When students write research papers they use a variety of sources in their paper. These sources range from web pages to research articles. The purpose of this study was to decide whether or not undergraduate students would choose to use scholarly or non-scholarly sources when presented with both types of sources in a set of search results. Twenty Duke University students were recruited for the study. They were given a research topic and asked to perform a search. Both the search results and interface were fabricated by the researcher in order to control the experimental environment. The students were asked to rate the sources found in the results, choose four sources to use for their research scenario, and finally, were asked to explain reasoning behind their choices. The findings concluded that the students in this study were more likely to choose scholarly sources over non-scholarly sources and give these scholarly sources higher ratings.

This thesis provides an in-depth study of the possibilities of applying bibliometric methods to the research field of literary studies. The four articles that constitute the backbone of this thesis focus on different aspects of references and citations in literary studies: from the use of references in the text to citation patterns among 34 literature journals. The analysis covers both an Anglo-Saxon context as well as research in Swedish literary studies, and the materials used include Web of Science data, references in the Swedish literature journal TFL (Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap) and applications to the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). A study is also made of the influence of one single publication—Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations—and its impact in literary studies and in wider academia. The results from the four articles are elaborated upon using a theoretical framework that focuses on differences in the social and intellectual organization of research fields. According to these theories literary studies can be described as a fragmented, heterogenic, interdisciplinary and ‘rural’ field with a diverse audience. The fragmented and rural organization of the field is reflected in low citation frequencies as well as in the difficulties in discerning research specialities in co-citation mappings, while the analysis of the intellectual base (highly cited authors) is an example of the heterogenic and interdisciplinary character of the field, as it includes authors from many fields across the humanities and the social sciences. The thesis emphasizes that bibliometric studies of research fields in the humanities need to incorporate non-English and non-journal publications in order to produce valid and fair results. Moreover, bibliometric methods must be modified in accordance with the organization of research in a particular field, and differences in referencing practices and citation patterns ought to be considered. Consequently, it is advised that bibliometric measures for evaluating research in these fields should, if used at all, be applied with great caution. / © Björn Hammarfelt 2012

The background of the project is partly found in a long tradition within library and information science (LIS) of meta-analyses on the field, partly in a science studies discussion on research fields and their contextual relation to wider academia, fields of professional practices and professionalization processes. The general purpose of the project is to analyze the social and intellectual development and organization of LIS; and to investigate the impact of the close relation to the practice field, as well as the relation to the academic world in general. Based on the general purpose of the project and results and interpretations of the four articles attached to the thesis, three questions were stated for discussion in the thesis proper, concerning: the effects of a dual origin and LIS as a discipline, a field of research and a field of practice, the purpose of meta-studies and implications in terms of identity and perception of LIS; and competition and cooperation with other fields of research. Because of the heterogeneous nature of LIS, a variety of methods and materials was used in the different articles; and methodological issues on limits and bias in bibliographic databases – and the implications on the perception of research areas with varying publication and citation behaviour – were discussed. The analyses were performed against a theoretical framework, providing key organizational characteristics of scientific fields, relating to social, intellectual and contextual aspects, in combination with theories on scientific and disciplinary development, professionalization and interdisciplinarity; but also, for analytical contrast: alternate theories on the development of the sciences since 1945. LIS shows two distinct paths of development: research areas developing out of other fields of research; and a disciplinary development originating out of the field of practice and institutions for educating practitioners. Analyzing meta-studies of LIS, the picture of a field with a vague identity and a diverse self-understanding, even in terms of core characteristics, emerges. The relation to the wider academic community is characterized by diffuse boundaries towards, and competition from, other fields of research. In general, LIS is a fragmented field with a multitude of wildly varying research areas; and with large variations in terms of organizational setting; which together with a vague identity and diffuse boundaries, as well as the close connections to the field of practice, might contribute towards explaining problems LIS have been experiencing, establishing itself in academia. However, there are also signs towards an integration of a number of LIS research areas, as well as an increase in interdisciplinary cooperation, contradicting theories suggesting a further fragmentation; and supporting ideas on the sciences developing towards e.g. interdisciplinarity and applicability of results.

This dissertation research is focused on how we, as researchers, ‘influence’ others researchers. In particular, I am concerned with the notion of what constitutes the ‘influence’ of a scholar and how ‘influence’ is conferred upon scholars. This research is concerned with the construct called ‘scholarly influence’. Scholarly influence is of interest because a clear “theory of scholarly influence” does not yet exist. Rather a number of surrogate measures or concepts that are variable are used to evaluate the value of one’s academic work. ‘Scholarly influence’ is broken down into ‘ideational influence’ or the influence that one has through publication and the uptake of the ideas presented in the publication, and ‘social influence’ or the influence that one has through working with other researchers. Finally through the use of the definition of ‘scholarly influence’ this dissertation tries to commence a definition of ‘quality’ in scholarly work.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: McKnight, C., Dillon, A. and Shackel, B. (1996) The electronic journal and its implications for the digital library. In T. Harrison and T. Stephens (eds.) Computer Networking and Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century. NY: SUNY Press, 351-368. 1. INTRODUCTION: It is now over ten years since the first electronic journal experiments (e.g., EIES, BLEND) and the intervening years have not seen researchers being idle in this field. Indeed, while experiments have continued apace in an attempt to answer various questions such as the appropriateness of particular interfaces, electronic journals have continued to appear. The third edition of the ARL list (Okerson, 1993) contains 45 electronic journals while the first edition, only two years earlier (Okerson, 1991), listed only 27. This might suggest reasonably rapid growth but in actual fact represents a high rate of turnover also -- 16 of the original 27 do not appear in the latest list. We therefore start this chapter from the assumption that electronic journals will continue to be a feature of the scholarly communication process, although not all will survive. Our second assumption arises from our experiences in the design, implementation and evaluation of information technology based systems in general, not just electronic journals. That is, we assume that in order to be acceptable, any system attempting to replace an existing technology must enable users to perform their necessary tasks in a way which is at least as easy as the existing system. The new system must offer at least as much (and preferably more) than the existing system, otherwise motivation to move from the old to the new is not high. In the present context, this means that the successful electronic journals will be those which not only support the scholarly communication process and all the other user requirements satisfied by paper based journals, but also support additional, enhanced facilities such as tailorable presentation formats, integrated interactive discussion about articles, flexible indexing and retrieval, hypertext linking and so forth.

Document in French / Cet article présente brièvement notre projet de recherche doctorale. à travers le rôle et les fonctions des bibliothèques universitaires, nous cherchons à comprendre les facteurs sociaux, économiques, institutionnels et documentaires ayant un impact sur lâ intégration des dépôts institutionnels dans lâ infrastructure informationnelle des universités canadiennes. ___________________________________________________________ This paper briefly presents our doctoral project. Throughout the role and the responsibilities of academic libraries, we aim to understand the social, economical, institutional and documentary factors influencing the integration of institutional repositories into the information infrastructure of Canadian universities.

Running scholarly presses as profit centers is becoming increasingly unsustainable as many are barely able to stay solvent in todayâ s market economy. Under increasing financial pressures university presses are creating a bottleneck for the publishing of scholarly articles, making less of it available more slowly. By restricting access and limiting outlets for publication, todayâ s commercially structured scholarly publishing system runs counter to the aims of scholarly publishingâ to circulate discourse and research findings through academic institutions and into the world. The open access movement is one response to a general failure of the for-profit scholarly publishing system. This paper looks at what it would mean to reconfigure scholarly publishing away from commerce and toward an open access model, and the potential role of libraries within an open access publishing system.

This paper reports on part of a study of academic researchers' use of Internet information and communication technologies (IICTs) to support information-seeking activities. The goal of this research is to gain insight into disciplinary and cultural differences of information seeking in the Internet Era. The project is ongoing to include more participants from different cultures.

“What does the global research environment look like?” This paper presents a summary look at the results of efforts to address this question using available indicators on global research production. It was surprising how little information is available, how difficult some of it is to access and how flawed the data are. The three most useful data sources were UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Research and Development data (1996-2002), the Institute of Scientific Information publications listings for January 1998 through March 2003, and the World of Learning 2002 reference volume. The data showed that it is difficult to easily get a good overview of the global research situation from existing sources. Furthermore, inequalities between countries in research capacity are marked and challenging. Information science offers strategies for responding to both of these challenges. In both cases improvements are likely if access to information can be facilitated and the process of integrating information from different sources can be simplified, allowing transformation into effective action. The global research environment thus serves as a case study for the focus of this paper – the exploration of information science responses to challenges in the management, exchange and implementation of knowledge globally.

This paper revises David Ellis's information-seeking behavior model of social scientists, which includes six generic features: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. The paper uses social science faculty researching stateless nations as the study population. The description and analysis of the information-seeking behavior of this group of scholars is based on data collected through structured and semistructured electronic mail interviews. Sixty faculty members from 14 different countries were interviewed by e-mail. For reality check purposes, face-to-face interviews with five faculty members were also conducted. Although the study confirmed Ellis's model, it found that a fuller description of the information-seeking process of social scientists studying stateless nations should include four additional features besides those identified by Ellis. These new features are: accessing, networking, verifying, and information managing. In view of that, the study develops a new model, which, unlike Ellis's, groups all the features into four interrelated stages: searching, accessing, processing, and ending. This new model is fully described and its implications on research and practice are discussed. How and why scholars studied here are different than other academic social scientists is also discussed.