Editorial


Introduction

We have, this quarter, the first set of papers from the Seventh International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, which was held in London between the 21st and 24th June, this year. My thanks to Ian Ruthven of the University of Strathclyde for his help in getting the xhtml coding sorted out. Time did not allow all of the papers to be published with this issue, but the remainder will be put on the site as soon as possible and will then be listed in the December issue of the journal. In this way, the papers are available to search engines as soon as they are on the site and experience shows that they are then 'hit'. Time did not permit a full copy-editing process on these papers, so there may be errors in the text and/or in the reference lists: please draw my attention to these.

In this issue

In addition to the conference papers we have five papers for this issue, covering the usually wide range of subjects from associative indexing to the impact of Chinese cultural factors on the development of information systems.

First, Isto Huvila asks where the information used by editors in Wikipedia comes from. The use of sources varies with the degree of activity shown by the editors (all of whom, of course, are volunteers) and most of the information is found on the Web, with literature known previously to the contributors being a major source. Possible, today, this is not too different from the resources used by authors generally.

Next, Sylvain Cibangu, explores a topic that has been written about extensively in the past, providing a valuable review of the literature and suggesting that notions of global complexity can act 'as a metaphor for information science as a social science to address the pressing issues of our increasingly interconnected world'.

Charles Cole, Charles-Antoine Julien and John Leide, from McGill University, propose an associative index model for the results list of search engines based on Vannevar Bush's concept of selection, the associative mechanism by which our human brains identify the likeness of things.

Next, Shannon Staley and her colleagues propose a standardised method for assessing an institution's library instruction programme, demonstrating that such a tool can provide valuable guidance on the development of library instruction.

Finally. Christina Ling-hsing Chang, investigates ideas of power relationships and cultural factors that affect the development of information systems in China. Her results show,

how the need to maintain interpersonal harmony, guanxi, renqing and status hierarchy (unequal power distribution) characteristic of Chinese culture can lead to the incongruence of technological frames in the information system development processes

In conclusion

In my last editorial I suggested that there might be people who would be interested in contributing to the management of the journal by acting as 'layout editors', that is, converting Word documents to the xhtml files we use. Well, there turned out to be only one such person! This doesn't make it possible for me to offer a conversion service, but if there are some who missed that original notice, who would like to participate, please get in touch.

It seems that the use of the journal continues to grow, although it is some time since I reported on such matters. However, a look at Google Analytics for the journal for the past year, shows that the most 'hit' papers are:

  • Environmental scanning as information seeking and organizational learning, by Chun Wei Choo (with 25,492 unique views, 106 citations in Google Scholar)
  • An action research approach to curriculum development, by Phil Riding, Sue Fowell and Phil Levy, which is from volume 1 no. 1! (24,146 unique views, 34 citations in Google Scholar)
  • The nonsense of "knowledge management", by T.D. Wilson (23,310 unique views, 436 citations in Google Scholar)
  • Five personality dimensions and their influence on information behaviour, by Jannica Heinström (22,111 unique views, 56 citations in Google Scholar)
  • Understanding knowledge management and information management: the need for an empirical perspective, by France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer (16,052 unique views, 88 citations in Google Scholar).

You'll see that the 'well-hit' papers are, as we might expect, well-cited, so there's a lesson here: if you want your papers to be seen and cited, choose a true open access journal.

My thanks to my Associate Editors for seeing papers through the review process, to the referees who spent time assessing the virtues of the papers they received, and our copy-editors who try to ensure that the papers you see in the journal are readable and properly referenced!


Professor Tom Wilson, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief
September, 2010