For this issue, Dr. Amanda Cossham, our Regional Editor for Australasia and South-East Asia, has kindly taken on the task of preparing the Editorial.

This issue

I will start by acknowledging ‘the elephant in the room’, the global COVID-19 pandemic. While this continues to challenge what is normal, adding layers of stress and distress to our work and lives, we continue teaching, learning, and researching. The papers in this issue are indicative of the efforts going on around the world in our profession. We have six papers and six book reviews. As always, topics are diverse and drawn from researchers in a variety of countries.

Cheyvuth Seng, May Kristine Jonson Carlon, and Jeffrey S. Cross (Japan) discuss information literacy in Cambodia; specifically, the information literacy self-efficacy of undergraduates in provincial universities. While Cambodia is incorporating information and communication technologies into education, the provinces lag behind the capital, and cultural factors are considered along with sex, faculty and academic year. The use of a well-established information literacy self-efficacy scale enables comparison with other countries and settings.

Francisco Carlos Paletta and José-Antonio Moreiro-González (Brazil) examine online job advertisements for information science professionals in Brazil to determine how digital transformation has impacted the labour market. Their intention is to identify the attributes, skills and knowledge required by private sector employers and consequently, to suggest how curriculums should be designed and develop to best meet these needs. They found that information professionals are moving out of traditional roles and being incorporated into different teams in organisations; thus, information professionals need complementary skills and knowledge to better enable them to participate in these environments. Job advert research is helpful in that it demonstrates what the wider community needs to manage dynamic information and communication technologies. Curricula need to respond to these needs while still maintaining the key competencies of the information science profession. (The paper is in Portuguese; the abstract is also provided in English. I found the automated translation of the Portuguese provided by browsers to be sufficiently readable.)

Pedro López-Rubio, Norat Roig-Tierno, and Alicia Mas-Tur (Spain) report on their bibliometric research into innovation policy studies, identifying the most cited studies, and the most cited authors and journals. One of their four key findings is that the top journals in innovation policy reveal an increasing influence of sustainable development and transitions i.e., focusing on the environmental, cultural, economic and social sustainability of human beings. Wen-Yau Liang, Chun-Che Huang, Tzu-Liang (Bill) Tseng, and Zih-Yan Wang (Taiwan and USA) have researched the effect of visualisation on user experience in recommender systems, finding that recommender systems supported by visualisations (e.g., tag clouds) can significantly enhance user satisfaction and users’ intention to continue using the system.

The last two papers focus on access to research and the role of institutional repositories and data sharing. Noreen Kirkman and Gaby Haddow (Australia) evaluated the impact of publisher embargoes on open access papers in institutional repositories. The situation is complex, and significantly impacts access to research that can simultaneously be open and embargoed. The findings have implications for authors everywhere seeking to ensure immediate access to their research and to meet the requirements of their grant funder. K. A. Abdullahi and A. Noorhidawati (Nigeria and Malaysia) explain the attributes that influence academics' data sharing in Nigeria, Using the theory of organizational culture, they identify organizational attributes (Artefacts), personal attributes (Espoused beliefs and values), and social attributes (Basic underlying assumptions) that influence academics at five Nigerian universities.

The region and the journal

It has always been a pleasure working for this journal, originally as a copyeditor and editorial assistant, and since 2014, as the Regional Editor for Australasia and South-East Asia. This region has a population of around 720 million, and includes eleven countries in South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and more than a dozen Pacific island nations. This is one of the few journals I know of in LIS which has such well-defined areas of responsibility and dedicated focus for its regional editors, and which consequently demonstrates direct support for authors in each region. It’s an effective way of fostering working relationships with authors in each region.

To conclude, I would like to acknowledge the Editor-in-Chief, Tom Wilson, for the phenomenal amount of time and effort he puts into the journal as well as for his leadership and generous support of the regional editors and copyeditors. I acknowledge too the copyeditors and editorial associates, my fellow regional editors, the editorial board and reviewers, and the publishers at the University of Borås.


Dr Amanda F. Cossham
Regional Editor, Australasia and South-East Asia
September, 2021.