education programs. Much less prevalent is the second cluster that includes knowledge and skills at a more technical side of IS (Architecture and Infrastructure, Operating Systems, Networks, and Security). Issues raised include the nature of entry level positions and their role in the preparation of their incumbents for future more senior positions. The findings add an Australian perspective to the literature on information systems job ads and should be of value to educators, employers, as well as current and future IS professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore journal quality as perceived by clinicians and researchers in clinical neurology. Methods: A survey was conducted from August 2003 to January 2004. Ratings for 41 selected clinical neurology journals were obtained from 254 members of the World Federation of Neurology (1,500 solicited; response rate 17%). Participants provided demographic information and rated each journal on a 5-point Likert scale. Average ratings for all journals were compared with the ISI's journal impact factors. Ratings for each journal were also compared across geographic regions and respondent publication productivity. Results: The top 5 journals were rated much more highly than the others, with mean ratings greater than 4. Mean journal ratings were highly correlated with journal impact factors (r = 0.67). Most of the top 10 journal ratings were consistent across the subgroups of geographic regions and journal paper productivity. However, significant differences among the different geographical regions and respondent productivity groups were also found for a few journals. Conclusions: The results provide valuable insight on how neurological experts perceive journals in clinical neurology. These results will likely aid researchers and clinicians in identifying potentially desirable research outlets and indicate journal status for editors. Likewise, biomedical librarians may use these results for serials collection development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of position vacant announcements appropriate for library and information studies (LIS) graduates appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald over a four week period in each of the following years: 2004, 1994, 1984 and 1974. The period studied witnessed change-demanding developments in information technologies as well as changes in workplace conditions and client expectations. The study collected data on the demands of employers as expressed through job advertisements that included data on work status (full-time, part-time, contract, casual), qualifications and the experience required of the information professional during the periods selected. To investigate similarities and differences between periods a content analysis and co-word analysis of the job advertisement was undertaken. The advertisements indicated a movement from simple advertisements in 1974 inviting applications for reference or technical services librarians, to complex and specialised positions being advertised in 2004 where the most called for attributes were interpersonal skills and behavioural characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of the World Wide Web for international travel by integrating the construct of uncertainty in information seeking and the Task-Technology Fit Model. The author states that the evaluation and measurement of information provision through traditional media has been the domain of information science. Concepts of "information need" and "information seeking behavior" have been seminal in evaluating information services and user behavior when interfacing with traditional media. These two disciplines have now converged through Web technologies that utilize information and communication technologies to meet the information needs of the population at large. Evaluation of Web technologies as an information resource should bring together these two perspectives. In this article a model integrating information systems models of success and information science concepts of information seeking and uncertainty reduction is proposed. Specifically, the concept of "uncertainty" is integrated into the task-technology fit model to evaluate Web usage within the non-work domain of personal travel.

This article investigates the relationship between the journal "impact factor" (IF) and the "immediacy index" (II) in the sciences, as well as the social sciences. It is found that there are highly positive correlations between the IF and the II in most sciences and social sciences disciplines although the correlation strengths vary across disciplines. Moreover, it is found that the II of year Y is also a good predictor for the IF of year Y + 1. These results are strongest for rapidly developing fields, such as biomedicine. Based on the assumption that the citation-age distribution has a Poisson distribution, our empirical data are clarified by a simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bibliographic databases contain surrogates to a particular subset of the complete set of literature; some databases are very narrow in their scope, while others are multidisciplinary. These databases overlap in their coverage of the literature to a greater or lesser extent. The topic of Fuzzy Set Theory is examined to determine the overlap of coverage in the databases that index this topic. It was found that about 63% of records in the data set are unique to only one database, and the remaining 37% are duplicated in from two to 12 different databases. The overlap distribution is found to conform to a Lotka-type plot. The records with maximum overlap are identified; however, further work is needed to determine the significance of the high level of overlap in these records. The unique records are plotted using a Bradford-type form of data presentation and are found to conform (visually) to a hyperbolic distribution. The extent and causes of intra-database duplication (records duplicated in the one database) are also examined. Finally, the overlap in the top databases in the dataset were examined, and a high correlation was found between overlapping records, and overlapping DIALOG OneSearch categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study traces the evolution of the scientific literature on cytochrome P450 (P450) published during the last 30+ years (1977-2008). Using the Web of Science, P450 articles from the Science Citation Index Expanded published from 1977 to 2008 were retrieved and analyzed. The number of P450 papers has increased from 342 articles in 1977-1978 to 2,357 in 2007-2008, and the number of contributing countries has grown from 23 countries for 1977-1978 to 76 for 2007-2008. While the USA and Japan were the most productive countries, along with several industrialized countries (e.g. UK, Germany and Canada), two Asian countries have recently joined the group of leading countries (in 2007-2008 China ranked 4th and South Korea, 7th). During 1977-2008, the number of journals publishing papers in P450 research increased more than seven-fold (7.7): 94 journals in 1977-1978 and 724 in 2007-2008; however, citation by readers (as measured by the journal impact factor) of the top-ten leading journals increased only slightly from 3.25 for 1977-1978 to 3.81 for 2007-2008. While Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Pharmacology and Pharmacy are the two main targeted subject areas for P450 research during the period considered, there has been a gradual shift from the biophysical and biochemical fields of interest to aspects of genomics and clinical approaches. The rapid evolution of P450 research in the last 30+ years was accompanied by important changes in the landscape of the contributing countries, in the subject domains, and consequently in the scientific journals targeted by researchers.

Objective: To explore journal quality as perceived by clinicians and researchers in clinical neurology., Methods: A survey was conducted from August 2003 to January 2004. Ratings for 41 selected clinical neurology journals were obtained from 254 members of the World Federation of Neurology (1,500 solicited; response rate 17%). Participants provided demographic information and rated each journal on a 5-point Likert scale. Average ratings for all journals were compared with the ISI's journal impact factors. Ratings for each journal were also compared across geographic regions and respondent publication productivity., Results: The top 5 journals were rated much more highly than the others, with mean ratings greater than 4. Mean journal ratings were highly correlated with journal impact factors (r = 0.67). Most of the top 10 journal ratings were consistent across the subgroups of geographic regions and journal paper productivity. However, significant differences among the different geographical regions and respondent productivity groups were also found for a few journals., Conclusions: The results provide valuable insight on how neurological experts perceive journals in clinical neurology. These results will likely aid researchers and clinicians in identifying potentially desirable research outlets and indicate journal status for editors. Likewise, biomedical librarians may use these results for serials collection development.