Essays Of An Information Scientist 1991

This book is written for members of the scholarly research community, and for persons involved in research evaluation and research policy. More specifically, it is directed towards the following four main groups of readers: – All scientists and scholars who have been or will be subjected to a quantitative assessment of research performance using citation analysis. – Research policy makers and managers who wish to become conversant with the basic features of citation analysis, and about its potentialities and limitations. – Members of peer review committees and other evaluators, who consider the use of citation analysis as a tool in their assessments. – Practitioners and students in the field of quantitative science and technology studies, informetrics, and library and information science. Citation analysis involves the construction and application of a series of indicators of the ‘impact’, ‘influence’ or ‘quality’ of scholarly work, derived from citation data, i.e. data on references cited in footnotes or bibliographies of scholarly research publications. Such indicators are applied both in the study of scholarly communication and in the assessment of research performance. The term ‘scholarly’ comprises all domains of science and scholarship, including not only those fields that are normally denoted as science – the natural and life sciences, mathematical and technical sciences – but also social sciences and humanities.

This book aims at answering pressing issues such as the neo-liberalization of the university, strategical solutions to the contemporary crisis, its multiple definitions and different pedagogical manifestations across disciplines and levels of education. Inspired by bell hooks' "transgressive school" and Haraway's "responsibility", it is an attempt at creating new forms of organizational practices that consequently promote a politics of care for each other. It addresses the challenges and possibilities of teaching students about women and gender by discussing the pedagogical, theoretical and political dimensions of learning and teaching with a three-dimensional perspective. First, it revisits how we can reconfigure a feminist politics of responsibility "able to respond" or engage with contemporary crises. Secondly, it conceptualizes crisis and explains how it is transforming contemporary societies and affecting individual vulnerabilities and institutional structures. And, thirdly, it offers practical cases from different European locations (Spain, Portugal, Austria, United Kingdom and Poland, as well as the complete journey of the Feminist Caravan) in which crisis and responsibility have served to reformulate contemporary feminist pedagogies, altering curriculums, reframing institutions, and affecting the process of teaching and learning

Can the methods of science be directed toward science itself? How did it happen that scientists, scientific documents, and their bibliographic links came to be regarded as mathematical variables in abstract models of scientific communication? What is the role of quantitative analyses of scientific and technical documentation in current science policy and management? Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis: From the Science Citation Index to Cybermetrics answers these questions through a comprehensive overview of theories, techniques, concepts, and applications in the interdisciplinary and steadily growing field of bibliometrics. Since citation indexes came into the limelight during the mid-1960s, citation networks have become increasingly important for many different research fields. The book begins by investigating the empirical, philosophical, and mathematical foundations of bibliometrics, including its beginnings with the Science Citation Index, the theoretical framework behind it, and its mathematical underpinnings. It then examines the application of bibliometrics and citation analysis in the sciences and science studies, especially the sociology of science and science policy. Finally it provides a view of the future of bibliometrics, exploring in detail the ongoing extension of bibliometric methods to the structure and dynamics of the World Wide Web. This book gives newcomers to the field of bibliometrics an accessible entry point to an entire research tradition otherwise scattered through a vast amount of journal literature. At the same time, it brings to the forefront the cross-disciplinary linkages between the various fields (sociology, philosophy, mathematics, politics) that intersect at the crossroads of citation analysis. Because of its discursive and interdisciplinary approach, the book is useful to those in every area of scholarship involved in the quantitative analysis of information exchanges, but also to science historians and general readers who simply wish to familiarize them

Stay on top with the latest developments in scientific and technical journal publications! In Scholarly Communication in Science and Engineering Research in Higher Education, experts in the academic community propose cost-effective alternatives to commercial publications in the face of increased journal prices and reduced budgets. This book discusses recent technological innovations that can maintain the needs of researchers who need to stay on the cutting edge of science and technology as well as scholars who must be published and peer-reviewed in order to achieve tenure and promotion. This text also examines the latest developments in information retrieval that will effectively cut time and costs for academic researchers in the library. Scholarly Communication in Science and Engineering Research in Higher Education focuses on the need for the academic community to accept new, economical methods of producing and making available publications such as peer reviews, research papers, letters, technical and experiment reports, preprints, and conference papers. This volume also emphasizes that scientists and engineers—whether graduate students or professionals—must have access to the latest relevant research in their fields and rely on libraries to provide it. Several chapters in this book examine the problem areas of information technology that will need to be fixed, such as bottlenecks to the flow of information, difficulties using information retrieval systems, and the challenges with archiving electronic journals. Using research and case studies, this book offers strategies for obtaining benefits such as: more efficient and inexpensive ways to access and navigate information more cost-effective means of authentication and quality control new initiative programs in electronic theses and dissertations to assist graduate students increased dissemination and access for conference papers at significantly less cost alternative and more effective approaches for solving underlying problems within the scholarly communication circuit of scientists activities for librarians to help expand utilization of digital technologies at the local level accurate and reliable retrieval of citation data from online sources Using Scholarly Communication in Science and Engineering Research in Higher Education, you can play an important role in improving the means and methods in this area of academics. This important guide will help librarians, science and engineering faculty and students, researchers, and publishers maintain funding, improve efficiency, and offer new methods for scientific studies.

What will future sci-tech libraries be like? Who will be the key players? In this insightful volume, first published in 1992, leaders in sci-tech librarianship reflect on their years in the profession and predict how the sci-tech library will look in ten years. It takes a close look at the revolution in the communication of scientific information and how technology has transformed the process of knowledge delivery and acquisitions. It prepares libraries to react to new channels of scholarly communication that in the future may challenge the viability of the research library. Most importantly, it emphasizes how the rapid pace of change in science, communication, and computers has pushed libraries to aggressively seek to become central to the knowledge formation and transfer process - just to survive. These provocative chapters reveal how sci-tech librarians need to work with scientists and engineers to understand their changing information needs and to participate in the planning and development of new information systems. This book examines all areas of the scientific process that will be affected by change: the way research is conducted, communicated, transferred, stored, and delivered. The changes discussed in this book encompass researchers, librarians, information managers, publishers, and users. Some of the important topics discussed include an in-depth analysis of the information needs of science and engineering and how to best develop the electronic means to meet them; leadership challenges in the future electronic, computer, or virtual library; concern over the quality of information services for scientists delivered by non-scientist librarians; a ten-year prediction for sci-tech librarians and sci-tech publishers; the science library building of the future; the impact of increasingly interdisciplinary scientific research; and the effect of federal policy on sci-tech libraries.

The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, comprising of seven volumes, now in its fourth edition, compiles the contributions of major researchers and practitioners and explores the cultural institutions of more than 30 countries. This major reference presents over 550 entries extensively reviewed for accuracy in seven print volumes or online. The new fourth edition, which includes 55 new entires and 60 revised entries, continues to reflect the growing convergence among the disciplines that influence information and the cultural record, with coverage of the latest topics as well as classic articles of historical and theoretical importance.

This book, first published in 2002, gathers some of America's top subject expert librarians to determine the most influential journals in their respective fields. 32 contributing authors reviewed journals from over twenty countries that have successfully shaped the evolution of their individual specialties worldwide. Their choices reflect the history of each discipline or profession, taking into account rivalries between universities, professional societies, for-profit and not-for-profit publishers, and even nation-states and international ideologies, in each journal's quest for reputational dominance. Each journal was judged using criteria such as longevity of publication, foresight in carving out its niche, ability to attract & sustain professional or academic affiliations, opinion leadership or agenda-setting power, and ongoing criticality to the study or practice of their field. The book presents wholly independent reviewers; none are in the employ of any publisher, but each is fully credentialed and well published, and many are award-winners. The authors guide college and professional school librarians on limited budgets via an exposition of their analytical and critical winnowing process in determining the classic resources for their faculty, students, and working professional clientele.