Bibliometric studies on single journals: a review

This paper covers a total of 82 bibliometric studies on single journals (62 studies cover unique titles) published between 1998 and 2008 grouped into the following fields; Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (12 items); Medical and Health Sciences (19 items); Sciences and Technology (30 items) and Library and Information Sciences (21 items). Under each field the studies are described in accordance to their geographical location in the following order, United Kingdom, United States and Americana, Europe, Asia (India, Africa and Malaysia). For each study, elements described are (a) the journal’s publication characteristics and indexation information; (b) the objectives; (c) the sampling and bibliometric measures used; and (d) the results observed. A list of journal titles studied is appended. The results show that (a)bibliometric studies cover journals in various fields; (b) there are several revisits of some journals which are considered important; (c) Asian and African contributions is high (41.4 of total studies; 43.5 covering unique titles), United States (30.4 of total; 31.0 on unique titles), Europe (18.2 of total and 14.5 on unique titles) and the United Kingdom (10 of total and 11 on unique titles); (d) a high number of bibliometrists are Indians and as such coverage of Indian journals is high (28 of total studies; 30.6 of unique titles); and (e) the quality of the journals and their importance either nationally or internationally are inferred from their indexation status

Information Systems: A House Divided?

Is the IS discipline a single discipline that focuses on both behavioral (BIS) and technical (TIS) topics, or is it two disciplines split between these orientations? Current opinion emphasizes BIS and reinforces the notion that researchers practice research in disconnected silos as opposed to a relatively continuous web. Such silos do disservice to the diversity of scholarly interests, skew productivity expectations in favor of small subsets of journals that often exclude technical- and decision science-oriented journals, and run the risk of creating self-perpetuating journal groupings. Silos disadvantage IS researchers by making the discipline narrower in comparison to other business disciplines and contradict the nature of IS pedagogy that equally reflects technology and management. We applied social network and cross-citation analyses to a sample of 98 IS journals to examine the cohesiveness of IS and to understand the extent to which boundary-spanning journals maintain scholarly connections between the approaches. Distinguishing between weak and strong ties among journals, we found that a discipline that comprises both BIS and TIS journals is highly cohesive in terms of weaker ties and that many boundary-spanning journals are quite balanced in their citations to and from each orientation. However, we did not find that IS is uniformly cohesive. Even so, our findings imply that IS scholars with different interests can parse out distinct subsets of journals that are central to their interests. We demonstrate as much by examining the most central journals for three examples of IS scholars: those with a strongly behavioral approach, with sociotechnical interests, and with specialized interests, such as medical informatics. The most central journals for these three interests are distinct subsets of the IS discipline

The Perception of Library and Information Science Journals by LIS Education Deans and ARL Library Directors: A Replication of the Kohl-Davis Study

Analyzing the collective opinion of presumed experts, often termed a per- ception study, is a frequently used approach for rating journals or evaluating education programs. Replicating the 1985 Kohl–Davis study, seventy-one library and information science (LIS) journals are ranked according to their mean rating on a 1 to 5 ordinal scale by deans of ALA-accredited educa- tion programs and by the directors of ARL libraries (surveyed during the summer of 2003). Comparison of the results with the 1985 study found considerable continuity in journal perceptions over the past two decades, but more so by directors than deans. A weak to moderate correlation was found between deans’ ratings and Journal Citation Reports citation scores, whereas the correlations between directors’ perceptions and citation data were weak to nonexistent. The findings confirm a hierarchy of prestige among LIS journals, but the hierarchical order differs somewhat between deans and directors

ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITY: SCHOOL CHOICE AND THE EXPERIENCES OF NON-ENGLISH-SPEAKING LATINO FAMILIES IN NEW YORK CITY

Districts across the United States have embraced school choice as a means to improve educational outcomes. Independent and charter management organization backed schools have entered the public educational market in an attempt to provide parents with more educational options. The marketing and branding of public schools, both traditional and charter, has also increased as schools and districts compete to attract more students. Furthermore, in addition to this school system, the Catholic school system of New York continues to increase its competitive strive in enrollment. In New York City, there has been an increase in charter school applications and in the English language learner population. This instrumental case study examines how non-English speaking Latino families, who have children in Catholic schools, navigate high school choice process. Through observation, interviews, and document analysis, this study captures the different factors that influence this group of non-English speaking parent’s educational choices for their children who are enrolled in Catholic schools. Through navigational and resistance lenses, examination of school choice reform takes place with a focus on marketing, branding, and advertisement practices and their effects on equity. Findings from this study will inform educational leaders, at all levels, as to the access and information given to non-English speaking parents, including those in a different school system, with regards to school choice

Counting published public library research: an exploratory study using content analysis

Studies published in a selected set of 20 scholarly library and information science journals were examined to determine the amount of research conducted about or in public libraries compared with academic, school, and special libraries Only refereed journals published in the U S and targeted for a general audience of librarians were included in the set Of the 241 articles included, 77% were about academic libraries and 23% were about public libraries (30 of the articles (12%) considered more than one library type) Academic librarians published 51% and academic researchers published 38% of the studies Authorship, author occupation, and subjects studied within the subset of public-library-related research articles were also examined. Within the 94 public-library-related articles, academic researchers authored 59%, academic librarians wrote 19%, and public librarians wrote 9% (several of the multi-author articles included more than one occupation m the author list, indicating collaboration among occupations). Possible consequences of a comparatively low number of published studies on the effectiveness of public libraries and practitioners are considered, including a lack of innovation in public libraries, reduced or limited status of public librarians within the profession, and poor representation of public library problems in the overall knowledge base Participation of public librarians m formal research is also discussed, especially in the context of a practice-theory communication gap in library and information science. Future research topics are suggeste

Towards automated analysis of research methods in library and information science

Previous studies of research methods in Library and Information Science (LIS) lack consensus in how to define or classify research methods, and there have been no studies on automated recognition of research methods in the scientific literature of this field. This work begins to fill these gaps by studying how the scope of “research methods” in LIS has evolved, and the challenges in automatically identifying the usage of research methods in LIS literature. A total of 2,599 research articles are collected from three LIS journals. Using a combination of content analysis and text mining methods, a sample of this collection is coded into 29 different concepts of research methods and is then used to test a rule-based automated method for identifying research methods reported in the scientific literature. We show that the LIS field is characterized by the use of an increasingly diverse range of methods, many of which originate outside the conventional boundaries of LIS. This implies increasing complexity in research methodology and suggests the need for a new approach towards classifying LIS research methods to capture the complex structure and relationships between different aspects of methods. Our automated method is the first of its kind in LIS, and sets an important reference for future research

DEFINING AND ASSESSING PARENT EMPOWERMENT AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT USING THE NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD EDUCATION SURVEY: A FOCUS ON MARGINALIZED PARENTS

Marginalized parents experience multiple and complex challenges in terms of social isolation, exclusion, and powerlessness. This empirical study investigated the effects of parent empowerment on academic outcomes using a large national representative sample and should provide insights about the importance of parent empowerment in education and counseling. Further, the study investigated the effect of the intersectionality of race/ethnicity, home language and income on parent empowerment. This first attempt at analyzing intersectionality in the context of parent empowerment may provide some guidance for future researchers in addressing the complex nature of intersecting identities. This study was a correlational study that used data from the Parent and Family Involvement Survey of the National Household Education Surveys (PFI-NHES: 2007) to investigate the relationship between parent empowerment and academic achievement as measured by parents' reports of students' grade point average(GPA). Using multiple linear regression and logistic regression, the findings of the current study demonstrated that some aspects of parent empowerment were related to children's academic achievement, namely, parents' competence, self-determination, community belonging, and community participation. Interestingly, parents' sense of meaning and consciousness were not related to children's academic achievement. Moreover, intersections of race/ethnicity, home language and income were also related to parent empowerment. The results are significant in that they provide empirical information for school counselors, teachers, administrators and counselors for working with parents. Furthermore, these data may begin to provide support for the conceptual framework of parent empowerment provided this study in order to guide future research and practice

A review and evaluation of the Langley Research Center's Scientific and Technical Information Program. Results of phase 5. Design and evaluation of STI systems: A selected, annotated bibliography

A selected, annotated bibliography of literature citations related to the design and evaluation of STI systems is presented. The use of manual and machine-readable literature searches; the review of numerous books, periodicals reports, and papers; and the selection and annotation of literature citations were required. The bibliography was produced because the information was needed to develop the methodology for the review and evaluation project, and a survey of the literature did not reveal the existence of a single published source of information pertinent to the subject. Approximately 200 citations are classified in four subject areas. The areas include information - general; information systems - design and evaluation, including information products and services; information - use and need; and information - economics