Investigates the effect of journal self-citedness on "Journal Citation Reports" (JCR) rankings of library and information science and genetics journals using data from 1994 on CD-ROM. Results for library and information science indicate that the effect of self-citedness on both JCR impact factor and total citation rankings was minimal.…

In this study, it is indicated that there is a statistically significant semantic relationship between highly cited publications and their citing publications in comparison to highly cited publications with no citing relationship, within the same topic literature. Visualizing this set of data, however, shows that citation-based data represents…

Reports on a study of people's decision making with respect to quality and authority on the World Wide Web. Seven facets of judgment of information quality were identified: source, content, format, presentation, currency, accuracy, and speed of loading. Institutional and individual authority was identified as an underlying theme in source…

Describes a methodology for collecting and extracting linguistic forms from documents authored by healthcare consumers. The forms were mapped to concepts and the resulting terms were analyzed. Although the case study uses examples from a "consumer medical vocabulary," procedures are applicable to investigating non-professional vocabularies in…

The high publication rate of scholarly material makes searching and browsing an inconvenient way to keep oneself up-to-date. Instead of being the active part in information access, researchers want to be notified whenever a new paper in one's research area is published. While more and more publishing houses or portal sites offer notification…

Identifies several aspects of citing behavior (reasons for citing, criteria used in decision making, and metalevel documentation concerns) by directly questioning researchers about decisions to cite or not to cite specific documents. The results reported are preliminary results related to citing behavior derived from a qualitative, longitudinal…

The Naval Research Laboratory Library has made significant progress providing its distributed user community with a single point-of-access to information needed to support scientific research through TORPEDO "Ultra," a digital archive that in many respects functions as an electronic counterpart of a traditional library. It consists of…

This paper provides information sources and ideas for challenge and adventure activities. Main information sources are listed: libraries, ERIC, and several publishers and programs. Some useful publications are described that provide activities and ideas related to outdoor education, environmental issues, games, special populations, educational…

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Library has identified six primary areas that need improvement: infrastructure, InfoWeb, TORPEDO Ultra, journal data management, classified data, and linking software. It is rebuilding InfoWeb and TORPEDO Ultra as database-driven Web applications, upgrading the STILAS library catalog, and creating other support…

Establishing pricing policies for electronic publishing that are fair and flexible is of vital importance to the information industry. The pricing of most information available electronically is far less efficient and market-sensitive than it could be. Some of the new approaches to pricing, emphasizing a usage-based metric providing qualitative…

Research into both the information needs of engineers engaged in research and development, and the means chosen by engineers to fulfill their information needs are summarized in this condensation of a Master's thesis. Parallel questionnaires were administered in 1981 to 78 engineers at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering…

This continuing education course syllabus presents information on the collection of vital and health statistics, lists of agencies or organizations involved in statistical collection and/or dissemination, annotated bibliographies of statistical sources, and guidelines for accessing statistical information. Topics covered include: (1) the reporting…

Explores the disaggregation (ability to access/manipulate individual components of a document) and reaggregation (compilation of article components into a new written work) of scientific and technical journal articles by students and faculty members. Results lead to a discussion of metadata, the role of context in constraining component use, and…

Bibliographic databases act as search tools to locate relevant literature and information, but they also disseminate information about the works indexed in the records. Articles and authors that cannot be found cannot be cited, and the ability to disseminate data for that particular work is diminished. This study found no significant differences…

The purpose of this study was: (1) to look at the design, aesthetics, and functionality of educational and noneducational Web pages from the perspective of visual literacy; and (2) to evaluate printed and online materials that are used as resources by professionals and nonprofessionals to create these Web pages. These "how to" manuals…