Showing papers in "Journal of Information Science in 2005"

What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works:

Abstract: This paper is a comparative review of four seminal works on communities of practice. It is argued that the ambiguities of the terms community and practice are a source of the concept's reusability allowing it to be reappropriated for different purposes, academic and practical. However, it is potentially confusing that the works differ so markedly in their conceptualizations of community, learning, power and change, diversity and informality. The three earlier works are underpinned by a common epistemological view, but Lave and Wenger's 1991 short monograph is often read as primarily about the socialization of newcomers into knowledge by a form of apprenticeship, while the focus in Brown and Duguid's article of the same year is, in contrast, on improvising new knowledge in an interstitial group that forms in resistance to management. Wenger's 1998 book treats communities of practice as the informal relations and understandings that develop in mutual engagement on an appropriated joint enterprise, but his f...

Human resource information systems (HRIS) and technology trust

Abstract: Scholars in many disciplines have considered the antecedents and consequences of various forms of trust. This paper generates 11 propositions exploring the relationship between Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) and the trust an individual places in the inanimate technology (technology trust) and models the effect of those relationships on HRIS implementation success. Specifically, organizational, technological, and user factors are considered and modeled to generate a set of testable propositions that can subsequently be investigated in various organizational settings. Eleven propositions are offered suggesting that organizational trust, pooled interdependence, organizational community, organizational culture, technology adoption, technology utility, technology usability, socialization, sensitivity to privacy, and predisposition to trust influence an individual's level of trust in the HRIS technology (technology trust) and ultimately the success of an HRIS implementation process. A summary of the relationships between the key constructs in the model and recommendations for future research are provided.

Information hub blogs

Abstract: Blogging has become an important activity on the web; the number of web blogs is growing extremely fast, and thus this phenomenon cannot be ignored. This paper monitors a set of blogs for a two-month period in September-October 2003 and characterizes these blogs based on descriptive statistics and content analysis. We have chosen a set of ‘topic-oriented’ blogs, i.e. blogs whose purpose is to convey professional information. Our findings show that most of these blogs are excellent information hubs, i.e. provide short summaries (sometimes with a personal touch) with links to further information on major issues related to the topic of the blog.

Knowledge creation: absorptive capacity, organizational mechanisms, and knowledge storage/retrieval capabilities:

Abstract: Drawing on a knowledge-based perspective of the firm (KBV), this study develops a framework that delineates the interrelationships among 'the roles of individuals as well as organizations,' 'the IT...

The emerging discourse of knowledge management: a new dawn for information science research?

Abstract: Information science has played a limited role in providing fresh insights into the emerging interdisciplinary discourse of knowledge management. There are opportunities and challenges posed by the new discourse. An analysis of the knowledge management literature within information science journals shows a need for a wider academic perspective and a more philosophically grounded one. As the current knowledge management discourse is fragmented, we propose an integrative, interdisciplinary framework that would be useful for resituating knowledge management among scholars and practitioners. The principal pillars of this theoretical framework are organizational learning; systems and technology; and culture and strategy. Current criticisms of the knowledge management discourse are closely examined. The notions of knowledge sharing, social capital and organizational learning processes provide fundamental insights into knowledge management. These processes are explored from a social, cognitive and technological perspective.

The English literature researcher in the age of the Internet

Abstract: This study explores the extent to which the information seeking behaviour of researchers active in the field of English Literature in the universities of the UK and the wider world has changed as a result of the developing electronic information revolution. It deals with the researchers' attitudes towards the Internet and examines their position with regard to utilizing the Internet as a publication outlet. The different types of electronic information sources for English literature are identified and the experiences of researchers using them explored. Finally, the study examines researcher attitudes towards electronic publication and to plans for a `virtual library'. The article concludes with recommendations for further study of the use of electronic resources in relation to information literacy and browsing and other facilities for subject access on the Internet.

Integrating option model and knowledge management performance measures: an empirical study

Abstract: The knowledge-based economy is coming, and knowledge management (KM) has rapidly disseminated in academic circles as well as in the business world. While an increasing number of companies have launched into knowledge management initiatives, a large proportion of these initiatives are limited to a technical focus. The problem with this type of focus is that it excludes and neglects the true potential benefits that can be derived from knowledge management. This paper develops a new metric, knowledge management performance index (KMPI), for evaluating the performance of a firm in its KM at a point in time. We therefore suggest that a KMPI can be used to determine KM activities from the following perspectives: knowledge creation, knowledge conversion, knowledge circulation and knowledge completion. When KM activities efficiency is increased, KMPI will also be expanded, enabling firms to become knowledge intensive. This paper makes three important contributions: (1) it provides a formal theoretical grounding for the validity of the Black-Scholes model that might be applied to KM; (2) it proposes a measurement framework to enable knowledge assets to be leveraged effectively and efficiently; and (3) it presents the first application of the Black-Scholes model that uses a real-world business situation involving KM as its test bed. The results prove the option pricing model can act as a measurement guideline to the whole range of KM activities.

estWin: Online data stream mining of recent frequent itemsets by sliding window method

Abstract: Knowledge embedded in a data stream is likely to be changed as time goes by. Identifying the recent change of the knowledge quickly can provide valuable information for the analysis of the data stream. However, most mining algorithms over a data stream are not able to extract the recent change of knowledge in a data stream adaptively. This is because the obsolete information of old data elements which may be no longer useful or possibly invalid at present is regarded as being as important as that of recent data elements. This paper proposes a sliding window method that finds recently frequent itemsets over a transactional online data stream adaptively. The size of a sliding window defines the desired life-time of information in a newly generated transaction. Consequently, only recently generated transactions in the range of the window are considered to find the recently frequent itemsets of a data stream.

How do search engines respond to some non-English queries?

Abstract: In this article, we explored the capabilities of search engines for non-English languages. As a test case, we considered four languages: Russian, French, Hungarian and Hebrew. For each of these languages we tested three general search engines: Alta Vista, FAST and Google and some local search engines. Our results indicate that in the examined cases the general search engines ignore the special characteristics of non-English languages, and sometimes they do not even handle diacritics well. These findings are rather disturbing, since for example Google is very popular in non-English speaking countries as well, and users are either not aware of what they miss when using search tools that do not take into account the structure and the special characteristics of the specific language or have no alternatives but to use these search engines.

Internal learning climate, knowledge management process and perceived knowledge management satisfaction

Abstract: Effective knowledge management (KM) has been a topic of great interest and extensively studied by organization researchers. Yet there is little research that attempts to explain the organizational ...

The global digital divide in the Internet: developed countries constructs and Third World realities

Abstract: Defined as the differential degree to which rich and poor countries benefit from new information and communications technologies such as the Internet, the global digital divide is widely measured by international institutions in terms of the number of persons with individual access to those technologies Yet, while this measure makes sense in the rich countries, where individual ownership is widespread among the population, it makes very little sense in poor countries For, in the latter, what we find is that although individual access is indeed very limited, a remarkable number of local innovations ensure that the benefits of the Internet are made available to at least 10 million people throughout the Third World Many such persons are illiterate, unskilled and resident in the rural areas of developing countries These findings directly contradict the commonly held notion that there are few, if any, local innovations in the applications of the Internet outside the rich countries and those parts of poorer countries with close connections to the former (most typically through multinational corporations) From a policy point of view, we suggest that foreign aid donors and national governments pay less attention to providing individual access facilities such as so-called telecentres and focus instead on ways to foster indigenous rural innovation systems devoted to finding relevant and cost-effective applications of the Internet

Studies on incidence pattern recognition based on information entropy

Abstract: For pattern recognition, the weight of the feature index is very important and is usually used to measure the feature index's importance. The weight is usually divided into two types. One is determined by the knowledge and experience of experts or individuals, and called subjective weight; the other is based on statistical properties and measurement data, and is called objective weight. In this paper, a new objective weight, information entropy weight (IEW) is defined and constructed based on information entropy and the practical background of the survey data. On the basis of gray relation analysis and IEW presented here, a new concept of information incidence degree (IID) is proposed. A new method of incidence pattern recognition based on IID is set up, and applied to soil nutrient data processing. The results of simulation application show that the method presented here is feasible and effective. It provides a new research approach for information pattern recognition.

Analyzing the mobilization of grassroots activities via the internet: a case study

Abstract: What part does the internet play in socio-political mobilization? The internet has influenced the ways in which we interact with each other and has been hailed as a great potential force to enrich civil society. In order to understand the extent of the internet's influence on social activists' activities, we examined newspaper and journal articles to identify indicators of that influence. Combining these indicators with elements drawn from theories of resource mobilization and participation, we focused our analysis on two distinct grassroots activities online and examined the roles of the internet for each. This analysis helps us conceptualize the mobilization of grassroots activities via the internet. The results may help inform social scientists as well as practitioners who are involved in grassroots activities, and provide a baseline for comparison with future research that examines mobilization of such activities with the use of the internet over time.

Internet policy and diffusion in China, Malaysia and Singapore

Abstract: The Internet has had a revolutionary impact on culture, communication and economic development around the world. In their efforts of using this powerful technology as a means for leapfrogging and bridging the gaps with developed nations, developing countries face challenges of poor telecommunications infrastructure and difficulties in utilizing the Internet's full potential and managing its information flow. By studying and comparing China, Malaysia and Singapore's practices, this article attempts to examine how a national Internet policy can address these challenges and realize the benefits the Internet offers, and to explore what lessons developing countries can draw from a comparative approach to policy analysis.

Integrating heterogeneous data warehouses using XML technologies

Abstract: Data warehousing has been widely adopted by contemporary enterprises. For inter-organizational information sharing, the need cannot be over-emphasized to conduct researches on the integration of heterogeneous data warehouses to overcome the challenging situations today. That makes it urgent to establish a systematic integration methodology for integrating heterogeneous data warehouses via the Internet or proprietary extranets. Traditionally, researchers usually employed a canonical format as the integration medium for logical data integrations among heterogeneous systems. In this paper, to fully utilize the power of the Internet, we propose a framework and develop a prototype to integrate heterogeneous data warehouses by XML technologies. We first formally define the elements in data warehousing and discuss various semantic conflicts occurring among heterogeneous data cubes. Then, we propose the system architecture and related resolution procedures for all kinds of semantic conflicts. For local data cubes with different schemas, we define a global XML Schema to integrate the local cube structures, and transform each local cube respectively into an XML document conforming to the global XML Schema. These transformed XML documents obtained from local cubes will be manipulated by pre-defined XQuery commands to form a unified XML document, which can be regarded as the global cube. The integrated global cube can be easily stored and manipulated in native XML databases. The proposed methodology enables global users to browse or pose multi-dimensional expressions (MDX) on the global cube to obtain a result in the same way as they perform locally.

Interaction quality between IS professionals and users : impacting conflict and project performance

Abstract: The quality of the interaction between the information system project team and the users in a development project is not clearly linked to the success of projects in terms of meeting budgets and product goals. Quality interaction may be crucial in understanding why past research is equivocal in support of the development maxim that user involvement is crucial to the success of an information system project. In this study, internal conflict among the IS project team is separated from the conflict of project team members with external users. Both internal and external team conflicts are found to impact interaction quality negatively, which in turn is strongly and positively related to project performance. These relationships indicate that attention to both internal and external conflict is crucial in achieving project goals.

Development of a Universal Virtual Computer (UVC) for long-term preservation of digital objects

Abstract: Emulation has been proposed as a preservation strategy for longevity of digital objects. An advantage of emulation is the relative platform independency. Emulation with a high degree of platform independency requires a Universal Virtual Computer (UVC), as described by Lorie. This paper describes the realization of the enhanced UVC developed for the National Library of the Netherlands. The preservation method of the UVC at preservation time and at retrieval time (in the future) is concisely described, the conceptual model of the UVC is given, and the object design and the logical data viewer of the UVC are presented. The UVC has been realized and proven to work for image types using the JPEG and GIF87a formats, although performance of the present UVC can still can be improved. The UVC demonstration tool is freely available at the Alphaworks web site to let the general public experience this approach on long-term access.

Mapping interdisciplinarity in demography: a journal network analysis

Abstract: Despite increasing interest in studying the intellectual structures of interdisciplinary fields, mapping interdisciplinarity in demography remains an unexplored topic. This paper visualizes such a demographic intellectual structure through a citation analysis of 65 demography-related journals between 2000 and 2003. The journal citation data were collected fromJournal Citation Reports. The subject relatedness of the journals was revealed through a cluster analysis, a network diagram, and an analysis of citation percentages between demography journals and all selected journals. Twelve clusters of subject specialties are identified. The network diagram largely matches the result of the cluster analysis. The results reveal closer connections between the demography journals and neighboring social sciences journals than with public health and medical science journals. Correlations between the citation matrices suggest stable demographic citation patterns over time.

Information society revisited: from vision to reality

Abstract: In this article a range of national and international policies, many tied to electronic business and electronic government initiatives, are reviewed from the much older perspective of the Information Society. As a concept, the Information Society has retained a form of residual currency but while not quite dormant, it has been overshadowed by what are essentially techno-economic New Economy perspectives. Although these techno-economic priorities can be viewed as contributing to the ultimate development of an Information Society, this contribution continues to fall somewhat short of what would be deemed sufficient. The shortfalls are particularly evident in the case of socially disadvantaged members of the community. In reviewing such developments mainly in Europe but with examples drawn from elsewhere, progress towards Information Society status is assessed in a social context that illustrates the gap that exists between aspiration and achievement in this regard.

Efficient mining method for retrieving sequential patterns over online data streams

Abstract: With the usefulness of data mining in various fields of information science, various mining methods have been proposed in previous research. Recently, in these fields, data has taken the form of continuous data streams rather than finite stored data sets. In this paper, a mining method of sequential patterns over an online sequence data stream is proposed, which is useful for retrieving embedded knowledge in the data stream. The proposed method can minimize memory usage of the mining process while an error is allowed in its mining result, and supports flexible trade-off between memory usage and mining accuracy. However, the error is minimized by an accurate estimation method for the count of a sequence, which considers the ordering information of items. The proposed method can catch a recent change in a sequence data stream in a short time, by a decaying mechanism gracefully discarding old information that may be no longer useful.

Influencing web-browsing behavior with intriguing and informative hyperlink wording

Abstract: Textual hyperlinks are important mainstays of the navigation systems of websites. The study presented here examines how the wording of hyperlinks in a navigation menu and embedded within the body text of a web page can influence users' browsing behavior, perceptions, and comprehension. Five experimental conditions were tested that varied hyper-link wording (generic, intriguing, and informative) in a navigation menu and in embedded links. Significant differences were found between the experimental conditions concerning number of links clicked, number of pages viewed, and inferential comprehension, with higher scores for study participants in conditions that had a navigation menu with generic hyperlink wording and embedded hyperlinks with intriguing or informative wording.

Implementing a convergent model for information literacy: combining research and web literacy:

Abstract: The authors propose a convergent model for information literacy (IL) based on complementary proficiencies in research and web literacy. Within this integrated framework, information technology (IT) is an essential dynamic in IL instruction. This model was designed, implemented and tested in an upper-level discipline-specific undergraduate information science (IS) course that requires students to develop research-oriented web pages. This study finds that student familiarity with IL and IT increased in this course. In addition, students who indicated a familiarity with certain web design terms also reported a familiarity with certain IL terms. A factor analysis of survey data indicates that a correlation may exist between research and web design in the development of comprehensive IL knowledge. This paper identifies three dimensions of IL and IT: web environment knowledge, web development knowledge, and research skills. This model is portable to other courses, programs, and organizations engaged in IL and I...

Managing IT projects: communication pitfalls and bridges

Abstract: The complex nature of the matrix organizational structure presents a communication paradigm unparalled by any other management position, creating an organizational environment that is uniquely sensitive to interpersonal communications. This paper discusses the organizational environment typically found in major information systems initiatives as well as some of the interpersonal communications challenges encountered by the IT project manager. Suggestions are provided as bridges to avoid the pitfalls these challenges present.

How much is too little? Privacy and smart cards in Hong Kong and Ontario

Abstract: In this article, we analyze the notion of privacy - how it is conceptualized and implemented as a constitutive element of identity - in two different cultures: Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Ontario, Canada. By examining the two jurisdictions of Hong Kong and Ontario, we argue that, in addition to institutional structures, differing cultural notions of privacy affect the acceptance of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). For our comparison, we focus on one potentially privacy-invasive technology, smart cards, and discuss the factors that contribute to their adoption and use in the two regions selected, including one's conceptualization of digital identity and privacy, and the role of consultation and public debate.

Towards a weighted average framework for evaluating the quality of web-located health information

Abstract: This article proposes a framework for evaluating the quality of web-located health information. A set of affirmative response evaluation features are identified across four quality categories -currency/authority, accuracy, objectivity and privacy -and are used as the basis for determining the fundamental quality of web-located health information. Furthermore, the researchers add a value dimension to the framework by using a weighted average technique allowing information features to be scored proportionally -a feature that other assessment frameworks tend to overlook. The framework was used to access 56 health information documents published on the web, concluding that only four pages addressed all the core criteria proposed in the framework. The study also found that a relatively high number of commercial health sites intermixed health information with product promotion and advertising. The study was exploratory and because sampling was not probabilistic, it is difficult to claim generalizability at this...

Is citation normalization realistic

Abstract: One method for assessing quality of research outputs across different technical disciplines is comparing citations received by the research output documents. However, crossdiscipline citation comparison studies require discipline normalization, in order to eliminate discipline differences in cultural citation practices and discipline differences in the number of active researchers available to cite. The 'definition' of, and number of documents used to represent, a discipline become critical. This study attempted to determine whether the citation characteristics (average, median) of a discipline's domain stabilized as the domain's size was decreased. A sample of papers (classified asresearch articles only, not review articles, by the Institute for Scientific Information) published in the journalOncogene in 1999 was clustered hierarchically, and the citation averages and medians were computed for each cluster at different cluster hierarchical levels. The citation characteristics became increasingly stratified as the clusters were reduced in size, raising serious questions about the credibility of a selected denominator for normalization studies. An interesting side result occurred when all the retrieved articles were sorted by number of citations. Thirteen of the fifty most highly cited research articles had 100 or more references, whereas zero of the fifty least citedresearch articles had 100 or more references.

Dissemination of Spanish social sciences and humanities journals

Abstract: The presence of scholarly journals in international data bases promotes the dissemination of research results and also facilitates requests for specific articles or journals by end users. As scientists seek optimal visibility for their work and wish their results to be published in journals with high circulation, it is important to know which are the leading journals within each scientific area. This paper contains a bibliometric study of scientific journals in the areas of Social Sciences and Humanities that are currently published in Spain, together with information concerning their production and circulation in the different national and international bibliographical data bases, publisher, scientific discipline, impact factor, frequency of publication, language and type of delivery used.

Constructing intelligent and open mobile commerce using a semantic web approach

Abstract: To achieve the full potential of mobile commerce (m-Commerce), many problems need to be resolved, such as how to make m-Commerce seamlessly span wide areas with heterogeneous information sources; how to improve the matchmaking between user requirements and product specifications; and how to make m-Commerce systems more intelligent in taking different actions according to different user context environments. We believe that the semantic web is a promising technology to solve these problems. In this paper, a framework is proposed in which semantic web ontology is used to model the contexts, user profiles, and product/service information. The semantic web service ontology, OWL-S, is extended for matching user requirements with product specifications at the semantic level, with context information taken into account. Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) is used for inferencing with context and user profile descriptions. Our system adopts a multi-agent infrastructure to deal with the integration and interaction between information sources and users. This paper demonstrates some of the great potential of semantic web technology for m-Commerce.

Evolution of virtual libraries in Nigeria: myth or reality?

Abstract: The article investigates factors that may make the Nigeria Virtual Library Project a myth or reality. Questionnaires were used for data collection, using 22 University Librarians in federal universities as respondents, and 14 (64%) University Librarians completed the questionnaires. Three indicators were used to determine the myth or reality of evolving virtual libraries in Nigeria: availability of information infrastructures, human capacity building programmes in ICT, and level of funding of university libraries. Nine (64%) of the libraries have relevant information infrastructures, 12 (86%) are involved in human capacity building programmes, 11 (79%) affirm that the level of funding for university libraries is low. The article concludes that evolution of virtual libraries is feasible and real in Nigeria.

A reference model for designing effective reputation information systems

Abstract: Reputation is a socially constructed, distributed knowledge phenomenon that creates powerful incentives for good behavior. The idea of using an information system to make reputation explicit and measurable is promising and not new. Well-known examples include Amazon's seller ranking system and eBay's feedback forum. The thesis of this article is that future reputation information systems can be more effective and useful than existing systems if their designs are informed by multi-disciplinary research on reputation. The contribution of this article is a reference model, or meta-specification, that describes the essential functionality and behavior that embedded information systems need to provide to be effective and useful mechanisms for making reputation explicit and measurable. The reference model specified in the industry-standard Unified Modeling Language (UML) is based on a multi-disciplinary understanding of reputation. The model addresses systems that focus on personal reputation. Extensions for organizational reputation are discussed along with other challenges for future research.