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(2010)Journal ArticleThis paper investigates the academization of library and information science (LIS)educators in Australia from 1959 to 2008. Extensive data document the distribution of these academics in Australian higher education institutions over fifty years: from a slow beginning in the 1960s, to rapid growth in the 1970s, relative stability in the 1980s, and a persistent decline from the 1990s. Results of other characteristics of Australian LIS educators over the fifty-year period are presented including: previous positions held before entering academia, what and where academic qualifications were obtained, academic positions/ranks by gender, mobility within Australian higher education institutions, and years spent as Australian LIS educators. Although there has been a steady decline in the number of Australian LIS educators since the 1990s, the level of academic qualifications and percentage with doctorates have risen, thus conforming to a major requirement of academia; however, the relative decline in junior academic positions is a worrying trend. The analysis of changed characteristics over time helps define who Australian LIS academics are, and additionally provides data that contributes to LIS academic workforce planning.
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(2010)Journal ArticleConducting a literature review is a vital part of any research. Library and information science (LIS) professionals often play a central role in supporting academics in their efforts to locate relevant publications and in teaching novice researchers skills associated with literature reviews. This paper examines literature review processes with the aim to contribute to better understanding of their complexity and uncertainty and to propose a new approach to literature reviews that is capable of dealing with such complexity and uncertainty.
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(2010)Conference PaperThis paper investigates the concept of information. It follows different approaches for defining information before discussing a knowledge-in-action view on information as part of sociomaterial practices. Drawing from Stamper’s (1991) extended semiological framework the paper proposes its reinterpretation to study information as a sociomaterial phenomenon. The paper further argues that rather than focusing on finding general definitions for information, intellectual efforts should concentrate on characteristics and attributes of information. Combining earlier efforts in this direction different attributes of information such as novelty, time dependence, or goal relevance. are introduced. Locating those attributes within Stamper's extended semiological framework helps to identify different aspects of sociomaterial context affecting information. Understanding and paying attention to information through its attributes can, therefore, provide guidance for researching information and possibly help advancing the development of information systems.
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(2010)Journal ArticleThis article explores some of the issues associated with giving non-human actors a voice of their own in actor-network theory based research. What issues do we face in doing so? Does doing so increase understanding of the issue to hand, bring to life and make more accessible and interesting the stories of these actors? Or does this anthropomorphism detract from the issues at hand? We discuss these broader issues and then present some findings from an ANT field study which investigated the implementation of institutional repositories and their relations with the spread of open access to scholarly publishing. We experiment with allowing some of the non-human actors to speak for themselves. We conclude with a discussion which opens the debate: does giving voice to non-human actors bring them to life and make them better understood as intimately entangled with each other and human actors in the sociomaterial practices of the everyday? And what are the challenges in doing so?
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(2010)Conference PaperAn opportunity to explore the topic of data usages is presented by the collaborative research being undertaken by a federation of applied science research units affiliated with a number of different Australian research organizations (the Cluster). The research aims to investigate how members of the collaboration understand and work with data in their day-to-day practice.
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(2010)Journal Article
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(2010)Journal ArticleProfessional journals play an important role in the dissemination of research results and activity reports among scientists and practitioners. This article gives a brief introduction into the field of informetrics with the purpose of presenting a list of journals in the field of library and information science (LIS ; in German: IuB). By combining ten different lists of journals from databases which cover the relevant literature in this field, a comprehensive list of 1205 professional journals could be assembled. Based on the frequency of appearance in the list, it is possible to rank individual titles by significance to the field. Four different categories of journals were identified: fifteen core journals, 88 central journals, 173 selective journals, and 672 marginal journals. Further features of the study include language of publication, geographical distribution, and the overlap of various databases with one another. ---- Fachzeitschriften spielen für Wissenschaftler und Praktiker bei der Verbreitung von Forschungsergebnissen und Erfahrungsberichten eine wichtige Rolle. Der vorliegende Artikel gibt eine kurze Einführung in das Feld der Informetrie, um auf dieser Grundlage eine Zeitschriftenliste auf dem Gebiet der Informations- und Bibliothekswissenschaft (IuB) einzuführen. Durch Kombination von zehn verschiedenen Zeitschriftenlisten aus Datenbanken, die relevante Literatur auf dem Gebiet der IuB erfassen, wird eine umfassende Liste von 1205 relevanten Fachzeitschriften erstellt. Anhand ihrer Erscheinungshäufigkeit wird die Bedeutung einzelner Zeitschriften für das Gebiet der IuB eingeordnet, wobei vier verschiedene Kategorien von Zeitschriften unterschieden werden: fünfzehn Kernzeitschriften, 88 zentrale Zeitschriften, 173 selektive Zeitschriften und 672 Randzeitschriften. Betrachtet werden darüber hinaus auch Publikationssprache und geografische Verteilung der Zeitschriften sowie die Überschneidung von verschiedenen Datenbanken untereinander.
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(2010)Journal ArticleThis article introduces the Impact Factor squared or IF²-index, an h-like indicator of research performance. This indicator reflects the degree to which large entities such as countries and/or their states participate in top-level research in a field or subfield. The IF²-index uses the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of research publications instead of the number of citations. This concept is applied to other h-type indexes and their results compared to the IF²-index. These JIF-based indexes are then used to assess the overall performance of cancer research in Australia and its states over 8 years from 1999 to 2006. The IF²-index has three advantages when evaluating larger research units: firstly, it provides a stable value that does not change over time, reflecting the degree to which a research unit participated in top-level research in a given year; secondly, it can be calculated closely approximating the publication date of yearly datasets; and finally, it provides an additional dimension when a full article-based citation analysis is not feasible. As the index reflects the degree of participation in top-level research it may favor larger units when units of different sizes are compared.
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(2010)ThesisAccording to the knowledge based view of organisation, knowledge is an important productive resource that provides organisations competitive advantages. It is also argued that no single organisation has the full-range of expertise to survive. New knowledge is acquired not only from internal knowledge resources but also from sources outside the organisation’s boundaries. Thus, inter-organisational knowledge sharing is important for organisations to gain new knowledge. Many organisational relationships have been created to transfer knowledge. The customer-supplier relationship as part of the supply chain is a special type of inter-organisational relationship that is highly knowledge-intensive. Many of the critical failures in supply chain management are the consequence of poor knowledge sharing activities with organisation partners. One of the barriers to knowledge sharing is the lack of intention to share knowledge. The lack of intention to share knowledge as a starting point for knowledge sharing is even more important in customer supplier relationship because knowledge sharing is not normally viewed as one of the main targets by supply chain partners and therefore may not receive appropriate attention. Unlike knowledge transfer activities in other types of inter-organisational alliances, knowledge transfer between supply chain partners is generally not targeted and is less guaranteed. Thus, intention to share knowledge with its supply chain partners is of particular interest for an organisation. The focus of this study is to investigate the intention to share knowledge in customer-supplier relationships. The study aims to identify factors influencing this intention to share knowledge between supply chain partners by focusing on a simple two-level supply chain. In order to achieve this aim, a research model is developed based on the relevant theories of knowledge sharing in existing literature and then tested and extended through multiple case studies. The resulting integrated conceptual model about the intention to share knowledge in supply-chain relationships makes an important contribution to the literature as well as to knowledge sharing in practice.
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(2010)ThesisThis research explores how diverse and distributed organisations and individuals establish electronic collaboration and how such collaboration affects the creation and achievement of shared goals. This phenomenon is particularly striking in the context of environmental collaboration where Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs), governments, private organisations and community groups and individuals need to act together in order to deal with critical climate change issues. While research on collaborative technologies has been predominantly limited to laboratory settings and intra-organisational situations, this research context allows investigation of the roles and usage of collaborative technologies in complex situations in which numerous stakeholders with diverse interests cooperate to address pressing environmental problems. Furthermore, this research investigates the ways collaborative technologies are adopted by ENGOs and other stakeholders in different settings, thus, enabling better understanding of electronic collaboration and mechanisms of convergence towards joint actions. This thesis adopts a transdisciplinary perspective to study an Information Systems (IS) phenomenon: the adoption and utilisation of collaborative technologies by diverse stakeholders mobilised towards creating and achieving shared goals. This phenomenon is explored through the study of ENGOs – key players in enacting electronic collaboration that involves diverse stakeholders in an environmental problem and bridge the gap between governmental initiatives and local communities. The thesis contextualises the environmental problem situation in three countries, and considers the multifaceted emergences of environmental collaboration from various local ENGO vantage points, through empirically exploring electronic collaborations and their outcomes. A research approach, based on the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) was adopted in the study of the emergence of environmental electronic collaborations enacted by ENGOs in Australia, Lebanon, and Thailand. Qualitative data were collected, primarily through interviewees with ENGO personnel over the course of one year. By retracing the associations and the complex webs of translations taking place in the emerging actor-networks of diverse stakeholders and collaborative technologies, the thesis reveals how sociomaterial politics shapes (or obstructs) convergence towards shared goals and joint actions. The thesis thereby contributes to knowledge about the power dynamics and sociomaterial tensions inherent in multi-stakeholder adoption and utilisation of collaborative technologies in different contexts, with significant theoretical and practical implications.