STUDIES IN EDUCATION & PSYCHOLOGY
Year:2009 | Volume:10 | Issue:2|Papers Count:16

The main purpose of this research is an examination of the extent of citations from the ISI Web of Science’s journal articles to DOAJ’s journals during 2003-2008. In this research, was been used bibliometrics and citation analysis. The research data have been gathered by means of Cited Reference Search in ISI Web of Science, and the data have been analyzed by SPSS 16. Finally, after studying 2953 journals from DOAJ, it was clarified that 321 journals (10.87%) received citations, and the total citations which allocated to these journals were 19050. Pure sciences received 10116 citations (53.1%), health and medical sciences received 5965 citations (31.31%), technology and engineering received 1436 citations (7.54%), social sciences received 832 citations (4.37%), arts and humanities received 701 citations (3.68%). According to these findings, the trend to open access journals in the field of pure sciences is more than the other four fields, as well as, the trend to these journals in pure sciences and health and medical sciences generally is more remarkable than arts and humanities and social sciences. On the other hand, the findings of Chi-square test (c2) are also indicative that there is a meaningful difference among the citations in terms of the mentioned-above five fields.

This article is a report of a research project aimed at developing a strategic plan for the Department of Library and Information Science (LIS), Ferdowsi University of Mashhad The aim of the project was to identify the factors and a model for designing the strategic plan for LIS Department. According to the process of strategic planning, external and internal studies carried out. In these studies, the external study was carried out through the review of the related literature. Survey research was used for the internal study. In this regard, the opinions of three groups of students (undergraduates and graduate and post-graduate students and those who completed their courses at Master's and Doctoral level), LIS academic staff and the faculty authorities were collected through a questionnaire and interviews. Three checklists were also designed and used for collecting data about the library and the computer facilities. The collected data from the two above-mentioned studies were compared through SWOT analysis. This analysis helped discover the weaknesses, strengths, opportunities and threats. Based on these findings, the relevant strategies and the appropriate model are suggested.

This research aims to investigate visibility, Web Impact Factor (WIF), RWIF and the collaboration rate of the websites of the Iranian Universities dominated by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT), and Health and medical Education (MHRME), using an analysis of the various links among these websites and webometrics. From all 119 websites belonging to the Iranian Universities, due to some technical problems, only 111 ones were reviewed through Yahoo, in a period of one month (October 6 – November 5, 2008). These were decreased to 71 websites in analysing co-links and identifying hi-frequency websites. The data were collected in two phase: using Yahoo Directory, first all the investigated university websites were retrieved and stored on a PC. Second the websites' various links were extracted and analysed. The results indicated that among all universities, the website of Olume Behzisty University had the most and Medical Science of Qum, the least visibility (respectively with 6.44 and 0.08). The WIF of Medical Science of Shahrood Website was the most, and that of Medical Science of Rafsanjan website, the least one. In regard to RWIF, the website of Mohghegh Ardebili with 3.5 had the first, and those of three universities (Gilan, Medical Science of Shahid Beheshti, and Medical Science of Gilan) had the last rank. In-link analysis results showed that the investigated websites had collaborated in 9 clusters, and a multidimensional scale illustrated the collaboration of these websites in 9 clusters.

This article reports findings of a research conducted to compare findings of manual assessment of accessibility rate of Iran ministerial websites (20 ministries) using www3 criteria with those of users' experiences. Findings of manual assessment showed that accessibility rate of websites are below the medium and those of users' experience are a little higher. Average rate of accessibility against www3 criteria was 46.32 and that of users' experience was 64.4 percent. Findings also indicate that there is no significance difference between accessibility of websites concerning results of two assessment methods.

The present research aims to examine the availability and decay of Internet references cited in five open access journals indexed in ISI. This is an applied research categorized in group of descriptive and quantitative studies. Its population is composed of 748 articles published from 2002 to late 2007 by these five journals. Afterwards, all Internet citations (URLs) were extracted and thus, 3734 URLs were identified. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and needed tables and diagrams were drawn by means of Excel software (version 2007). Research findings indicated that at first check, out of 3734 URLs, 73% were accessible while 27% disappeared. It is notable that rate of availability increased to 89% and rate of decay decreased to 11% after searching gone URLs through the Internet, Internet archive and Google. Domain .net with availability of 96% (decay, 4%) has more stability and persistence compared to other domains. And, the most stable file is PDF with availability of 93% (decay, 7%). Additionally, most of errors were related to message "404 not found" (43%), and the average half-life for cited Internet resources is estimated to be 8 years and 9 months. Finally, some suggestions and recommendations have been offered to stop decay phenomenon.

This content analysis research analyzes and compares concept network of Persian Subject Headings with Persian library and information science literature. Statistical population consisted of 392 books and 782 papers published during 2002-2006. Through systematic sampling, 99 books and 197 papers were selected. The findings indicate that the concept network of books and papers are different. Moreover, there is a significant difference between the concept network of literature with that of Persian Subject Headings.Therefore the structure of Persian Subject Headings concept network have to be reviewed and modified.

The Information age has changed the relations between the phenomenon in their nature and complexity. The concept and meaning are two important issues in Library and Information Science, which are directly related to Semantics. This article tries to focus on Semantic theories and indicates the implicit and explicit effects of these theories to study the "relevance" and "representation" in this filed. To achieve this goal, some of the theories are selected. This article shows the importance of the process and context of the communication in understanding the meaning. Hjørlan's theory, Domain analysis, and the possibility of developing new Knowledge Representation tools are mentioned in this article as well.

This study attempts to measure online search skills among graduate students of Shiraz University and to determine their ability in using them. According to the previous studies and available sources in this field, seven online search skills which were the most useable ones and also current skills were selected for this study. Also 10 factors which affect these skills were determined. This study intends to measure the factors influencing these skills.In this survey a questionnaire was used for data collection. Descriptive and analytical statistics and SPSS program used for analyzing data.Finding reveals that among these seven skills, chronological skill had the highest score but proximity skill was in the lowest level. Also among 10 factors influencing skills, finding showed that: age, internet interest and using scientific databases had significant differences with the score of search skills. Furthermore engineering students had better skills compared to humanities. In other word, there were significant differences between these two groups.

This research investigated the difficulties which search engines are faced with in searching different forms of a word in the Persian language. A comparative survey and documentary method were used. Research population consisted of three international search engines (Google, Yahoo and AltaVista) which provide Persian Search capability. Studying Persian texts, a checklist was developed which consisted of 17 keywords each of which represented one of the Persian language challenges. Researchers input keywords in search tools and recorded retrieved results for each search engine. Results showed that none of the search engines considered linguistic challenges of the Persian Language. Furthermore, a significant relation existed between the form of words and the type of search engine.

This comparative study addressed user satisfaction of Unassisted Keyword Search Paradigm with Assisted Keyword Search Paradigm in the Google search engine. The methodology was one group pretest-posttest design. The instrument for data collection was 3 researcher-made questionnaires that one of them included closed questions about expertise in using computer and the Internet as well as demographic information.Other questionnaires were process-based forms which dealt with search questions, search procedures and evaluation forms for each state. The subjects under study were postgraduate students of Foreign Languages and Linguistic Department of Shiraz University, 30 students were selected by using the propotional random sampling technique and non- random technique was used for whom didn’t participate.Findings of the study revealed that about 70 percent of suggestions presented in Google Suggest Beta as an assisted keyword search server had a middle-to-higher relevance. Although there was no significant difference between precision based user oriented relevance in both of paradigms, assisted keyword search led to a significant increase in precision on based system oriented relevance. Generally, the second paradigm caused a significant increase in both the ease of use and the whole performance of the system in finding expected results .Although there was not seen any significant difference between time satisfaction and search results' value, the total user satisfaction increased significantly in the second paradigm. Finally, some suggestions for futher studies were provided.

This study surveyed the research experience of graduate students at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and the factors influencing this experience. Information was gathered by means of a questionnaire developed based on PREQ questionnaire. The statistical population of this study consisted of those graduate students whose research proposal had been approved by the Educational Council of their faculty or had defended their dissertation between 23/09/2007 to 20/01/2008. By using a random sampling method 416 completed questionnaires were collected. The findings showed that there was a significant relationship between all of factors making up research experience and there are significant differences between general satisfactions of the students on their research experience. Factors such as sex, level of education, education field, scientific activity and different stages of research had positive and significant impact on the research experience of the respondents. Generally, the results of this study showed that among the graduate students of Ferdowsi University there was a relative satisfaction with factors making up the research experience.

Creating crisis and attempting to solve it is an important function of the mass media. This is carried out using a range of modern tools. Media can influence socio-political and cultural events employing strategies and meta-strategies to form the public thinking in the direction they aim. The media emperors and the press trusts manage to form some kind of information monopoly through influencing the selection and dissemination of monopolized news. They attempt to provide miss-understanding about some political, cultural, and national systems which they regard as rivals. The present paper reviews the media crisis from a management point of view taking into consideration a quick reaction against the control of the flow of information, revising the hope giving, etc. It also attempts to study the process of crisis creation which is known as the communication soft power. The focus is on the question that how and in what ways mass media would be able to manage media crisis and to form public opinions.