Editorial


Editor's note

Introduction

The journal is launched a little earlier than usual this quarter, as I shall be in Zadar, Croatia, on publication day, helping the Department of Information Studies to celebrate its fifteenth anniversary. Consequently, as I shall be on my way to Zadar on the 11th June, I need to have the issue online before I leave.

The issue is quite a big one, with six papers for the thematic issue on archaeology and information research, organized and managed by Isto Huvila of Uppsala University; nine 'regular' papers; and eight book reviews. There may be some remaining glitches in the code, but we shall be trying to find and repair them once the issue is online.

The editors of the thematic issue, Isto Huvila, Marija Dalbello, Costis Dallas and Ixchel Faniel, note 'Archaeology intersects with information research both as an empirical domain of investigation and as a perspective to inquire into how people interact with information. This special issue explores an interdisciplinary nexus of information science and archaeology that has been generating practices, fields of knowledge, methodologies, and theorisations in information research.', and no further introduction is required here, as you can read the Editorial for the theme. Suffice to say, that a variety of approaches to the relationship between archaeology and information research, are addressed.

The regular papers cover quite a wide span of topics: social media are involved in three of the papers: Reijo Savolainen explores diabetes-related online discussion; JungWon Yoon and colleagues investigate the use of multimedia in Twitter health communication; and Miller, Davis and Partridge, present an analysis of everyday life information experiences in Twitter. We've seen a trend over the past two or three years, of more papers relating to Twitter: presumably, the ability to download and analyse thousands of tweets, is a major attractor for research efforts.

The remaining papers are all rather different in focus, covering health information searching, automatic taxonomy generation, Spinozan ethics, online information overload, semantic information and truth, and perspectives of Icelandic university students on the relative virtues of printed and electronic study material. Something, indeed, for everyone!

Book reviews

We have eight book reviews in this issue, again covering a wide range of topics from data visualization to bibliotherapy. My particular favourite, this quarter, was All data are local. Thinking critically in a data-driven society' by Y.A. Loukissas. I did not like the physical production of the book, since a sans-serif font on a semi-gloss paper is one of my pet hates, but it is a handsome product and the content is continually stimulating.

Lastly

Lastly, I can think of no better way than to end by flagrantly plagiarising Crystal Fulton's editorial in the last issue—hope you don't mind Crystal! As editor, I sometimes find myself explaining what we do to prospective authors. It is often assumed that we are paid — handsomely — and that our sole task is this publication. The truth is that we all donate our time and energy freely. As dedicated participants in the journal’s production, we compete this work alongside our very full-time day jobs and other commitments. Rest assured that while life can bring delays, we do our best to move submitted work through the review and production processes as quickly as we can.

On this note, I (following Crystal) would like to thank the reviewers who take their time to read and comment on submissions. They really are unsung heroes who not only evaluate, but also write lengthy commentary to assist authors. The work of our reviewers plays a critical role in ensuring paper and journal quality. In addition, our copy editors make the final journal copy possible, ensuring that content is presented appropriately. Again, these individuals, who have helped make yet another issue of Information Research happen, have generously volunteered their invaluable services.

Our collective work means that Information Research is published with free access to you. We hope you will enjoy another team production in this issue.


Professor Tom Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
June, 2019