Scientometric Indicators And Webometrics And The Polyrepresentation Principle Information Retrieval

This book contains the text of three lectures from the 28th Sarada Ranganathan Endowment Lectures, held in Bangalore in December 2010. The lectures were delivered by Dr. Peter Ingwersen, Professor at the Danish School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen. The first lecture on scientometric indicators presented two fundamental models of scientific communication: the classic one - mainly providing access to document records in library catalogues and bibliographic databases - and the digitized one - relying on open access and diversified document access potentials. The lecture contextualizes, characterizes, and exemplifies the concept of 'scientometrics.' The second lecture on the range of webometrics provided insights into the history of webometrics in context of other research evaluation methods. The lecture exemplified selected cases, both from traditional webometric analyses and new ones based on scientific dataset usage and comparisons of link and download/reading patterns for newspapers. The third lecture on poly-representation provides an integrated and explicitly cognitive framework for understanding the process involved in information retrieval. The lecture outlined the principle of poly-representation with a focus on the kinds of representations involved. The potentials, strengths, and problems of applying the principle are discussed in the light of recent studies. The challenges and opportunities for future research are identified along a poly-representation continuum.

In recent years, our world has experienced a profound shift and progression in available computing and knowledge sharing innovations. These emerging advancements have developed at a rapid pace, disseminating into and affecting numerous aspects of contemporary society. This has created a pivotal need for an innovative compendium encompassing the latest trends, concepts, and issues surrounding this relevant discipline area. During the past 15 years, the Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology has become recognized as one of the landmark sources of the latest knowledge and discoveries in this discipline. The Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Fourth Edition is a 10-volume set which includes 705 original and previously unpublished research articles covering a full range of perspectives, applications, and techniques contributed by thousands of experts and researchers from around the globe. This authoritative encyclopedia is an all-encompassing, well-established reference source that is ideally designed to disseminate the most forward-thinking and diverse research findings. With critical perspectives on the impact of information science management and new technologies in modern settings, including but not limited to computer science, education, healthcare, government, engineering, business, and natural and physical sciences, it is a pivotal and relevant source of knowledge that will benefit every professional within the field of information science and technology and is an invaluable addition to every academic and corporate library.

As the academic and scholarly landscape are continuously enhanced by the advent of new technology, librarians must be aware and informed to develop and implement best practices. Effective administration of libraries is a crucial part of delivering library services to patrons and ensuring that information resources are disseminated efficiently. Advanced Methodologies and Technologies in Library Science, Information Management, and Scholarly Inquiry provides emerging information on modern knowledge management and effective means of sharing research through libraries. While highlighting the importance of digital literacy and information resources, readers will also learn new methods in information retrieval and research methods in quality scholarly inquiry. This book is an important resource for librarians, administrators, information science professionals, information technology specialists, students, and researchers seeking current information on the importance of effective library science technology.

This book deals with methods to evaluate scientific productivity. In the book statistical methods, deterministic and stochastic models and numerous indexes are discussed that will help the reader to understand the nonlinear science dynamics and to be able to develop or construct systems for appropriate evaluation of research productivity and management of research groups and organizations. The dynamics of science structures and systems is complex, and the evaluation of research productivity requires a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and measures. The book has three parts. The first part is devoted to mathematical models describing the importance of science for economic growth and systems for the evaluation of research organizations of different size. The second part contains descriptions and discussions of numerous indexes for the evaluation of the productivity of researchers and groups of researchers of different size (up to the comparison of research productivities of research communities of nations). Part three contains discussions of non-Gaussian laws connected to scientific productivity and presents various deterministic and stochastic models of science dynamics and research productivity. The book shows that many famous fat tail distributions as well as many deterministic and stochastic models and processes, which are well known from physics, theory of extreme events or population dynamics, occur also in the description of dynamics of scientific systems and in the description of the characteristics of research productivity. This is not a surprise as scientific systems are nonlinear, open and dissipative.

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 provides its readers with an introduction to interesting prediction and science dynamics problems in the field of Science of Science. Prediction focuses on the forecasting of future performance (or impact) of an entity, either a research article or a scientist, and also the prediction of future links in collaboration networks or identifying missing links in citation networks. The single chapters are written in a way that help the reader gain a detailed technical understanding of the corresponding subjects, the strength and weaknesses of the state-of-the-art approaches for each described problem, and the currently open challenges. While chapter 1 provides a useful contribution in the theoretical foundations of the fields of scientometrics and science of science, chapters 2-4 turn the focal point to the study of factors that affect research impact and its dynamics. Chapters 5-7 then focus on article-level measures that quantify the current and future impact of scientific articles. Next, chapters 8-10 investigate subjects relevant to predicting the future impact of individual researchers. Finally, chapters 11-13 focus on science evolution and dynamics, leveraging heterogeneous and interconnected data, where the analysis of research topic trends and their evolution has always played a key role in impact prediction approaches and quantitative analyses in the field of bibliometrics. Each chapter can be read independently, since it includes a detailed description of the problem being investigated along with a thorough discussion and study of the respective state-of-the-art. Due to the cross-disciplinary character of the Science of Science field, the book may be useful to interested readers from a variety of disciplines like information science, information retrieval, network science, informetrics, scientometrics, and machine learning, to name a few. The profiles of the readers may also be diverse ranging from researchers and professors in the respective fields to students and developers being curious about the covered subjects.

This handbook presents the state of the art of quantitative methods and models to understand and assess the science and technology system. Focusing on various aspects of the development and application of indicators derived from data on scholarly publications, patents and electronic communications, the individual chapters, written by leading experts, discuss theoretical and methodological issues, illustrate applications, highlight their policy context and relevance, and point to future research directions. A substantial portion of the book is dedicated to detailed descriptions and analyses of data sources, presenting both traditional and advanced approaches. It addresses the main bibliographic metrics and indexes, such as the journal impact factor and the h-index, as well as altmetric and webometric indicators and science mapping techniques on different levels of aggregation and in the context of their value for the assessment of research performance as well as their impact on research policy and society. It also presents and critically discusses various national research evaluation systems. Complementing the sections reflecting on the science system, the technology section includes multiple chapters that explain different aspects of patent statistics, patent classification and database search methods to retrieve patent-related information. In addition, it examines the relevance of trademarks and standards as additional technological indicators. The Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators is an invaluable resource for practitioners, scientists and policy makers wanting a systematic and thorough analysis of the potential and limitations of the various approaches to assess research and research performance.

T The Turn analyzes the research of information seeking and retrieval (IS&R) and proposes a new direction of integrating research in these two areas: the fields should turn off their separate and narrow paths and construct a new avenue of research. An essential direction for this avenue is context as given in the subtitle Integration of Information Seeking and Retrieval in Context. Other essential themes in the book include: IS&R research models, frameworks and theories; search and works tasks and situations in context; interaction between humans and machines; information acquisition, relevance and information use; research design and methodology based on a structured set of explicit variables - all set into the holistic cognitive approach. The present monograph invites the reader into a construction project - there is much research to do for a contextual understanding of IS&R. The Turn represents a wide-ranging perspective of IS&R by providing a novel unique research framework, covering both individual and social aspects of information behavior, including the generation, searching, retrieval and use of information. Regarding traditional laboratory information retrieval research, the monograph proposes the extension of research toward actors, search and work tasks, IR interaction and utility of information. Regarding traditional information seeking research, it proposes the extension toward information access technology and work task contexts. The Turn is the first synthesis of research in the broad area of IS&R ranging from systems oriented laboratory IR research to social science oriented information seeking studies.