The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication

The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however, a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap, have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS

Information seeking retrieval, reading and storing behaviour of library users

In the interest of digital libraries, it is advisable that designers be aware of the potential behaviour of the users of such a system. There are two distinct parts under investigation, the interaction between traditional libraries involving the seeking and retrieval of relevant material, and the reading and storage behaviours ensuing. Through this analysis, the findings could be incorporated into digital library facilities. There has been copious amounts of research on information seeking leading to the development of behavioural models to describe the process. Often research on the information seeking practices of individuals is based on the task and field of study. The information seeking model, presented by Ellis et al. (1993), characterises the format of this study where it is used to compare various research on the information seeking practices of groups of people (from academics to professionals). It is found that, although researchers do make use of library facilities, they tend to rely heavily on their own collections and primarily use the library as a source for previously identified information, browsing and interloan. It was found that there are significant differences in user behaviour between the groups analysed. When looking at the reading and storage of material it was hard to draw conclusions, due to the lack of substantial research and information on the topic. However, through the use of reading strategies, a general idea on how readers behave can be developed. Designers of digital libraries can benefit from the guidelines presented here to better understand their audience

The Rhetoric of Documentation: Two Approaches

In an attempt to clarify how a beginner who has not yet mastered a software program is to learn to use word processing programs, this thesis examines two examples, WordPerfect and W.W. Norton\u27s TEXTRA from the standpoint of their documentation. Software developers have adopted conflicting rhetorical strategies in their documentation: some have sought clear instruction via a rule-based rhetoric with a reliance on jargon-free standard English, and others have pursued an inferential rhetoric. These two strategies parallel two models in modern communications theory: a decoding model and an inferential model. WordPerfect seems to follow a decoding (rule-based) approach and TEXTRA seems to follow an inferential approach. An examination of the rhetorical environment of the documentation is a useful strategy for determining the complexity of the program and the complexity of learning how to use it

Growth of Open Access Literature on Library and Information Science during 2011-2020: A Scientometrics Analysis

In this study, we attempted to analyse the quantitative growth of open access publications on library and information science education research. The literature data obtained from Scopus database and scientometrics methods were deployed to analyse the publications originated during 2011-2020. The study shows that open access papers on Library and information science education (LIS) has grown expontially and significant amount of research papers published by both academics and working professionals. Scientometric study of the research on Scopus indexed open access Library and information science (LIS) journals is essential to investigate the existing literature to identify a suitable theory for new research. This study retrieved 8380 research papers and 25661 citations from SCOPUS also find 2019 is the most productive year with 1642 papers and 2321 citations. USA accounted for the highest number of publications with 2166 papers. The degree of collaboration (DC) for ten years was 0.634. USA and Canada are the most collaboration with 24 papers. “Library Philosophy and Practice” is the favourite source for researcher as it has published the highest number of papers totalling 3151 and 3932 citations. Further it has been found that information literacy, bibliometrics, academic libraries, scientometrics, open access and citation analysis are the emerging areas of research in this domain

Evaluating Research Output using Scientometric and Social Network Analysis: A Case of Alagappa University, India

This study analyzed the research productivity of Alagappa University (AU), India, in terms of scientometric and social network analysis measures. The primary aim of this study is to construct two types of networks, co-authorship, and citation, with three levels of network measures to divulge the social and intellectual structure of AU and to identify their research hubs, social interactions, the knowledge diffusion pattern, which will help to strengthen their research areas, fund allocation and to formulate appropriate policy strategies. It revealed that AU produced 99.45 % of research articles in collaboration, particularly 88.41% of the articles were the outcome of international scientific collaboration, remaining 11.04% of them have collaborated domestically. It found that the main path of the most cited publications constituted the mainstream of development of the Department of Bio-Technology, AU.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.2.20.

IVOA Recommendation: Data Model for Astronomical DataSet Characterisation

This document defines the high level metadata necessary to describe the physical parameter space of observed or simulated astronomical data sets, such as 2D-images, data cubes, X-ray event lists, IFU data, etc.. The Characterisation data model is an abstraction which can be used to derive a structured description of any relevant data and thus to facilitate its discovery and scientific interpretation. The model aims at facilitating the manipulation of heterogeneous data in any VO framework or portal. A VO Characterisation instance can include descriptions of the data axes, the range of coordinates covered by the data, and details of the data sampling and resolution on each axis. These descriptions should be in terms of physical variables, independent of instrumental signatures as far as possible. Implementations of this model has been described in the IVOA Note available at: http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/ImplementationCharacterisation.html Utypes derived from this version of the UML model are listed and commented in the following IVOA Note: http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/UtypeListCharacterisationDM.html An XML schema has been build up from the UML model and is available at: http://www.ivoa.net/xml/Characterisation/Characterisation-v1.11.xsdComment: http://www.ivoa.ne

Research, writing, and computer technology: A reconsideration of invention and process

This thesis argues for a more open and active research process and approach toward the teaching of researched writing. A hypertext-based research environment may enrich student learning and writing by reinforcing recursivity throughout the writing process, at the same time as it encourages reflection on both cognitive and social processes of knowledge construction. Further argument is for a more vigorous student engagement in knowledge-making activities by encouraging active research further along the writing process

Manual on Scientific Communication for Postgraduate Students and Young Researchers in Technical, Natural, and Life Sciences

The “Manual on Scientific Communication for Postgraduate Students and Young Researchers in Technical, Natural and Life Sciences” is meant to be a practical guide for the preparation of theses, papers, posters and other scientific documents. Upon going through the different chapters, the readers should be able to critically search for relevant literature, to correctly define and execute a research topic or project, to correctly write a scientific document, to know the characteristics of the different parts of a M.Sc or PhD thesis and a scientific paper, to correctly interpret publishing ethically sensitive material, to understand problems about falsification, fabrication of data, plagiarism and ranking of authors, and to prepare and present a good poster