143,529 research outputs found
Understanding information needs of Australian business organisations
Over the past decade, universities have used repositories as channels
to create access to research outputs. Increasingly government and
universities are seeking to optimise the impact of their research,
particularly to improve public policy. This study looks at the impact
of access to research from the perspective of business associations
and researchers. It finds that business organisations value trusted
timely, relevant research. Accessibility and peer-reviewed research
outputs are highly valued but little used. Barriers to use of the research
include availability (material not openly accessible), discoverability
(ranking on search engines) and knowledge by trusted mediators and
connectivity (presentation as part of a cohort of scholarly knowledge).
Barriers for researchers include lack of rewards and recognition for
research outputs focused on these organisations. The theories used in
the study include triple helix, Kautto-Koivula and Huhtaniemi’s model
for knowledge and competence management and actor network
theory. The study concludes that significant work is required to
improve the accessibility and discoverability of research. In particular,
the search paradigm is insufficient to provide optimal awareness of
and impact of research.Australian Library and Information Associatio
Dominant Search Engines: An Essential Cultural & Political Facility
When American lawyers talk about essential facilities, they are usually referring to antitrust doctrine that has required certain platforms to provide access on fair and nondiscriminatory terms to all comers. Some have recently characterized Google as an essential facility. Antitrust law may shape the search engine industry in positive ways. However, scholars and activists must move beyond the crabbed vocabulary of competition policy to develop a richer normative critique of search engine dominance.
In this chapter, I sketch a new concept of essential cultural and political facility, which can help policymakers recognize and address situations where a bottleneck has become important enough that special scrutiny is warranted. This scrutiny may not always culminate in regulation. However, it clearly suggests a need for publicly funded alternatives to the concentrated conduits and content providers colonizing the web
Pathways to Fragmentation:User Flows and Web Distribution Infrastructures
This study analyzes how web audiences flow across online digital features. We
construct a directed network of user flows based on sequential user
clickstreams for all popular websites (n=1761), using traffic data obtained
from a panel of a million web users in the United States. We analyze these data
to identify constellations of websites that are frequently browsed together in
temporal sequences, both by similar user groups in different browsing sessions
as well as by disparate users. Our analyses thus render visible previously
hidden online collectives and generate insight into the varied roles that
curatorial infrastructures may play in shaping audience fragmentation on the
web
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