Are e-readers suitable tools for scholarly work?

This paper aims to offer insights into the usability, acceptance and limitations of e-readers with regard to the specific requirements of scholarly text work. To fit into the academic workflow non-linear reading, bookmarking, commenting, extracting text or the integration of non-textual elements must be supported. A group of social science students were questioned about their experiences with electronic publications for study purposes. This same group executed several text-related tasks with the digitized material presented to them in two different file formats on four different e-readers. Their performances were subsequently evaluated by means of frequency analyses in detail. Findings - e-Publications have made advances in the academic world; however e-readers do not yet fit seamlessly into the established chain of scholarly text-processing focusing on how readers use material during and after reading. Our tests revealed major deficiencies in these techniques. With a small number of participants (n=26) qualitative insights can be obtained, not representative results. Further testing with participants from various disciplines and of varying academic status is required to arrive at more broadly applicable results. Practical implications - Our test results help to optimize file conversion routines for scholarly texts. We evaluated our data on the basis of descriptive statistics and abstained from any statistical significance test. The usability test of e-readers in a scientific context aligns with both studies on the prevalence of e-books in the sciences and technical test reports of portable reading devices. Still, it takes a distinctive angle in focusing on the characteristics and procedures of textual work in the social sciences and measures the usability of e-readers and file-features against these standards.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Online Information Revie

Water level monitoring and controlling of water treatment plants using wireless sensors in LabVIEW

Monitoring and controlling systems are taken as the main entity of any field which can ensure for the effective performance, hence its importance is rising exponentially in industry field. There can be many factors which can bring variations in those systems. This may cease the efficiency of the industry and destruction of industrial equipment. Therefore, monitoring, evaluation and controlling of the variables of any system is significantly important. The main objective of this research is to investigate the process of combining monitoring and controlling of the water level in the distribution tanks of water treatment plants by using wireless sensors network. The design and developed prototype of remote monitoring and controlling system of water levels in various tanks can be used in different parts of the water treatment plants. We have proposed, developed and tested hardware module based on two Arduino Mega2560 boards linked wirelessly by using two NRF transceivers. Remote Arduino is designed to monitor the water flow and the level of the distribution tank besides controlling the water level whenever is necessary. The real time sensors readings obtained are observed by specially designed LabVIEW application using graphical user interface running on a PC connected directly to the local Arduino. The application displays and analyses sensors reading on the front panel. Water level is controlled based on preset values entered by the user. The experimental result and percentage error curve endorse the reliability and feasibility of the proposed system to provide a solution for similar problems in industrial liquids treatment process applications

Sir epidemic and predator - prey models of fractional-order

Recently, many deterministic mathematical models such as ordinary differential equations have been extended to fractional models, which are transformed using fractional differential equations. It was believed that these fractional models are more realistic to represent the daily life phenomena. The main focus of this report is to extend the model of a predator-prey and the SIR epidemic models to fractional model. More specifically, the fractional predator-prey model which depend on the availability of a biotic resources was discussed. On the other hand, fractional SIR epidemic model with sub-optimal immunity, nonlinear incidence and saturated recovery rate was also discussed. The fractional ordinary differential equations were defined in the sense of the Caputo derivative. Stability analysis of the equilibrium points of the models for the fractional models were analyzed. Furthermore, the Hopf bifurcation analysis of each model was investigated . The result obtained showed that the model undergo Hopf bifurcation for some values. Throughout the project, the Adams-type predictor-corrector method to obtain the numerical solutions of the fractional models was applied. All computations were done by using mathematical software, Maple 18

Citation Analysis: A Comparison of Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science

When faculty members are evaluated, they are judged in part by the impact and quality of their scholarly publications. While all academic institutions look to publication counts and venues as well as the subjective opinions of peers, many hiring, tenure, and promotion committees also rely on citation analysis to obtain a more objective assessment of an author’s work. Consequently, faculty members try to identify as many citations to their published works as possible to provide a comprehensive assessment of their publication impact on the scholarly and professional communities. The Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) citation databases, which are widely used as a starting point if not the only source for locating citations, have several limitations that may leave gaps in the coverage of citations to an author’s work. This paper presents a case study comparing citations found in Scopus and Google Scholar with those found in Web of Science (the portal used to search the three ISI citation databases) for items published by two Library and Information Science full-time faculty members. In addition, the paper presents a brief overview of a prototype system called CiteSearch, which analyzes combined data from multiple citation databases to produce citation-based quality evaluation measures

Back to basics: what is the e-journal?

As we move further into the first decade of a new century, it seems a good point to reflect on where the e-journal has come from, the position it is at now, and where it might be going in the immediate and long-term future. My concern within this article is to look backwards and forwards and consider this revolution in serials publishing, and the impact it has had on different user groups from the traditional academic audience to the general internet-savvy population. This article will therefore be structured in the following way: first, I will be looking at the birth of the e-journal, and the development of technologies through the last twenty years which influenced it; then move on to consider popular models of electronic serial publishing; to consider whether ‘born digital’ content is really in the long-term an advantage; to discuss the impact of new publishing models; and finally to look at where the e-journal fits as a source for support, and an outlet, for scholarly research. In conclusion I will present some thoughts on future development for this form of information sharing

From Artifacts to Aggregations: Modeling Scientific Life Cycles on the Semantic Web

In the process of scientific research, many information objects are generated, all of which may remain valuable indefinitely. However, artifacts such as instrument data and associated calibration information may have little value in isolation; their meaning is derived from their relationships to each other. Individual artifacts are best represented as components of a life cycle that is specific to a scientific research domain or project. Current cataloging practices do not describe objects at a sufficient level of granularity nor do they offer the globally persistent identifiers necessary to discover and manage scholarly products with World Wide Web standards. The Open Archives Initiative's Object Reuse and Exchange data model (OAI-ORE) meets these requirements. We demonstrate a conceptual implementation of OAI-ORE to represent the scientific life cycles of embedded networked sensor applications in seismology and environmental sciences. By establishing relationships between publications, data, and contextual research information, we illustrate how to obtain a richer and more realistic view of scientific practices. That view can facilitate new forms of scientific research and learning. Our analysis is framed by studies of scientific practices in a large, multi-disciplinary, multi-university science and engineering research center, the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).Comment: 28 pages. To appear in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST

Littérature scientifique et formation à l'information, la situation des bioingénieurs à Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (ULg) (synthèse bibliographique)

Scholarly publication and education in Information Literacy within the bioengineering curriculum, the Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (ULg) case. A review. This article is based on a doctoral study on the role of scientific literature in the teaching of bioengineering at Gembloux. It is essentially a summary incorporating recent advances in Information Literacy. Data analysis indicates that the bioengineers working at Gembloux publish at least as much as research as other scientists in Belgium. These bioengineers choose to publish articles in journals with a high impact factor, preferring to read articles rather than books and using all the electronic resources available to them. Their fields of research, and reading, go beyond the bounds of agronomy in the strictest sense. The bioengineering courses provided at Gembloux are based on the concept of Information Literacy. This concept refers to a set of skills that allow individuals to recognize an information need and enable them to locate, evaluate and use the required information. The area of Information Literacy has evolved over the last two decades. The scope of education of this area goes well beyond the bounds of the library. In addition to intellectual skills, Information Literacy also involves social and cultural skills. These include an understanding of media and new information technologies, without being reduced to technical or technological skills. At Gembloux, education in Information Literacy is included in the student's timetable. It incorporates the production of scientific papers and is based on a methodological approach with its own didactic and specific content

Scholarly communication: The quest for Pasteur's Quadrant

The scholarly communication system is sustained by its functions of a) registration, b) certification or legitimization, c) dissemination and awareness d) archiving or curation and e) reward. These functions have remained stable during the development of scholarly communication but the means through which they are achieved have not. It has been a long journey from the days when scientists communicated primarily through correspondence. The impact of modern-day technological changes is significant and has destabilized the scholarly communication system to some extent because many more options have become available to communicate scholarly information with. Pasteur's Quadrant was articulated by Donald E Stokes in his book Pasteur's Quadrant Basic Science and Technological Innovation. It is the idea that basic science (as practiced by Niels Bohr) and applied science (as exemplified by Thomas Edison) can be brought together to create a synergy that will produce results of significant benefit, as Louis Pasteur did. Given the theory (fundamental understanding) we have of scholarly communication and given how modern-day technological advances can be applied, a case can be made that use-inspired basic research (Pasteur's Quadrant) should be the focus for current research in scholarly communication. In doing so the different types of digital scholarly resources and their characteristics must be investigated to determine how the fundamentals of scholarly communication are being supported. How libraries could advocate for and contribute to the improvement of scholarly communication is also noted. These resources could include: e-journals, repositories, reviews, annotated content, data, pre -print and working papers servers, blogs, discussion forums, professional and academic hubs