Studying the users’ information-seeking behavior by recording brain waves activity with Electroencephalography method: A systematic Review

Despite the novelty in methodologies, User behavior study based on brain activity during information-seeking stages has become popular among information science researchers. This paper reviews scientific publications in which information-seeking behavior has been studied along with recorded brain activity to shed light on research status, challenges, and suggestions for future studies. Based on Kitchenham & Charters (2007) framework, a complete web search was performed in English and Persian scientific databases, and 22 publications in English were found as the final result, from 2007 to 2020. Review results demonstrate that exploring the user status (10 papers) and brain wave activity during information-seeking episodes (12 papers) were the most dominant subjective approaches in the field of user behavior studies. Cognitive load was found as an effective cognitive component on user status. With eye movement measurement and brain waves frequency study, 3 factors were found effective on cognitive load level generated during information searching and processing: searching media type, information representation, and text reading style. Brain wave activity and pupil dilation analysis were the most important measures in user status during search stages, and alpha and theta band waves were demonstrated as an index for cognitive load measurement during the information searching process. A correlation among eye data, search behavior, task complexity based on user experience, and cognitive style – as another effective factor on user status- led to results in different information searching behavior demonstrations. Also, 3 main stages were analyzed in the information-seeking process, based on brain wave activity: information exploring and query formulation, query reformulation and selection, relevance judgment, and decision making. Results showed a difference between brain activity areas, and differences in pupil dilation change level and alpha/beta frequency level during different search episodes. For future research, some suggestions were offered based on reviews. Finding relations between correlations among cognitive styles, task features, and domain knowledge during information searching process, personalized information retrieval improvement, more collaboration between information science and neurocognitive specialists, research in more user affective status like aggression and fatigue during the search process, using more economic methods and portable devices aiming to reduce research costs and expenses, facilitating larger sample studies and designing standard tasks were considered as a suggestion. Finally, some challenges were found based on reviewed studies. Some concepts like relevance feedback in information retrieval need more investigation. Also, it is necessary to investigate and explore user affections during the search process with multiple approaches

A Correlation Study of Co-opinion and Co-citation Similarity Measures

Co-citation forms a relational document network. Co-citation-based measures are found to be effective in retrieving relevant documents. However, they are far from ideal and need further enhancements. Co-opinion concept was proposed and tested in previous research and found to be effective in retrieving relevant documents. The present study endeavors to explore the correlation between opinion (dis)similarity measures and the traditional co-citation-based ones including Citation Proximity Index (CPI), co-citedness and co-citation context similarity. The results show significant, though weak to medium, correlations between the variables. The correlations are direct for co-opinion measure, while being inverse for the opinion distance. Accordingly, the two groups of measures are revealed to represent some similar aspects of the document relation. Moreover, the weakness of the correlations implies that there are different dimensions represented by the two group

Investigating text power in predicting semantic similarity

This article presents an empirical evaluation to investigate the distributional semantic power of abstract, body and full-text, as different text levels, in predicting the semantic similarity using a collection of open access articles from PubMed. The semantic similarity is measured based on two criteria namely, linear MeSH terms intersection and hierarchical MeSH terms distance. As such, a random sample of 200 queries and 20000 documents are selected from a test collection built on CITREC open source code. Sim Pack Java Library is used to calculate the textual and semantic similarities. The nDCG value corresponding to two of the semantic similarity criteria is calculated at three precision points. Finally, the nDCG values are compared by using the Friedman test to determine the power of each text level in predicting the semantic similarity. The results showed the effectiveness of the text in representing the semantic similarity in such a way that texts with maximum textual similarity are also shown to be 77% and 67% semantically similar in terms of linear and hierarchical criteria, respectively. Furthermore, the text length is found to be more effective in representing the hierarchical semantic compared to the linear one. Based on the findings, it is concluded that when the subjects are homogenous in the tree of knowledge, abstracts provide effective semantic capabilities, while in heterogeneous milieus, full-texts processing or knowledge bases is needed to acquire IR effectiveness

The Role of Ontology in Information Retrieval: Reviewing Current Research and Representing a Conceptual Model

Inefficiency of thesauri and other information representation tools in electronic environment have forced librarians to revise the structure of these tools. So they have tried to develop other information organization tools such as ontology. In this paper, the performance of ontology in information retrieval was investigated. In addition, by reviewing two basic ontology-based information retrieval models- Lingpeng model and Dan Model- a new conceptual model was introduced

The Relation between the Complexity and Semantic Distance of Icons and their Effectiveness in Digital Libraries

The present study tends to investigate the relation between the complexity and semantic distance of Icons and their Effectiveness in searching module of Simorgh, Azarakhsh and Nika applications. Following a correlational survey, the participants of this research consisted of two groups: specialists and end-users. The former consisted of 30 PhD in Knowledge and Information Science, and the latter included undergraduate students of Shiraz University. First, the effective and non-effective icons were identified by end-users. Then, their complexity and semantic distance was investigated by specialists. The results of the study showed that there was a statistically significant difference between effective and non-effective icons; effective icons have less complexity and semantic distance than non-effective icons. Furthermore, it showed a significant strong relationship between the complexity of icons and their semantic distance. The more complexity, the more semantic distance it was, and vice versa. Despite the importance of the studies on the relation between the complexity and semantic distance of icons and their effectiveness, little attention is paid to it in the area of digital library applications. Investigating the studies on the relation between the complexity and semantic distance of icons and their effectiveness may clarify effective icons’ features. It also helps designers to design effective icons and build better and easier interaction between users and digital library application

The Investigation of the Librarians’ Mental Model Completeness Scale of the Icons in the Circulation and Cataloging Modules of Azarakhsh, Simorgh and Nika Digital Library Applications

The present study intended to investigate the librarians’ mental model completeness scale of the icons in the circulation and cataloging modules of Azarakhsh, Simorgh and Nika digital library applications. Following a survey research design, The population of this research consisted of the librarians who were familiar with at least one of the digital library applications. Since the number of them was limited (174), they were selected using census. According to the results, in both circulation and cataloging modules, the librarians’ mental model of the icons was more complete in Simorgh application than those of Azarakhsh and Nika. Furthermore, a list of icons in the circulation and cataloging modules of the three applications, in which the librarians’ mental model of the icons’ functions was complete and incomplete, was provided. Since the users’ mental models of the icons in both circulation and cataloging modules might be incomplete or incorrect, one can determine the required instruction for the librarians by investigating the mental models’ completeness scale. Furthermore, providing a list of icons in which the librarians’ mental model of the icons’ functions is complete helps designers to design user interface in such a way that it corresponds to the users’ mental models as much as possible

Investigating Factors Affecting on the Users\' Mental Models of Icons in Digital Library Software

Perception of icons is one of the most important elements of graphical user interface in information systems that is affected by personal and environmental factors, including users' mental models. The present study tended to investigate factors affecting on the users' mental models of icons in digital library software. This is an applied research using qualitive and quantitive approach. Gathering data tool in quantitive section is researcher-made questionnaire and in qualitive section is semi-structured interview. The participants consisted of B.A. and M.A. students of knowledge and information science in Shiraz University and Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and Shiraz University librarians, 174 persons. According to the results, " experience", "icons' functions", "external characteristics of icon", and "context" are four main categories affecting on users' mental models of icons. "Experience" includes users' former familiarity and experience and " icons' functions " includes compatibility of icon function with its picture, referring the icon to unknown and uncommon function rather than common function, common function in different applications and special functions of some of icons. " appearance characteristic of icons" includes color, size, clarity, context and complexity of icon. It hasn’t been any research that investigate factors affecting on users' mental models of icons in digital library software. Recognition of factors affecting on users' mental models can help digital library software designers to design the icons that have more consonancy with users’ mental models and eventually provide users satisfaction

An Assessment of Iranian Journals guide for authors

One indicator to assess the journals in international studies is the quality of guide for authors. The aim of this study is to determine the quality of guide for authors in Iranian journals.The population consisted of 755 Persian journals approved by Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in March 2013. Using a checklist, authors reviewed separately the content of guide for authors of 501 journals that provided access to their guide for authors through the web.according to the results, a total of 40% of the observed items were met. In addition, of the four studied sections, including generalities, legal and ethical issues, article structure and appearance, legal and ethical issues (18%) and appearance (56%) had the worst and best status respectively. In terms of the severity of problems, "violation of individuals or group rights"," how to write abbreviations and acronyms", "accepting journal requirements and laws", and "writing manuals used by authors" had the highest severity rankings