Iranian Journal of Information Processing & Management
Year:2015 | Volume:30 | Issue:2|Papers Count:13

This study investigates the relation between regional capabilities and geographic distribution of scientific productions in some disciplines in Iran. Data include all the articles related to oceanography, agriculture, medicine, oil and petroleum, and energy disciplines with at least one Iranian author published between 2007 and 2011 that have been indexed in Scopus database. Results show that geographic distribution of specialists, scientific centers and universities were focused in Tehran. This might be because all research infrastructure and facilities are concentrated in Tehran, but other provinces do not have enough of them. Tehran was also the hub for most of collaborations in science .This uneven distribution of scientific wealth is not in accordance with the science policy of the country and does not support the efficiency of scientific activities in the country.

Citing national publications is considered as a qualitative measure for science localization in the current research. Consequently, the aim is to study this metric within the corpus of Iranian Scholar Journals in Social Science Domain between 2002 and 2010.The research uses citation analysis method. The references of six social science scholar journals were extracted from the papers and then divided into two groups of national and foreign publications. The studied journals were those which were regularly published in Iran between 2002 and 2010. The analysis was performed on a sample of 543 papers out of 1528 ones. The sampling method was based on the Cochran’s function.An ANOVA test showed that the average number of citing to national publications is statistically unchanged in the journals’ papers during the period mentioned above. On the other hand, the same average for foreign publications is growing. The correlation analysis determined that this growth follows a logarithmic function. The other finding concerns the differences between the average numbers of citing to the national publications in the studied journals. A one way ANOVA test revealed a difference between the journals from this point of view. Based on the Tukey’s Range Test the results of ANOVA test is affected by the "Journal of Women Strategic Studies". It means, if this journal was omitted from the analysis, the rest five ones would statistically have the same rate of citing to the national publications. The citing rate to national publications ranges between 0.31 and 0.39 except for the journal mentioned above.Based on this metric, the tendency toward the use of national publications in the social science domain is constant despite the growing number of scientific productions in Iran. This means that the Iranian social science domain not only doesn’t tend to localization of science, but its use of foreign science is growing in the span of time as well.

The present study aimed to investigate the value of Iranian papers in chemistry in 2010 from the viewpoint of their citation quality. The citation value was calculated based on text citation frequency and text citation potential. The latter is defined based on the text citation frequency of the cited papers, divided by text citation potential of the citing papers.The research was carried out using a citation analysis method. The data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics, including Spearman correlation test.955 papers referring to 517 Iranian papers were examined. These papers gave 1434 text citations to Iranian papers, of which 213 (22 percent) were self-citations. Only a minority (17.02 percent) of the Iranian papers performed higher than the expected level and the rest (82.97 percent) performed below the expected level, regarding their text citation portions. The results also indicated that citations can properly predict text citation frequencies but have no significant correlation with text citation portions.Despite the recent growth in Iran’s scientific outputs in chemistry, the citation value of the papers was revealed to be considerably low. This implies that in order to have a more objective evaluation, Iranian science system requires more qualitative indicators instead of the crude count of citations.

Based on the co-occurrence analysis method, the scientific fields can be extracted and the relationships between them can be detected directly from their subject content. With this view in mind, the aim of this study is to determine the subfields of informetrics and the relationships between these subfields, and thus to investigate the efficiency of this method and its application in mapping of the structure of scientific fields. This is an applied study using scientometrics, coword analysis and network analysis methods. In order to determine the main concepts in the field of informetrics, all scientific papers of international scholars in this field were extracted from WOS (included 7375 records from 1991 to 2012). Then after refining and standardizing the keywords of these articles, a selected list of these keywords was prepared. Using the results of the data analysis, the trend in publication growth in the field of informetrics and each of its subfields was identified. Then the thematic maps were drawn using Vosviewer and Nodexl software. The resulting data of the maps and the structure of the formed clusters and their inter-relationships have been analysed. Based on the resulted maps the concepts such as information science, library, bibliometric analysis, innovation and text mining are the most widely used topics in the field of informetrics. The co-word occurrence maps drawn at different time periods show the changes and stabilities in the concepts and terms related to the field of informetrics. Some words like "bibliometric analysis" are present in all the studied years, while others disappear over time. In interacting with developments and new technologies, the new concepts can be created.

The evolution of cognition in a field starts with concentration on concepts, words and terms of that field. In the field of information science distinction and similarity between information and knowledge has involved discussions, part of which has been transferred into the fields of information management and knowledge management. Therefore, the current research has been carried out with the purpose of comparing scientific products of the fields of information management and knowledge management in WOS and determining the share of library and information science in any of these fields. Scientific products of Iran have been specially studied. This research is conducted applying scientometrics method and the population of the research consists of 1457 documents in the field of information management, 5993 documents in the field information management, and 183 documents belonging to both information management and knowledge management indexed in WOS. Results of data analysis shows that although the field of knowledge management is much younger than the field of information management, after 15 years from the emergence of this field, the number of documents belonging to this field has taken precedence over documents belonging to the field of information management, to the extent that in the last research conducted in this regard (2012), the published number of documents in knowledge management is two times more than those of information management. Based on Web of Science Category Terms in information management, library and information science has ranked first, while in the field of knowledge management, library and information science has ranked second. In other words, journals in library and information science have published documents in information management more than journals in other fields, while journals of management have published documents in knowledge management more than other types of journals in other field. Investigating authors with the most number of publications in any of the fields under study shows that these authors consider information management and knowledge management as two completely distinct fields. Subject analysis of Iran’s documents and also affiliation of highly productive Iranian authors in these fields show that the status of Iran is in line with the universal status of the field, and Iranian librarians do not have a significant role in knowledge management. A noteworthy finding of this research is that the fields of information management and knowledge management and especially the latter are not exclusively controlled by librarians, but if librarians and information specialists want to play a key role in knowledge management phenomenon, they have to get acquainted with various viewpoints and attitudes of other players of the field.

This This paper aims at determining the influence of contextual factors on information seeking behavior. This survey investigates search tactics used and users’ perceptions of the search results on the Web by postgraduate students at Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This study was conducted through a mixed method. Thirty postgraduate students voluntarily participated. The study was carried out in the first semester of the academic year 2012-2013. The data was gathered using two questionnaires and log files recorded with Camtasia Studio software. The findings indicated that more than half of the participants (53.3 percent) used Google, short queries were more used than long queries, advanced search options were used rarely (23 percent), and the participants view few search result pages. According to the results, the contextual factors significantly influenced the search time, search tactics (including querying and navigating) and users’ perceptions of the search results (including ease of use, usefulness, satisfaction and relevance judgment). Navigating tactic was primarily used by the participants. Among different aspects of users’ perceptions of the search results, ease of use and relevance judgments were significantly different based on the contextual factors, whereas scanning, extracting, and confidence were less affected by the contextual factors. The findings suggest practical implications for information retrieval systems designers to design systems with better user interface in order to meet the needs of users with different knowledge and skills. Doing this, it leads in promotion of search process and improvement of search results quality.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate attitude and incentives of academic staff on e-learning lecturing in all Payam-e-Noor universities of Ardabil province, Iran. The target population of the study comprised of 600 lecturers out of which a sample of 160 participants was randomly selected. In this descriptive correlational research, a self-made questionnaire was administered after securing its validity and reliability. Data revealed that all participants had positive attitudes towards e-learning. Factor analysis explored four factors influencing instructors' attitude towards e-learning -i.e. improving educational effectiveness via e-learning; developing the instructor and student rapport; introducing legal and spiritual support for e-learning’s input and output; and finally incorporating traditional and electronic learning. Moreover, personal interest of the lecturers regarding information technology applications in educational settings, their continuous career development and participation in e-learning projects proved to be the most important incentives of the respondents.

In this study, we evaluate the performance of five semantic search engines available on the web, using 45 criteria in the form of a researcher-made checklist. Criteria provided in the checklist include both common and semantic features. Common criteria or features are those applicable to all search engines and semantic ones are those applicable only to semantic search engines. Findings show that the selected search engines do not have suitable performance and expected efficiency. DuckDuckGo gained the highest points, considering regular features. Cluuz is in the second place with 20 points and Hakia with 18 points was in the third place. Lexxe and Factbites, with scores of 15 and 10 were placed in the next categories according to their points. In semantic features, DuckDuckGo with 10.65 points was in the first place; Hakia with 9.99 points was in the second place, and then the search engines Cluuz with 8.66 Points, Lexxe with 8.65 points and Factbites with 7.32 points were allocated to the next levels. The results also indicated that on the whole, considering ordinary and semantic features, DuckDuckGo with 31.65, Cluuz with 28.66, Hakia with 27.99, Lexxe with 23.65 and Factbites with 17.32 points got the highest scores.

OPACs are regarded as one of the most important intermediaries between library users and their collections. Through them one can find, identify and access desired information resources. A while ago, the very nature of OPACs made holdings of libraries and information centers available throughout the world but the real interaction between users and the collection was far beyond reach. Now through new technologies such as Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and OPAC 2.0, a higher level of user interaction is possible. The first part of this paper identified a set of OPAC 2.0 elements. A checklist was prepared based on these elements, then using it, 7 different OPAC software were assessed. Among the studied OPACs, “Sana” was identified as the most successful OPAC in both searching and social facilities. Regarding these social facilities, “ParsAzarakhsh” and “Parvan” were in a rather good state. Moreover, “Oracle”, “Parvan” and “Payam” were in a fairly poor state for the searching facilities, and “Simorgh” functionality was not acceptable when social facilities were considered. The overall score of all these OPACs was higher in searching than social facilities.

Identifier is one of the main elements in identifying an object in digital environment. Digital identifier systems were developed followed by a lot of problems such as violation of persistency and uniqueness of physical identifiers and URL in digital environment. These identifiers try to guarantee uniqueness and persistency of hostnames by using indirect names for Domain Name System (DNS). The main objective of this research is to identify qualified digital identifier system among other systems. To achieve the research objective, researchers have considered two major steps: first, identifying main criteria for distinguishing digital identifier based on literature review and focus group interview; and second, performing a comparative evaluation on common identifier systems in the world. Findings of first step demonstrated seven main criteria in three domains for distinguishing digital identifier systems: identifier uniqueness and persistency in the identifier features domain, digital identification, digital uniqueness, digital persistency and digital actionability in the digital coverage domain, and globality in the comprehensiveness of scope domain. In the second step, results of the comparative evaluation on common identifier systems indicated that six identifier systems, included, DOI, Handle, UCI, URN, ARK and PURL, are appropriate choices for using as a digital identifier system. Also, according to these results, three identification systems Including NBN, MARIAM and ISNI were identified as suitable choices for digital identification in certain specialized fields. According to many benefits of using these identifiers in important applied fields, such as digital content chains and networks integration, digital right management, cross referencing, digital libraries and citation analysis, results of this study can help digital environment experts to diagnose digital identifier and their effective use in applied fields.

Cloud computing as a new technology with Internet infrastructure and new approaches can be of significant benefits in providing medical services electronically. Applying this technology in E-Health requires consideration of various factors. The main objective of this study is to identify and rank the factors influencing the adoption of E-Health cloud. Based on the Technology-Organization- Environment (TOE) framework and Human-Organization-Technology fit (HOT-fit) model, 16 sub-factors were identified in four major factors. With the survey of 60 experts, academics and experts in health information technology and with the help of fuzzy analytical hierarchy process had ranked these sub-factors and factors. In the literature, considering the newness of the subject, no domestic or foreign study has covered this number of criteria. The results show that when deciding to adopt cloud computing in e-health technological, human, organizational and environmental factors must be considered respectively.

Purpose: The purpose of this research lies in analyzing strategic plan dimensions for research development in the Organization of Libraries, Museums and Documentation Center of Astan Quds Razavi. For this purpose, current status of research in the organization for four strategic development dimensions (attitude, policy, management, staffing) from the organization's senior professionals views have been investigated.Method: The method of this research is based on descriptive survey. 34 AQ organization's senior professionals were selected as a sample. The tool for collecting the data was a questionnaire made by researchers.Results: The data showed that there is a relative satisfaction of the research development programs (with regard to four dimensions: attitude, policy, management, staffing) in the AQ organization. The positive attitude of AQ organization's senior professionals is an opportunity for research development. The data also showed that one of the more important challenges for AQ research development is a weakness in policy making dimension. Although there have been management issues in AQ organization research development, experts’ relative satisfaction of the quantity and quality of research projects could be promising for the possibility of changes in the research structure. However, some problems and challenges are: lack of research funding and low research fees, poor research facilities and conditions, necessity of encouraging researchers to select and implement appropriate research projects, challenges about research findings advertisement, research administrative structure ineffectiveness, problems related to the publication of research findings and their implementation, failure to allocate adequate facilities for the research advancement and the lack of a suitable environment for development in research. The findings also showed that there is a good level of satisfaction about AQ organization interaction with other research organizations and researchers. There is dissatisfaction about low impact of research activities in staff gradation.