D.Litt. et Phil. / This study investigated the impact of the Web on the information-seeking and citation behaviour of Unisa academics. The research study was executed in two phases. Phase 1 consisted of a Web citation analysis and phase 2 a questionnaire. Phase 1 explored how the availability of Web information resources affected the scholarly citation behaviour of Unisa academics by determining the relationship between Web-based references and non-Web-based references in the reference lists of Unisa academics. In phase 1 it was established how frequently Web-based information resources were cited (reference lists) compared to traditional print sources. Furthermore, the variation in Web citation patterns between academics from different subject disciplines was identified. The main source of data was 20 825 citations contained in reference lists, endnotes and footnotes of 458 accredited research journal articles submitted in 2004 by Unisa to the Department of Education for subsidy purposes. The data were gathered by calculating the total number of references that appeared in the reference lists. Thereafter a citation count was done of the total number of Web references cited in the article by checking each article for references containing Web-based information resources such as URLs of webpages or websites. Collectively the reference lists consisted of 3.5% references to Web-based information resources and 96.5% to non-Web-based information resources. The findings of the 2005 citation study indicate that academics tended to rely on static, academic library, print-based resources when citing the literature, not Web-based information resources. Furthermore, academics from the five Unisa Colleges displayed different Web citation patterns. Phase 2 of the study, a questionnaire survey, provides insight into the relative significance of the open Web as an information resource and Web search engines as research tools among academics. The aim of the questionnaire was to record the preferences, usage and perceptions of the freely available open Web information resources, as compared to the academic library information resources (print and electronic). In addition, the factors that influence the choice of the academic when iv selecting the open Web or the academic library as an information resource were investigated. The entire Unisa academic staff establishment was invited via e-mail and the Unisa intranet to participate in the survey. The survey instrument consisted of 32 questions via the Web and/or print-based format. The findings reported are based on a survey of 187 Unisa academics with a response rate of 15.74%.

This research investigates the association between board diversity and firms’ innovation in Canada over the period of 2001 to 2015. Previous research revealed that board diversity has conflicting effects on the firm innovation depending on the country, and there is no such study conducted in Canada. Moreover, only few proxies for the board diversity have been used to study the subject in the literature. Thus, this study introduces new factors of board diversity and add to the literature by assessing the topic in Canadian firms. We found that firms with more women on the board when women members are more than one fourth of the board members can increase the number of patents. Also, while more education diversity results in more patent numbers, more diversity in the number of years that board members have served the board results in less patent numbers for the firms, it is noteworthy that there is no significant association between the deviation in the number of years that board members have served the company and the innovation of the firm.

Link label prediction is the problem of predicting the missing labels or signs of all the unlabeled edges in a network. For signed networks, these labels can either be positive or negative. In recent years, different algorithms have been proposed such as using regression, trust propagation and matrix factorization. These approaches have tried to solve the problem of link label prediction by using ideas from social theories, where most of them predict a single missing label given that labels of other edges are known. However, in most real-world social graphs, the number of labeled edges is usually less than that of unlabeled edges. Therefore, predicting a single edge label at a time would require multiple runs and is more computationally demanding. In this thesis, we look at link label prediction problem on a signed citation network with missing edge labels. Our citation network consists of papers from three major machine learning and data mining conferences together with their references, and edges showing the relationship between them. An edge in our network is labeled either positive (dataset relevant) if the reference is based on the dataset used in the paper or negative otherwise. We present three approaches to predict the missing labels. The first approach converts the label prediction problem into a standard classification problem. We then, generate a set of features for each edge and then adopt Support Vector Machines in solving the classification problem. For the second approach, we formalize the graph such that the edges are represented as nodes with links showing similarities between them. We then adopt a label propagation method to propagate the labels on known nodes to those with unknown labels. In the third approach, we adopt a PageRank approach where we rank the nodes according to the number of incoming positive and negative edges, after which we set a threshold. Based on the ranks, we can infer an edge would be positive if it goes a node above the threshold. Experimental results on our citation network corroborate the efficacy of these approaches. With each edge having a label, we also performed additional network analysis where we extracted a subnetwork of the dataset relevant edges and nodes in our citation network, and then detected different communities from this extracted sub-network. To understand the different detected communities, we performed a case study on several dataset communities. The study shows a relationship between the major topic areas in a dataset community and the data sources in the community.

This master´s thesis considers implementation of a standard of bibliographic quotation BibTeX using the XML technology. This project starts with theoretical introduction into XML technology problematics. Next part contains introduction into LATEX and its subprogram BibTEX and into its function. Later, the principle of implementation and important parts of XSL transformation (from output les *.bib. *.tex, *.html) source code will be described. Verication of functionality of the implementation is demonstrated using BibTEX database of used literature generated by XML technology.

In vergangenen Publikationen wurden bereits verschiedene Zitierungsanalysen durchgeführt. Jedoch stets auf unterschiedlichen Datenquellen, was einen direkten Vergleich der jeweiligen Ergebnisse verhindert. Ziel dieser Arbeit soll es sein, eine Grundlage zur flexiblen Durchführung von Zitierungsanalysen zu schaffen. Durch die Entwicklung eines Data Warehouses sollen verschiedene Datenquellen integriert und konsolidiert werden, um eine Vielfalt von Analyseperspektiven und Berechnungsverfahren auf einem einheitlichen Datenbestand zu ermöglichen. Dabei wird insbesondere auf die Besonderheiten bei der Nutzung von Webdatenquellen, als wie verschiedene Methoden zur Datenbereinigung eingegangen.

This diploma thesis is focused on determining the degree of presence of Benford's law in citation data. The data and their acquisition are described in detail. The most extensive analysis was performed on a dataset of 8.6 million records of scientific outputs from the Web of Science database, over a five-year period, with a selection of the three most numerous and most cited types of documents. Descriptive MAD (Mean Absolute Deviation) statistic were used to determine the degree of presence of Benford's law. The degree of presence of Benford's law was also determined for two datasets, the production of public universities in the Czech Republic and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic under the same conditions as in other analyses.

No description available.

We investigate the applicability of network analysis to the problem of finding seminal publications in scientific publishing. In particular, we focus on the network measures betweenness centrality, the so-called backbone graph, and the burstiness of citations. The metrics are evaluated using precision-related scores with respect to gold standards based on fellow programmes and manual annotation. Citation counts, PageRank, and random selection are used as baselines. We find that the backbone graph provides us with a way to possibly discover seminal publications with low citation count, and combining betweenness and burstiness gives results on par with citation count. / I detta examensarbete undersöks det huruvida analys av citeringsgrafer kan användas för att finna betydelsefulla vetenskapliga publikationer. Framför allt studeras ”betweenness”-centralitet, den så kallade ”backbone”-grafen samt ”burstiness” av citeringar. Dessa mått utvärderas med hjälp av precisionsmått med avseende på guldstandarder baserade på ’fellow’-program samt via manuell annotering. Antal citeringar, PageRank, och slumpmässigt urval används som jämförelse. Resultaten visar att ”backbone”-grafen kan bidra till att eventuellt upptäcka betydelsefulla publikationer med ett lågt antal citeringar samt att en kombination av ”betweenness” och ”burstiness” ger resultat i nivå med de man får av att räkna antal citeringar.

Excreted pharmaceuticals are leaking out into aquatic environments via effluent water where they are hypothesized to be potent enough to alter fish behavior. Central for this hypothesis is oxazepam, an anti-anxiety drug that have been shown to make fish behave more bold, more active, and less social. However, some laboratory trials have also failed to find these effects and have been poor predictors of fishes’ behavior in situ. The aims of my meta-analysis were; i) investigate the strength of oxazepam induced behavior changes in wild-caught fish, and ii) assess eventual impact of citation bias (i.e., that researcher prefer citing studies showing effects) on published literature relating to oxazepam induced behavior changes. I found, when combining existing literature on oxazepam impact on wild caught fish behavior, that exposure concentrations ranging between 0.5-100µg/L, did only change the activity (increased) of the fish. In high (>100 µg/L) concentration exposures activity and boldness increased, and sociality decreased as previously suggested. I also noticed a significant citation bias, where studies showing effects of oxazepam on behaviors were more frequently cited. Several studies report absence of behavior effects caused by oxazepam in controlled laboratory trials, despite using >1000 times higher concentrations that ever been measured in fresh water. Therefore, I find it unlikely that this drug has strong effects on fish in nature. Citation biases towards studies showing effects seems likely to have had a strong influence on the current notion that oxazepam is altering fish behavior.

Writing has a peculiar place within higher art education. Students in all three cycles are required to produce written thesis work alongside their artistic work in order to receive a diploma. However, there is no established style or methodological approach to the written thesis work and the information practices of art students are not well researched.  This thesis attempts to discover and explain the information practices of art students by studying master’s theses from two Swedish universities using a mixed method. A quantitative study provides data on the types and subject of the references of interest to art students. While a qualitative study of a smaller number of theses is conducted in order to better understand the reference practices in the context of the art field. Results are analysed using a theoretical framework composed of Richard Whitley’s theories on the social and intellectual organization of the scientific fields and Björn Hammarfelt’s writing on reference practices within the humanities.  Findings confirm the previously documented importance of non-art material and print books, but also highlight the importance of various digital sources to students. It was also discovered that art students are unlikely to strictly follow established references styles in their theses. Instead, reference practices are highly individualized and related to variables such as degree of specialization within the individual program and the stylistic construction theses.