On the relationship of funding and research publications

The impact of 17 year period of funding in schistosomiasis research on publication outcome was examined. Two productivity and three quality indicators were used to compare the output from the entire population of schistosomiasis in this period with those associated with 351 funded researchers. A substantially higher productivity and citation impact were found. This consistency of direction points to the positive effect of a period of sustained funding commitment.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43669/1/11192_2005_Article_BF02018158.pd

A discipline-specific journal selection algorithm

An experiment was conducted to demonstrate the validity of a journal selection and ranking algorithm designed for any discipline. The characteristics of the journal generation procedure incorporate both cited and citing journals so that basic scientific research journals contributing to the research foundation of the discipline, as well as journals in the discipline, might be identified. A Discipline Influence Score was proposed as a journal weight which could reflect the relative citation influence of each journal to the discipline under consideration. Two evaluation studies showed that this method produced many journals which were perceived as frequently used journals by a group of American and Chinese professionals in veterinary medicine. Journals with high Discipline Influence Scores were also selected by experts in their compilations of basic recommended lists in this discipline. In particular, the easy implementation of this journal selection algorithm appears to be of practical use to resource-poor libraries.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26414/1/0000501.pd

Communicating MIS research: A citation study of journal influence

Due to difficulties with objectively evaluating the quality of MIS research, attitudes about journals in which this research is published play an important role in determining the allocation of research resources. To provide a more objective basis for these attitudes, we examine journal influence in communicating MIS research over a 9-year period using citation analyses, researcher perceptions, and publishing patterns of top MIS research universities. As a result of these analyses, we identify a cohesive stable group of highly influential journals which can reasonably be called an MIS core. An internal ranking of this core is then determined which is significantly different from prior rankings.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31049/1/0000726.pd

Term and citation retrieval: A field study

The relative efficacy of searching by terms and by citations is investigated with real searches collected in health sciences libraries. The objective is to seek evidence to confirm or refute findings from a controlled pilot study, and to understand the factors at work in operational search environments. Overall confirmation was found. In both the pilot and field studies, the improvement of the odds that overlap items retrieved would be relevant or partially relevant was truly astounding. If an item was retrieved from both MEDLINE(R) and SCISEARCH(R), it was six times more likely that it would be relevant or partially relevant as opposed to being not relevant, and 8.4 times more likely for definitely relevant retrievals. In the field setting, citation searching was able to add an average of 24% recall to traditional subject retrieval. Term or citation searching from the open literature produced lower precision results. Attempts to identify distinguishing characteristics in queries which might benefit most from additional citation searches proved to be inconclusive. In spite of the obvious gain shown by citation searching, online access of citation databases has been hampered by their relative high cost.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31048/1/0000725.pd

The Overseeing Mother: Revisiting the Frontal-Pose Lady in the Wu Family Shrines in Second Century China

Located in present-day Jiaxiang in Shandong province, the Wu family shrines built during the second century in the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220) were among the best-known works in Chinese art history. Although for centuries scholars have exhaustively studied the pictorial programs, the frontal-pose female image situated on the second floor of the central pavilion carved at the rear wall of the shrines has remained a question. Beginning with the woman’s eyes, this article demonstrates that the image is more than a generic portrait (“hard motif ”), but rather represents “feminine overseeing from above” (“soft motif ”). This synthetic motif combines three different earlier motifs – the frontal-pose hostess enjoying entertainment, the elevated spectator, and the Queen Mother of the West. By creatively fusing the three motifs into one unity, the Jiaxiang artists lent to the frontal-pose lady a unique power: she not only dominated the center of the composition, but also, like a divine being, commanded a unified view of the surroundings on the lofty building, hence echoing the political reality of the empress mother’s “overseeing the court” in the second century during Eastern Han dynasty

Relevance odds of retrieval overlaps from seven search fields

Data contained in a 1982 paper were analyzed in terms of relevance odds of common items retrieved by searching any two content-bearing search fields. While the 1982 study compared the relative retrieval performance of 7 search fields, the present study shows that duplicate documents retrieved by the use of terms from any two of the fields would have higher odds of being judged relevant than those retrieved by only one of the fields. Sixty-three relevance odds were computed using the log cross product technique. The highest relevance odds were associated with common items retrieved from assigned descriptors and from truncated free-text terms from either the title or abstract fields; their relevance odds were 19 to 2 in favor of overlaps. Overlap retrieval could be considered a strategy for high precision searching.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31615/1/0000546.pd

Perusing the Literature via Citation Links

While MEDLINE searching is recognized as the single most effective means to identify relevant items to solve clinical and research problems, the clinician should also consider the complementary strategy to search for relevant items citing a known key paper. This study reports on the usefulness of citation searching based on the analysis of 89 searches. For each topic, the citations linked to an average of 24% additional relevant materials. At least one relevant item was added to 85% of the searches. The additional effort of scanning another printout is minimal since citation searching for 42% of the searches produced less than 7 additional items, half of which were judged to he useful. Duplicate retrievals were mostly of definite relevance. This alternate strategy appeared to be effective in interdisciplinary topics. Furthermore, the online version of the citation index is known for short turnaround time in processing, a feature important for many rapidly developing specialties.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30859/1/0000522.pd

Factors Affecting Students' Use of MEDLINE

MEDLINE search transcripts by a class of third-year medical students were analyzed. The 184 students were divided into three groups according to their search experience in terms of the number of sessions logged at the time of a search assignment. A Strong relation was found between the level of search experience and the frequency of use in the subsequent 5 months. Over 80% of the students were able to retrieve a few useful items for an emergency clinical situation. More experienced searchers were able to retrieve more relevant items than less experienced searchers. However, no relation was found between search effectiveness and clinical knowledge as indicated by two scores derived from the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Clinical Assessment examination and Part II of NBME. Similarly, clinical knowledge also did not appear to relate to MEDLINE search experience. More exposure to MEDLINE during medical school could play an important role in developing effective literature searching skills for lifelong learning, which is essential for today's health professionals.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30421/1/0000042.pd