Topic Maps : a bibliometric study

Topic Maps is an international standard (ISO/IEC 13250) to describe and encode knowledge structures and associating them with relevant information resources. This thesis seeks to investigate what has been written about Topic Maps from year 2000 to 2011, as well as finding out the research and publication trend in Topic Maps. This study was based on quantitative methodology, which was bibliometric analysis. The data was collected from Scopus and Web of Knowledge databases. Search keywords used are “topic map”, “topic maps” and “ISO/IEC 13250”. A total of 356 publications (265 conference papers, 91 journal articles) from 2001 to 2011 taken into data analysis. The findings revealed that Topic Maps researchers had a preference to present their findings in conference rather than in journal. The authorship pattern was more towards coauthorship. Most researchers were coauthored locally, as international collaboration was very low. Computer science and library and information science related journals were the favourite publishing venue. Majority of the conferences were computer science and education related. The focus of the topic maps was on data integration and interoperability (2001-2004), information theory (2005 – 2008), knowledge and intelligent based system (2009 – 2011). Also, there were five themes identified, namely content management, repository, ontology, information architecture, retrieval and navigation, and semantic web. The future research areas will possibly be collaborative e-learning system, knowledge visualization system, visualization construction, semantic metadata creation from a relational database, knowledge navigation and retrieval improvement, intelligent topic map, distributed knowledge management based on extended topic maps, knowledge service system, knowledge representation modeling, and multi granularity and multi-level knowledge.Joint Master Degree in Digital Library Learning (DILL

A RESEARCH IMPACT FRAMEWORK FOR HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

In general, models of operation and funding of universities has undergone intense changes over the last decade, caused by the demand for a new organizational mission, which includes the production of socio-economic impact. This transformation has been intensified by the adoption of a research impact-based agenda, which has been operationalized in different ways around the globe. Despite the raising importance attributed to the “societal impact” that should result from academic research activities, the definition of this concept, as well as the assessment approaches and models to assess it, are subject to discussion and shrouded in controversy among academics, university managers and policymakers. Considering this situation and the challenges of the impact-based research agenda, this study proposed the development of a conceptual framework for research impact which can address some of the current problems and then contribute to the promotion of research impact produced by higher education and research institutions. Given this objective, a first phase of research was conducted which allowed to deepen the existing knowledge about the implementation challenges of the impact-based agenda, as well as, to unveil a common set of beliefs and values shared by the academic community, which regardless of the research context, may come into tension with policies and other instruments of impact promotion. The obtained results also validated the need and interest in developing a framework for impact focused on the analysis of the academic research process. Thus, in a second phase of the investigation, the conditions (resources) that could have a positive effect on the production of different types of impacts, referred to as impact conditions, were analyzed. The eight categories of impact conditions here obtained, which were dived into three different categories, served as the basis for the development of a process-based conceptual framework for the impact of academic research.This framework, together with the impact assessment tool here proposed can be used by management teams of higher education institutions and research organizations to assess the current performance of the organization in what respects to research impact, as well as, to support the definitions an implementation of strategies that can take the organization towards and increased production of research impact. The results obtained in this study may also produce effects on research impact assessment policies and procedures, as well as, contribute to a better involvement of the academic community in these topics and therefore increase the efficacy and efficiency of the impact produced by the results obtained in the academic research activities