Issues of work-life balance among JASIST authors and editors

International audienceMany dedicated scientists reject the concept of maintaining a “work-life balance.”They argue that work is actually a huge part of life. In the mindset of these scientists, weekdays and weekends are equally appropriate for working on their research. While we all have encountered such people, we may wonder about how frequent this condition is in other scientists in our field. This brief communication probes the degree of work-life balance issues among JASIST authors and editors. We collected and examined the publication histories for all 1,533 of the 2,402 papers published in JASIST between 2001 and 2012. Although there is no rush to submit, revise, or accept papers, we found that 11% of these events happened during weekends and that this trend has been increasing since 2005. Our findings suggest that working during the weekend may be one of the ways that scientists find to cope with the highly demanding era of “publish or perish.” We hope that our findings will raise an awareness of the steady increases in work among scientists before it affects our work-life balance even more

Informational balance

Evoking both activity and stillness, balance has been a concept of interest within academic research for centuries. In recent decades, the concept of balance has also garnered attention within information science. This conceptual paper is based upon a synthesis of selected articles and themes concerning the subject of balance as well as an analysis of recent writings from the field of information science. It draws in particular from work regarding the construct of informational balance. Information scientists have analysed the shifting balance of scientific information flows between nations as well as the balance of intellectual trade between information science and its cognate disciplines. Studies have also examined strategies to identify and implement balanced, scalable and sustainable online instruction within information institutions, and investigated issues of work-life balance among information professionals and scientists. The construct of informational balance has emerged as a particularly noteworthy application of the concept of balance, and subsequent to its origin it has been taken up by a number of additional information scientists. In shining a light on informational balance this paper aspires to lay the groundwork for fresh elaboration of the construct and for future innovative research in this area.Peer Reviewe

Career Progression of Women: Does Work Life Balance Matter?

Purpose-The study empirically examined the influence of work-life balance practices on Career Progression of Women at Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP). Design, methodology/approach-Given the reliance on explanatory research design, the study utilized structured questionnaire for gathering the primary data quantitatively from 209 randomly selected participants. A second-order model was configured in SMART PLS for testing of the directional hypotheses formulated. Findings- Work-life balance practices have a moderate significant positive predictor on both career goal progress and promotion speed. However, it significantly predicts a weak positive variance in professional development ability of career progression. Research limitations- The study was limited to only female MoGCSP employees, and this may restrict the degree of generalizability to other ministries of the government of Ghana. Practical implication- The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection through its agency, must continually provide a favourable work life balance practices for its female staff as this would in order to make female workers happy, satisfied and progressed in the various careers. Originality/value- Empirically, the study enriches the theoretical understanding of how work-life balance if properly managed would affect female workers in progression in their career even in a masculine context as established by the role theory in Sub-Saharan country-context

Career Progression of Women: Does Work Life Balance Matter?

Purpose-The study empirically examined the influence of work-life balance practices on Career Progression of Women at Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP). Design, methodology/approach-Given the reliance on explanatory research design, the study utilized structured questionnaire for gathering the primary data quantitatively from 209 randomly selected participants. A second-order model was configured in SMART PLS for testing of the directional hypotheses formulated. Findings- Work-life balance practices have a moderate significant positive predictor on both career goal progress and promotion speed. However, it significantly predicts a weak positive variance in professional development ability of career progression. Research limitations- The study was limited to only female MoGCSP employees, and this may restrict the degree of generalizability to other ministries of the government of Ghana. Practical implication- The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection through its agency, must continually provide a favourable work life balance practices for its female staff as this would in order to make female workers happy, satisfied and progressed in the various careers. Originality/value- Empirically, the study enriches the theoretical understanding of how work-life balance if properly managed would affect female workers in progression in their career even in a masculine context as established by the role theory in Sub-Saharan country-context

Career Progression of Women: Does Work-life Balance Matter?

The study empirically examined the influence of work-life balance practices on the Career Progression of Women at the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection (MoGCSP). Given the reliance on an explanatory research design, the study utilized a structured questionnaire for gathering the primary data quantitatively from 209 randomly selected participants. A second-order model was configured in SMART PLS for testing the directional hypotheses formulated. The results indicated that work-life balance practices have a moderately significant positive predictor on both career goal progress and promotion speed. However, it significantly predicts a weak positive variance in professional development ability of career progression. The practical implication is that the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection through its agency, must continually provide favorable work-life balance practices for its female staff to make female workers happy, satisfied, and progress in their various careers. The study offers a better theoretical understanding of how work-life balance, if handled well, may influence female workers' career progression, even in a situation where men predominate, as per role theory. Empirically, the study enriches the theoretical understanding of how work-life balance, if properly managed, would affect female workers in progression in their careers even in a masculine context, as established by the role theory in Sub-Saharan country-context

La webométrie en sciences sociales et humaines : analyse des données d’usage de la plateforme Érudit

Cette étude exploratoire s’intéresse à l’usage des revues en sciences sociales et humaines diffusées en libre accès complet et en libre accès différé par la plateforme Érudit. Basée sur les données de téléchargements d’Érudit, elle vise à 1) fournir un portrait détaillé de l’usage des articles, 2) décrire les habitudes de téléchargement des usagers au Canada et à l’international, et 3) analyser l’effet des politiques de libre accès des revues sur les téléchargements qu’elles reçoivent. Pour ce faire, 39 437 659 téléchargements, extraits de 999 367 190 requêtes HTTP enregistrées dans les logs du serveur d’Érudit de 2010 à 2015, ont été analysés. Les résultats montrent que la majorité des usagers provient du Québec, de la France et d’autres pays francophones, et que, la plupart du temps, ceux-ci accèdent aux articles par l’intermédiaire de Google. Les habitudes de téléchargement varient d’un pays à l’autre : alors que les usagers canadiens et français utilisent Érudit principalement en journée et en semaine, leurs homologues américains sont davantage actifs en soirée, la nuit, ainsi que les week-ends. Enfin, un avantage important lié au libre accès a été observé : les articles des revues en libre accès sont davantage téléchargés que ceux des revues en libre accès différé et, pour ces dernières, la fin de l’embargo est associée à une croissance importante des téléchargements – croissance moins marquée au Canada où bon nombre d’institutions sont abonnées aux revues de la plateforme. Ces résultats démontrent l’importance des revues nationales pour les sciences sociales et humaines, ainsi que l’effet positif du libre accès sur la diffusion des connaissances, tant au Canada qu’à l’étranger.This study explores the usage of open access (OA) and delayed OA journals in the social sciences and humanities hosted by the journal platform Érudit. Relying on Érudit’s download data, the goals of the study are: 1) to describe the usage of scholarly articles, 2) to examine download patterns of national and international users, and 3) to analyze the effect of OA policies on journal download rates. The study is based on an analysis of 39,437,659 downloads, which were extracted from 999,367,190 HTTP requests stored in Érudit’s log files between 2010 and 2015. The results show that the majority of users came from Quebec, France and other French-speaking countries, and that most users access articles through Google. Download patterns varied between countries: although articles were most frequently accessed during working hours, US users were more active in the evening, at night and during weekends than Canadian and French users. The study also demonstrates a clear OA advantage, as freely available articles were downloaded more frequently than delayed OA articles affected by an embargo, and downloads per article increased substantially after embargos ended. This effect was less pronounced for Canadian users, who often have access to Érudit journals via institutional subscriptions and are thus not affected by the embargo periods. The results show the positive effect of OA on knowledge dissemination in Canada as well as internationally, and emphasize the importance of national journals in the social sciences and humanities

Leveraging social relevance : using social networks to enhance literature access and microblog search

L'objectif principal d'un système de recherche d'information est de sélectionner les documents pertinents qui répondent au besoin en information exprimé par l'utilisateur à travers une requête. Depuis les années 1970-1980, divers modèles théoriques ont été proposés dans ce sens pour représenter les documents et les requêtes d'une part et les apparier d'autre part, indépendamment de tout utilisateur. Plus récemment, l'arrivée du Web 2.0 ou le Web social a remis en cause l'efficacité de ces modèles du fait qu'ils ignorent l'environnement dans lequel l'information se situe. En effet, l'utilisateur n'est plus un simple consommateur de l'information mais il participe également à sa production. Pour accélérer la production de l'information et améliorer la qualité de son travail, l'utilisateur échange de l'information avec son voisinage social dont il partage les mêmes centres d'intérêt. Il préfère généralement obtenir l'information d'un contact direct plutôt qu'à partir d'une source anonyme. Ainsi, l'utilisateur, influencé par son environnement socio-cultuel, donne autant d'importance à la proximité sociale de la ressource d'information autant qu'à la similarité des documents à sa requête. Dans le but de répondre à ces nouvelles attentes, la recherche d'information s'oriente vers l'implication de l'utilisateur et de sa composante sociale dans le processus de la recherche. Ainsi, le nouvel enjeu de la recherche d'information est de modéliser la pertinence compte tenu de la position sociale et de l'influence de sa communauté. Le second enjeu est d'apprendre à produire un ordre de pertinence qui traduise le mieux possible l'importance et l'autorité sociale. C'est dans ce cadre précis, que s'inscrit notre travail. Notre objectif est d'estimer une pertinence sociale en intégrant d'une part les caractéristiques sociales des ressources et d'autre part les mesures de pertinence basées sur les principes de la recherche d'information classique. Nous proposons dans cette thèse d'intégrer le réseau social d'information dans le processus de recherche d'information afin d'utiliser les relations sociales entre les acteurs sociaux comme une source d'évidence pour mesurer la pertinence d'un document en réponse à une requête. Deux modèles de recherche d'information sociale ont été proposés à des cadres applicatifs différents : la recherche d'information bibliographique et la recherche d'information dans les microblogs. Les importantes contributions de chaque modèle sont détaillées dans la suite. Un modèle social pour la recherche d'information bibliographique. Nous avons proposé un modèle générique de la recherche d'information sociale, déployé particulièrement pour l'accès aux ressources bibliographiques. Ce modèle représente les publications scientifiques au sein d'réseau social et évalue leur importance selon la position des auteurs dans le réseau. Comparativement aux approches précédentes, ce modèle intègre des nouvelles entités sociales représentées par les annotateurs et les annotations sociales. En plus des liens de coauteur, ce modèle exploite deux autres types de relations sociales : la citation et l'annotation sociale. Enfin, nous proposons de pondérer ces relations en tenant compte de la position des auteurs dans le réseau social et de leurs mutuelles collaborations. Un modèle social pour la recherche d'information dans les microblogs.} Nous avons proposé un modèle pour la recherche de tweets qui évalue la qualité des tweets selon deux contextes: le contexte social et le contexte temporel. Considérant cela, la qualité d'un tweet est estimé par l'importance sociale du blogueur correspondant. L'importance du blogueur est calculée par l'application de l'algorithme PageRank sur le réseau d'influence sociale. Dans ce même objectif, la qualité d'un tweet est évaluée selon sa date de publication. Les tweets soumis dans les périodes d'activité d'un terme de la requête sont alors caractérisés par une plus grande importance. Enfin, nous proposons d'intégrer l'importance sociale du blogueur et la magnitude temporelle avec les autres facteurs de pertinence en utilisant un modèle Bayésien.An information retrieval system aims at selecting relevant documents that meet user's information needs expressed with a textual query. For the years 1970-1980, various theoretical models have been proposed in this direction to represent, on the one hand, documents and queries and on the other hand to match information needs independently of the user. More recently, the arrival of Web 2.0, known also as the social Web, has questioned the effectiveness of these models since they ignore the environment in which the information is located. In fact, the user is no longer a simple consumer of information but also involved in its production. To accelerate the production of information and improve the quality of their work, users tend to exchange documents with their social neighborhood that shares the same interests. It is commonly preferred to obtain information from a direct contact rather than from an anonymous source. Thus, the user, under the influenced of his social environment, gives as much importance to the social prominence of the information as the textual similarity of documents at the query. In order to meet these new prospects, information retrieval is moving towards novel user centric approaches that take into account the social context within the retrieval process. Thus, the new challenge of an information retrieval system is to model the relevance with regards to the social position and the influence of individuals in their community. The second challenge is produce an accurate ranking of relevance that reflects as closely as possible the importance and the social authority of information producers. It is in this specific context that fits our work. Our goal is to estimate the social relevance of documents by integrating the social characteristics of resources as well as relevance metrics as defined in classical information retrieval field. We propose in this work to integrate the social information network in the retrieval process and exploit the social relations between social actors as a source of evidence to measure the relevance of a document in response to a query. Two social information retrieval models have been proposed in different application frameworks: literature access and microblog retrieval. The main contributions of each model are detailed in the following. A social information model for flexible literature access. We proposed a generic social information retrieval model for literature access. This model represents scientific papers within a social network and evaluates their importance according to the position of respective authors in the network. Compared to previous approaches, this model incorporates new social entities represented by annotators and social annotations (tags). In addition to co-authorships, this model includes two other types of social relationships: citation and social annotation. Finally, we propose to weight these relationships according to the position of authors in the social network and their mutual collaborations. A social model for information retrieval for microblog search. We proposed a microblog retrieval model that evaluates the quality of tweets in two contexts: the social context and temporal context. The quality of a tweet is estimated by the social importance of the corresponding blogger. In particular, blogger's importance is calculated by the applying PageRank algorithm on the network of social influence. With the same aim, the quality of a tweet is evaluated according to its date of publication. Tweets submitted in periods of activity of query terms are then characterized by a greater importance. Finally, we propose to integrate the social importance of blogger and the temporal magnitude tweets as well as other relevance factors using a Bayesian network model

Congress UPV Proceedings of the 21ST International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators

This is the book of proceedings of the 21st Science and Technology Indicators Conference that took place in València (Spain) from 14th to 16th of September 2016. The conference theme for this year, ‘Peripheries, frontiers and beyond’ aimed to study the development and use of Science, Technology and Innovation indicators in spaces that have not been the focus of current indicator development, for example, in the Global South, or the Social Sciences and Humanities. The exploration to the margins and beyond proposed by the theme has brought to the STI Conference an interesting array of new contributors from a variety of fields and geographies. This year’s conference had a record 382 registered participants from 40 different countries, including 23 European, 9 American, 4 Asia-Pacific, 4 Africa and Near East. About 26% of participants came from outside of Europe. There were also many participants (17%) from organisations outside academia including governments (8%), businesses (5%), foundations (2%) and international organisations (2%). This is particularly important in a field that is practice-oriented. The chapters of the proceedings attest to the breadth of issues discussed. Infrastructure, benchmarking and use of innovation indicators, societal impact and mission oriented-research, mobility and careers, social sciences and the humanities, participation and culture, gender, and altmetrics, among others. We hope that the diversity of this Conference has fostered productive dialogues and synergistic ideas and made a contribution, small as it may be, to the development and use of indicators that, being more inclusive, will foster a more inclusive and fair world