Design-based research for LIS

Design-based research is a methodology emerging from the field of education that may hold potential for research in library and information science (LIS). Based upon the assumption that learning is situated in a real-world context, design-based research combines research, design, and practice into one process. It results in usable products that are supported by a theoretical framework. While definitional and methodological issues do exist, the method holds some promise for research into “user-centered” information systems and services. In the field of LIS, design-based research might contribute to our understanding of how people find, choose, understand, and use information in context. The method is also of interest to professionals concerned with “evidence-based practice.” This article will first explain and describe the method as it has been used in the allied field of education. Issues related to definition and methodology will be explored, as well as some of the solutions that have been proposed. The method will then be related to LIS, using the bonded design work of Large, Nesset, Beheshti, and Bowler [Large, A., Nesset, V., Beheshti, J., & Bowler, L. (2006a). Bonded design: a methodology for designing with children. In S. Kurniawan & P. Saphiris (Eds.), Advances in Universal Web Design and Evaluation: Research, Trends and Opportunities. London: Idea Group., Large, A., Nesset, V., Beheshti, J., & Bowler, L. (2006b). “Bonded design”: a novel approach to intergenerational information technology design. Library and Information Science Research, 28, 64–82] as a case study to demonstrate the applicability of design-based research to LIS inquiry.     

Macro-level indicators of the relations between research funding and research output

In response to the call for a science of science policy, we discuss the contribution of indicators at the macro-level of nations from a scientometric perspective. In addition to global trends such as the rise of China, one can relate percentages of world share of publications to government expenditure in academic research. The marginal costs of improving one's share are increasing over time. Countries differ considerably in terms of the efficiency of turning (financial) input into bibliometrically measurable output. Both funding schemes and disciplinary portfolios differ among countries. A price per paper can nevertheless be estimated. The percentages of GDP spent on academic research in different nations are significantly correlated to historical contingencies such as the percentage of researchers in the population. The institutional dynamics make strategic objectives such as the Lisbon objective of the EU – that is, spending 3% of GDP for R&D in 2010 – unrealistic.     

Collaborative strategies for low-use research materials

Librarians are often fond of proclaiming that they are developing digital libraries. The clear evidence however is that the better strategy is to design services to “deliver digitally.” A brief overview of current, past, and future publishing trends will reveal data key to any understanding of evolving policies for preservation of a nation's intellectual output. These data highlight that academic libraries, at least, are presenting homogeneous collections of digital serials. Together with the budget pressures to maintain serial collections, the result is a lack of collecting diversity of the intellectual publishing of interest to academe. Presently, academic libraries in Australia are committing between 30% and 40% of their acquisitions budgets to digital resources. Yet, this cannot buy more than 10% of the published serials output. The availability of serial information will become more and more constrained in the very near future as the range of print serial titles shrinks in accordance with institutional buying power.CAVAL Collaborative Solutions is a consortium of Victorian university libraries and the State Library of Victoria. Established 25 years ago, it enables libraries to pursue projects together. CAVAL created the CARM Centre in 1997 to house one million volumes in state-of-the-art environmental conditions and fire suppression. The CARM Centre is unique in that it is a true collaborative collection of little used research materials. Ownership of materials is relegated to the CARM Centre. Simultaneously, each member takes on ownership of the CARM Centre's total collection. This results in a collection with no duplication, a no-discard policy, and an expectation for 250 or more years or functional service. Moreover, it provides individual libraries with a means of rationalizing collections and the ability to avoid capital expenditures. There are many implications for the member libraries as well as to the library system in Victoria and beyond.     

An exploratory study: Using adapted interactive research design and contributive research method

This paper describes a nuanced methodological approach that responds to the notion that knowledge is socially positioned.MethodFour researchers sought to answer: How can Contributive Research Method be employed in a workshop with participants to build knowledge, provide trustworthy data collection, and leverage the opportunity to revise open content? Using an Adapted Interactive Model of Research Design (adapted from Maxwell, 2009) for engaging in the Contributive Research Method (Puig et al., 2018), data was gathered from an online satellite event, involving 34 institutions from Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Of the 97 participants, 57 contributed data. The presentation utilized digital tools (Mentimeter, and Hypothes.is) with an online learning community to promote the wellbeing of librarians.ResultsAn Adapted Interactive Research Design (AIRD) together with a Contributive Research Method (CRM) (Puig et al., 2018) and CAST analysis (AIRD with CRM + CAST) were effective as a nuanced research design.ConclusionsContributive Research creates an opportunity to truly blend research with the scholarship of learning and teaching where it could be used in Higher Education during lectures and potentially in classrooms. Findings contribute to the body of literature on methodology and may be applicable to similar studies.     

Medical research charities and open access

This paper provides an analysis of the attitudes and activities of UK medical research charities in relation to open access (OA). Both quantitative and qualitative data are presented derived from a recent survey of charities covering areas such as policy development, funding arrangements, and business process design for OA. Positions on key issues including green and gold OA, funding article‐processing charges (APCs), and publication licences are assessed. Modelling of potential APCs as a percentage of overall annual research spend is undertaken to show possible costs of a charged‐for gold system. Medical research charities clearly regard OA as important and some see it as an opportunity to further their mission. However, many expressed significant concerns particularly about the costs and expertise required to support OA. Further co‐ordination of policy development and action across the sector and with other stakeholders is recommended in order to help ensure optimal implementation of OA.     

A research impact indicator for institutions

This paper introduces a new impact indicator for the research effort of a university, ⁿh₃. The number of documents or the number of citations obtained by an institution are used frequently in international ranking of institutions. However, these are very dependent on the size and this is inducing mergers with the apparent sole goal of improving the research ranking. The alternative is to use the ratio of the two measures, the mean citation rate, that is size independent but it has been shown to fluctuate along the time as a consequence of its dependence on a very small number of documents with an extremely good citation performance. In the last few years, the popularity of the Hirsch index as an indicator of the research performance of individual researchers led to its application to journals and institutions. However, the original aim of this h index of giving a mixed measure of the number of documents published and their impact as measured by the citations collected along the time is totally undesirable for institutions as the overall size may be considered irrelevant for the impact evaluation of research. Furthermore, the h index when applied to institutions tends to retain a very small number of documents making all other research production irrelevant for this indicator. The ⁿh₃ index proposed here is designed to measure solely the impact of research in a way that is independent of the size of the institution and is made relatively stable by making a 20-year estimate of the citations of the documents produced in a single year.     

Promoting library research: The research review competition

This column describes the Research Review Competition, a program developed by the Library at LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York to promote research and writing skills. The Competition, which since 1980 has recognized well-written research papers that reflect mastery of library research skills, is a success with students and faculty, and highlights the library's role in the academic process.     

Joint European-Russian research area: Experience of preparing and managing European research projects for Russia

The paper describes practical experience in preparing and managing European research projects of the EU Framework Programs on research and technology development. We note that creating bifurcated net-works focused on working with FP7 at the national, regional, and institutional levels would enable one to critically improve competitiveness of Russian research, and that active participation of the leading Post-Soviet scholars in the Program would give a unique chance to start the restoration process of the Post-Soviet research area taking into account the meager enthusiasm of officials at the governmental science agencies as regards integration of the former USSR science and research systems.     

Priorities for publishing research

The author suggests a wide-ranging research agenda, including applying and safeguarding copyright, increasing literacy, comparing the appropriate uses of the printed word and other media, understanding language itself, assisting authors to get their work into print, improving statistics about the industry, predicting the future of suppliers as well as publishers themselves, improving distribution, and influencing the likely future of the information superhighway. J. Kendrick Noble was formerly publishing industry analyst for Paine Webber, Inc.     

The use of paradigms in information research

Studies of human behaviour usually require the adoption of a research paradigm with the objective of improving the credibility and generalisability of the study. Applying research paradigms in information research is noted to vary from one researcher to another based on the investigator's choice as well as the character of the issue under investigation. The differences in the application of research paradigms in information research do not rely on philosophical assumptions alone, but also on the practical consequences of the inquiry and the interpretation of the findings. The four most broadly applied paradigms in research - pragmatism, interpretivism, positivism, and post-positivism and how the adoption of these paradigms fit into information research was examined. Findings indicate that application of research paradigms in information research is beneficial. However, information researchers are advised to be cautious of the weaknesses of the paradigm they would adopt for a study.     

Social media use in the research workflow

The paper reports on a major international survey, covering 2,000 researchers, which investigated the use of social media in the research workflow. The topic is the second to emerge from the Charleston Observatory, the research adjunct of the popular annual Charleston Conference ( http://www.katina.info/conference/ ). The study shows that social media have found serious application at all points of the research lifecycle, from identifying research opportunities to disseminating findings at the end. The three most popular social media tools in a research setting were those for collaborative authoring, conferencing, and scheduling meetings. The most popular brands used tend to be mainstream anchor technologies or ‘household brands‘, such as Twitter. Age is a poor predictor of social media use in a research context, and humanities and social science scholars avail themselves most of social media. Journals, conference proceedings, and edited books remain the core traditional means of disseminating research, with institutional repositories highly valued as well, but social media have become important complementary channels for disseminating and discovering research.     

Funding international communication research

The purpose of this paper is to derive certain lessons learned about funded international communication research. Like other types of funded research, funding for international communication research is increasing as funding agencies perceive the value of communication research. Much international communication research is interdisciplinary in nature, and benefits the American university in broadening intellectual concerns to a more worldwide perspective. The Internet is changing the nature of certain types of international communication research by providing rapid, low-cost access to overseas respondents in data-gathering, and by raising new issues to be investigated. Also, the rise of this new communication technology calls the potential of communication research to the attention of funding agencies.     

对GILS的认识研究

对GILS的定义、查询技术及其与DC的异同进行了阐述,并介绍了美国不同流派对GILS的评估.     

The Bottleneck in research communications

Researchers find it increasingly difficult to investigate the research literature as a result of sharply restricted university library budgest. Fremont Rider's barometer of the effectiveness of an educational institution is more relevant now, after fifty years, because it provides a clear measure of the deficits in university collections and can be corroborated by other evidence of reduced productivity in research. Librarians and faculty have been told there is no money for the library while growth of administrative expenditures has been well funded. Researchers have begun to call for reforms.     

Using evaluation research methods to improve quality

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A research agenda for special libraries

The Special Libraries Association (SLA), an international professional association that represents 14,000 information resource experts, is a key influence in defining and meeting the research priorities of the special library community. In June 1986, SLA's Board of Directors formed the Special Committee on Research with the charge of determining if a research program was a necessity for SLA, and, if so, to establish a'comprehensive research strategy, in particular focusing on issues especially relevant to special librarianship and information management. In June 1988, The Board of Directors voted to establish an in-house research department and a standing Research Committee, which formulated a research agenda subsequently approved by the Board in June 1989. SLA's research agenda sets forth priorities and serves as the keystone to all research conducted by and for the Association. In June 1990, the SLA Board of Directors reaffirmed the Association's commitment to research by approving the Strategic Planning Committee's recommendation that research be one of the top priorities for the next five years. This article reviews SLA's research agenda, current research activities and future priorities, and comments on the importance of research to the special library community.     

Medical journals and effective dissemination of health research

Clinical medical journals have not been effective in meeting the information needs of practitioners and bridging the gap between clinical research and practice. The slow adoption of results of clinical research is at least partly due to the failure of clinical journals to disseminate information in a way that would motivate practitioners to change practice. Although implementation is primarily a local process, medical journals are in a unique position to advance implementation by modifying their focus and adjusting their contents. Strategies that may be useful include publication of pre‐appraised evidence summaries and ‘clinical bottom‐lines’ and giving importance to systematic reviews and large evaluative research articles as they represent higher levels of evidence and have greater potential to change practice. Clinical journals should encourage researchers to consider how and by whom the findings will be used and provide information on implications for implementation such as possible strategies that may work, cost‐effectiveness, side‐effects and potential barriers to implementation. Medical journal publishers should explore ways to cooperate so that findings of landmark clinical trials could be shared thus reducing the ‘scatter’ of medical information. Electronic media offers numerous advantages such as quick accessibility and linking of information, and medical journals should capitalize on such innovations. There is a paradigm shift in health care practice as evidence is consciously and explicitly incorporated into individual patient care. Medical journals need to change to reflect this change in practice and provide practitioners with valid and relevant information.     

个人所得税的改革和研究

个人所得税是我国财政收入的一项重要组成部分,也是调节社会财富分配的主要政策性工具之一,在我国的经济发展中发挥着至关重要的作用。近年来个人所得税已经成为我国社会程度关注高,改革力度最大的一个税种也是最具有潜力和活力的一个税种。但是用于我国个人所得税存在弊端,面临着全面深入的改革。本文就收集的相关资料结合当前的国内个税实际,借鉴国外经验,从理论和实际相结合就个人所得税的现状和发展趋势进行了较为深刻的分析并在今后如何在改革中如何完善个人所得税提出自己的建议。     

Double rank analysis for research assessment

Reliable methods for the assessment of research success are still in discussion. One method, which uses the likelihood of publishing very highly cited papers, has been validated in terms of Nobel prizes garnered. However, this method cannot be applied widely because it uses the fraction of publications in the upper tail of citation distribution that follows a power law, which includes a low number of publications in most countries and institutions. To achieve the same purpose without restrictions, we have developed the double rank analysis, in which publications that have a low number of citations are also included. By ranking publications by their number of citations from highest to lowest, publications from institutions or countries have two ranking numbers: one for their internal and another one for world positions; the internal ranking number can be expressed as a function of the world ranking number. In log–log double rank plots, a large number of publications fit a straight line; extrapolation allows estimating the likelihood of publishing the highest cited publication. The straight line derives from a power law behavior of the double rank that occurs because citations follow lognormal distributions with values of μ and σ that vary within narrow limits.