The sensitivity and precision of search terms in Phases I, II and III of the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy for identifying reports of randomized trials in medline in a specific area of health care--HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment interventions

OBJECTIVES: To detect term(s) in the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS) that retain high sensitivity but improve precision in retrieving reports of trials in the PubMed version of medline. METHODS: Individual terms from the PubMed version of the HSSS were added, term by term, to an African HIV/AIDS strategy to identify reports of trials in medline using PubMed. The titles and abstracts of the records retrieved were read by two handsearchers and checked by a clinical epidemiologist. The sensitivity and precision of each term in the three phases of the HSSS were calculated. RESULTS: Of 7,719 records retrieved, 285 were identified as reports of trials [204 randomized (RCTs); 81 possibly randomized or quasi-randomized (CCTs)]. Phase III had the highest sensitivity (92%). Overall, precision was very low (3.7%). One term, 'random*[tw]', retrieved all RCTs found by our search and improved precision to 29%. The least sensitive terms, yielding no records, were '(doubl* AND mask*)[tw]' and terms containing 'trebl*' or 'tripl*', except for '(tripl* AND blind*)[tw]'. The highest precision per term was for 'Double-blind Method [MeSH]' (76%). CONCLUSIONS: To retrieve all RCTs and CCTs found by our search, seven terms are needed but precision remains low (4.3%). Developments in the methods of search strategy design may help to improve precision while retaining high levels of sensitivity by identifying term(s) which occur frequently in relevant records and are the most efficient at discriminating between different study designs.     

A study comparing centralized CD-ROM and decentralized intranet access to MEDLINE

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a decentralized intranet access in each medical department as opposed to centralized unique MEDLINE access in the medical library. DESIGN: A two-phase questionnaire to evaluate MEDLINE use was given to junior and senior physicians at Rouen University Hospital (RUH). Phase I (August-October 1996) corresponded to a time period when centralized access was the only means of access available and phase II (August-October 1997) to a time period following the introduction of decentralized intranet access. RESULTS: A total of 168 physicians filled out at least one phase of the questionnaire, among whom 123 (73%) filled out both phases. Use of MEDLINE significantly increased in 1997 (average of 10.2+/-1.1 searches in three months) versus 1996 (average of 4.9+/-0.7 searches in three months, P<0.0001). The aim of searches changed, becoming significantly more care oriented in phase II (P<0.0001). The number of searches performed by the physicians alone increased (P<0.0001) and searches performed by the librarian decreased (P<0.0001) in phase II. The method of searches also changed, as searches by author (P< 0.0001), by journal (P = 0.0042), and by free word (P = 0.0027) increased in phase II. Knowledge of the following concepts of MEDLINE significantly increased: explosion (P<0.0001), scope note (P<0.0001), Abridged Index Medicus (AIM) journals (P<0.0001), Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) qualifier (P<0.0001), and focus (P<0.0001). CONCLUSION: A decentralized intranet access to MEDLINE increased the number of searches and knowledge of this bibliographic database. MEDLINE intranet access modified the purpose and the methods of searching.     

基于WEB OF SCIENCE的理科学者H指数实证研究

通过ESI中科学家的Citations排序和CPP排序取交集选出数学、物理、化学、生物、地球科学5个理科学科代表性学者,基于Web of Science(WoS)查出这些学者的累积被引篇数P、被引次数C、篇均被引次数CPP和h指数。分析表明被引篇数P和被引次数C与h指数都有一定相关性;计算表明所有理科学者的h指数落在Hirsch公式和Egghe-Rousseau公式估计值之间,Egghe-Rousseau公式估计值、Hirsch公式估计值和真实h指数之间存在Pearson相关性。     

Are you in h?

A new method of assessment of scientific papers, scientists, and scientific institutions was defined. The significance of a paper was assessed by the definition of the largest (the most prestigious) set, including that paper in its h-core. The sets of papers were defined by affiliation (country, city, university, department) or by subject (branches and sub-branches of science, journal). The inclusion of a paper in the h-core of certain set(s) was used as an indicator of the significance of that paper, and of the scientific output of its author(s), of their scientific institution(s), etc. An analogous procedure was used to assess the contribution of an individual to the scientific output of his/her scientific institution, branch of science, etc.     

An analysis of book versus article productivity based on top researchers careers

This study analyzed the productivity of top scholars in the field in terms of published books in order to (1) equate the relative value of published books in comparison to published research articles, and (2) provide a scholarship ranking which takes into consideration both published books and published research articles. The list of the top 102 researchers in the field, as identified by Hickson, Stacks, and Bodon (1999) and 29 additional researchers identified by Funkhouser (1996) as the top “most cited”; researchers served as the parameters for this study. The total number of articles from those researchers (2,687) was divided by the number of books they had written (426), producing an article‐to‐book ratio of 6.3. Each book was multiplied by that coefficient and that number was added to the number of articles for each author to produce a ranking of the top 100 prolific researchers in communication, based on a combination of both articles and books published.     

A survey of nursing libraries in the Northern Region

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Informetrics in the World System of Higher Education

Consideration is given of the modern state of education in informetrics (bibliometrics and scientometrics) at higher-educational institutions in Russia and abroad. A database is presented of the courses on informetrics taught at various universities worldwide. The distribution of the courses is analyzed by country, by university, by academic major, and by degree level (bachelor’s, master’s, or postgraduate program).     

Characteristics and publication patterns of theses from a Peruvian medical school

Background: Many medical schools require a student thesis before graduation. Publishing results in a peer‐reviewed journal could be an indicator of scientific value and acceptability by the scientific community. The publication pattern of theses published by medical students in Peru is unknown. The aim of this study was to assess the characteristics and publication pattern of theses in biomedical‐indexed journals conducted by medical students in a university with the highest research output in Peru. Methods: Data from registered theses between 2000 and 2003 were obtained from the university library. Publication of theses in biomedical journals was assessed in 2008 by a search strategy using PubMed, Google Scholar, LILACS, LIPECS and SciELO. Results: Four hundred and eighty‐two medical theses were registered between 2000 and 2003; 85 (17.6%) were published in biomedical‐indexed journals. Of the published theses, 28 (5.8%) were published in MEDLINE‐indexed journals, 55 (11.4%) in SciELO‐indexed journals, 61 (12.6%) in LILACS‐indexed journals and 68 (14.1%) in LIPECS‐indexed journals. Most of the published theses (80%) were in Spanish and published in Peruvian journals; and 17 theses (20%) were published in foreign journals (all of them indexed in MEDLINE). In addition, 37 (43.5%) belong primarily to internal medicine, and 24 (28.2%) belong primarily to infectious diseases. Medical students were first authors in 71 (83.5%) of the articles. Conclusion: In this study, most of the published theses were in Spanish, published in local journals and indexed in LIPECS. The percentage of published theses in biomedical journals at this university is comparable with others coming from developed countries.     

Non-english web search: an evaluation of indexing and searching the Greek web

The study reports on a longitudinal and comparative evaluation of Greek language searching on the web. Ten engines, five global (A9, AltaVista, Google, MSN Search, and Yahoo!) and five Greek (Anazitisi, Ano-Kato, Phantis. Trinity, and Visto), were evaluated using (a) navigational queries in 2004 and 2006; and (b) by measuring the freshness of the search engine indices in 2005 and 2006. Homepage finding queries for known Greek organizations were created and searched. Queries included the name of the organization in its Greek and non-Greek, English or transliterated equivalent forms. The organizations represented ten categories: government departments, universities, colleges, travel agencies, museums, media (TV, radio, newspapers), transportation, and banks. The freshness of the indices was evaluated by examining the status of the returned URLs (live versus dead) from the navigational queries, and by identifying if the engines have indexed 32480 active (live) Greek domain URLs. Effectiveness measures included (a) qualitative assessment of how engines handle the Greek language; (b) precision at 10 documents (P@10); (c) mean reciprocal rank (MRR); (d) Navigational Query Discounted Cumulative Gain (NQ-DCG), a new heuristic evaluation measure; (e) response time; (f) the ratio of the dead URL links returned, (g) the presence or absence of URLs and the decay observed over the period of the study. The results report on which of the global and Greek search engines perform best; and if the performance achieved is good enough from a user’s perspective.     

A classification model based on incomplete information on features in the form of their average values

This paper presents a model of classification under incomplete information in the form of mathematical expectations of features; it is based on the minimax (minimin) strategy of decision making. The discriminant function is calculated by maximization (minimization) of the risk functional as a measure of misclassification, by a set of distributions of probabilities with bounds determined by information on features, and minimization by the set of parameters. The algorithm is reduced to solution of the parametric problem of linear programming.     

The development of a scientometric database for monitoring the publication activities of Russian scientists at the Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia

The existing approaches to the definition of the scientific contributions made by researchers are analyzed. A bibliometric database is developed on the basis of the quantitative analysis of publication activities monitored by the most representative global citation systems, such as the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters, USA), Scopus (Elsevier, the Netherlands), and the Russian Science Citation Index (Scientific Electronic Library, the Russian Federation). The system allows teachers and researchers to consult their scientific publications (contained in Scopus, the WoS, and the RSCI),check citation levels and the h-index, filter data by the date of publication, and access the profiles of other researchers.     

The impact of the hospital library on clinical decision making: the Rochester study.

In these times of economic constraint, libraries of all types are under increasing pressure to evaluate their services. Hospital libraries face a particular challenge because the goals of the health care system demand that the relevance of library services to patient care be determined. The hospital librarians in Rochester, New York, responded to this challenge by developing a research project that explored the impact of library services on clinical decision making. A systematically sampled group of 448 physicians in the Rochester area agreed to participate in the study between September 1990 and March 1991. The physicians were asked to request some information related to a current clinical case and then to evaluate its impact on the care of their patients. Senior medical staff or administrators acted as study facilitators in each of the fifteen participating hospitals. As a result of the information provided by the library, 80% of the 208 physicians who returned their questionnaires said that they probably or definitely handled some aspect of patient care differently than they would have handled it otherwise. Changes in the following specific aspects of care were reported by the physicians: diagnosis (29%), choice of tests (51%), choice of drugs (45%), reduced length of hospital stay (19%), and advice given to the patient (72%). Physicians also said that the information provided by the library contributed to their ability to avoid the following: hospital admission (12%), patient mortality (19%), hospital-acquired infection (8%), surgery (21%), and additional tests or procedures (49%). The physicians rated the information provided by the library more highly than that provided by other information sources such as diagnostic imaging, lab tests, and discussions with colleagues. In addition to confirming earlier research findings that information provided by hospital libraries is perceived by physicians as having a significant impact on clinical decision making, the results increase our store of scientific knowledge about the specific nature and extent of the impact of information provided by the hospital library.     

Electronic information for students ‐the Elinor project

The article presents an overview of recent developments in mentoring in the library and information services (LIS) community in the United Kingdom (UK). The article discusses the concept of mentoring, provides a review of relevant literature and summarises a recent fourteen‐month project (May 1995‐July 1996) investigating mentoring as a staff development tool. The project was funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC) and was carried out by the Centre for Information Research and Training (CIRT) in the School of Information Studies at the University of Central England in Birmingham (UCE). Project results relevant to academic libraries are particularly drawn out in this article. The article makes some comparisons between findings in the general literature on mentoring and findings in the recent Birmingham research. It concludes with a discussion of some possible advances in mentoring in the UK LIS community, and a substantial bibliography.     

Known-item Searches Resulting in Zero Hits: Considerations for Discovery Systems

The goal of this article is to understand the reasons why known-item search queries entered in a discovery system return zero hits. We analyze a sample of 708 known-item queries and classify them into four categories of zero hits with regard to whether the item is held by the library and whether the query is formulated correctly: (1) item in stock, but query incorrect, (2) item not in stock, (3) item in stock, but incomplete or erroneous metadata, (4) query is ambiguous or not understandable. The main reasons for zero hits are caused by acquisition and erroneous search queries. We discuss possible solutions for known-item queries resulting in zero hits from the side of the system and show that 30% of zero hits could easily be avoided by applying automatic spelling correction. We argue that libraries can improve their discovery systems or online catalogs by applying strategies to avoid or cope with zero hits inspired by web search engines and commercial search web sites.     

Normalization of zero-inflated data: An empirical analysis of a new indicator family and its use with altmetrics data

Recently, two new indicators (Equalized Mean-based Normalized Proportion Cited, EMNPC; Mean-based Normalized Proportion Cited, MNPC) were proposed which are intended for sparse scientometrics data, e.g., alternative metrics (altmetrics). The indicators compare the proportion of mentioned papers (e.g. on Facebook) of a unit (e.g., a researcher or institution) with the proportion of mentioned papers in the corresponding fields and publication years (the expected values). In this study, we propose a third indicator (Mantel-Haenszel quotient, MHq) belonging to the same indicator family. The MHq is based on the MH analysis – an established method in statistics for the comparison of proportions. We test (using citations and assessments by peers, i.e. F1000Prime recommendations) if the three indicators can distinguish between different quality levels as defined on the basis of the assessments by peers. Thus, we test their convergent validity. We find that the indicator MHq is able to distinguish between the quality levels in most cases while MNPC and EMNPC are not. Since the MHq is shown in this study to be a valid indicator, we apply it to six types of zero-inflated altmetrics data and test whether different altmetrics sources are related to quality. The results for the various altmetrics demonstrate that the relationship between altmetrics (Wikipedia, Facebook, blogs, and news data) and assessments by peers is not as strong as the relationship between citations and assessments by peers. Actually, the relationship between citations and peer assessments is about two to three times stronger than the association between altmetrics and assessments by peers.     

Information literacy in South-East Europe: Formulating strategic initiatives,making reforms and introducing best practices

South-East Europe (SEE) is one of the geographic regions in the world which is lagging behind positive global Information Literacy (IL) developments. An informed, authoritative and enlightened understanding of the state of Information Literacy conceptual understanding and best practices across the region was recently provided by two important UNESCO co-sponsored workshops that addressed specific IL challenges in this part of Europe. The first meeting, the Workshop on Information Literacy Initiatives for Central and South-East European Countries, co-organized by UNESCO, with the support of the CEI (Central European Initiatives, an arm of the EU), took place in 2006 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The second, also co-organized by UNESCO, was held in Ankara, Turkey, as a part of a series of eleven Training-the-Trainers in Information Literacy («TTT») workshops that covered all regions of the world. This paper will review and analyse some of the main policy agreements reached by the participants at these meetings, as well as best practices shared by the participants at the two workshops, and discuss remaining Information Literacy advocacy and promotional barriers. The authors will endeavour to identify region-specific barriers to IL in the SEE region and, based on the aforementioned Ankara and Ljubljana workshop outcomes, define focal points for future local and regional IL events, meetings and other initiatives that could and should be taken.     

A knowledge-based expert systems application in library acquisitions: Monographs

The decision-making process in any environment, including the library, is potentially subjective and arbitrary. The impetus for this research has been to eliminate the discretionary component in vendor selection by designing a quantitative decision-making model. Technically, the model is based on the artificial intelligence concept known as an expert system. The model uses rules provided by the expert, policies of the individual institution, and quantitative decision techniques to assign orders to vendors. Advantages to this knowledge-based model are the following: (1) assurance of quantitative objectivity; (2) efficient allocation of limited resources; (3) improved use of personnel time; (4) creation of a database of vendor price structuring; and (5) usefulness as a training resource.     

The changing role of school/media resource libraries in secondary schools in Singapore and the need to implement mandatory standards, 1946–2010: Issues,challenges and opportunities

The aim of this paper is to study the development and evolution of secondary school libraries into Media Resource Libraries (MRLs) in Singapore after the Second World War and the rationale to have mandatory school library standards. It is an historical survey analysing published data about the linkages of libraries and librarianship, school library standards, education and school reforms in Singapore. It analyses historical and current documents on the roles played by stakeholders like the Library Association of Singapore (LAS) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) in the introduction and development of school library standards. The need for school libraries standards was first discussed when the Malayan Library Group (MLG) organised the first course on librarianship for school teachers in 1955, but, with no follow through. The need for school libraries standards was also mentioned by the LAS in 1962 in a memorandum to the Commission of Enquiry into Education to train teacher librarians and adopt school library standards. However, this was left out in the final report of the Commission published in 1964. The need for school library standards was discussed in a school library seminar for 150 teacher librarians in 1970. The first Recommended Minimum Standards for Secondary School Libraries was published two years later by the Standing Committee on Libraries set up by the MOE, but it was not mandatory for schools to adopt the standards. In 1997 the MOE launched its “Thinking School Learning Nation” vision to teach thinking skills. Students were expected to do multidisciplinary project work and be independent users of information. The MOE began to convert school libraries into Media Resource Libraries (MRLs) with print and non-print materials. However, a survey conducted in 2001 on the roles and competencies of 112 Library Coordinators (LCs) or teacher librarians revealed that they lack the skills and knowledge to manage MRLs effectively. This is because subsequent school library standards published in 1983 and 2002 did not require trained and full-time teacher librarians to manage the MRLs. Furthermore, it is essential for the standards to be periodically updated with regards to professional staff, collection development, facilities, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure and school library programs. Otherwise, MRLs risk being “hollow shells still considered on the periphery of core educational requirements, and are run by teachers not professionally prepared to do the work” (Hart, 2001, p. 25). The national standards published in the United States from 1918 to 2008 are well researched and provide substantive guidelines to develop school libraries. Therefore, it is essential for the MOE to formulate MRL standards by doing comparative studies of school library standards in other countries. These standards have to be mandatory and fully adopted by the schools. It provides opportunities for stakeholders like the LAS, National Library Board (NLB), the National Institute of Education (NIE), and the Singapore Teachers’ Union, to collaborate in the formulation of these standards and take collective ownership to implement them.     

Collection Development Trip to Moscow,Tallinn, Riga,and Vilnius,May 3–23, 2013

The author traveled to Moscow, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius in May 2013. The primary purpose of the trip was to acquire materials written by former participants in the University of Iowa’s (UI) International Writing Program (IWP). The UI Libraries has an approval plan for works written by IWP authors from selected countries, including those she visited, but this trip was an opportunity to locate harder to identify materials and to learn from the writers themselves about their current projects.