Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access

Volume 2 Issue 1

February 2018

Issue of Open Information Science

Contents
Journal Overview

Regular Articles

Open Access March 15, 2018

Toponyms as Entry Points into a Digital Edition: Mapping Die Fackel

Adrien Barbaresi

Page range: 23-33

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Abstract

The emergence of Spatial Humanities has prompted for interdisciplinary work on digitized texts, especially since the significance of place names exceeds the usually admitted frame of deictic and indexical functions. In this perspective, I present a visualization of toponyms co-occurrences in the literary journal Die Fackel ("The Torch"), published by the satirist and language critic Karl Kraus in Vienna from 1899 until 1936. The distant reading experiments consist in drawing lines on maps in order to uncover patterns which are not easily retraceable during close reading. I discuss their status in the context of a digital humanities study. This is not an authoritative cartography of the work but rather an indirect depiction of the viewpoint of Kraus and his contemporaries. Drawing on Kraus' vitriolic recording of political life, toponyms in Die Fackel tell a story about the ongoing reconfiguration of Europe.

Open Access March 15, 2018

Managing the Electronic Resources Lifecycle with Kanban

Jaclyn McLean, Robin Canham

Page range: 34-43

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Abstract

This paper discusses the implementation of Kanban as the framework for managing electronic resources workflows by presenting case studies from the University of Saskatchewan Library and at the Saskatchewan Polytechnic Library in Saskatchewan, Canada. Librarians at both institutions independently chose to adopt Kanban to manage electronic resources work, applying the essential Kanban framework of lists titled to do, in progress, and done. Examining the similarities and differences in each librarian’s experience and discussing two different software programs used, we have included descriptions of our implementation, in-depth information about the origins of Kanban, and its more recent applications to technical work. We found numerous benefits-including reduced email communication and improved due date tracking-to our implementation of Kanban and no significant drawbacks. Interest in applications of Kanban in libraries is on the rise, and we found there were significant benefits of using Kanban for electronic resources teams when used in conjunction with other tools (e.g., spreadsheets, email, ERMS).

Open Access June 21, 2018

Reading for your Life: The Impact of Reading and Writing During the Siege of Sarajevo

Natalie Ornat

Page range: 44-58

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Abstract

In the spring of 1992, the city of Sarajevo was surrounded by nationalist Serb troops and bombarded with shells, bullets, and terror for four long years. Isolated from the world, Sarajevans found a refuge and a freedom that took them beyond their circumstances: they read, they wrote, and they survived. This paper examines how these activities impacted the mental, physical, and spiritual survival of Sarajevans during the war. Diaries, memoirs, personal histories, letter collections, and oral histories are analyzed for what they may reveal about the value of reading and writing during this time of crisis. What we learn from these accounts is that even during the most trying times, activities such as reading and writing give us a space for control and self-preservation. This paper strives to learn about the power of literacy and writing from those who faced adversity in war-torn Sarajevo.

Open Access July 26, 2018

Trends in Academic Library Space: From book boxes to learning commons

Silas M. Oliveira

Page range: 59-74

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Abstract

Top management in academic/university libraries must play a more significant role within the academic setting by reorganizing library spaces or building new libraries that will be aligned with the new teaching pedagogies and today’s students’ learning preference styles. The aim of this review is to present and discuss trends related to how librarians are redefining academic libraries’ buildings and spaces in order to be better aligned to current pedagogies and students’ learning styles and needs

Open Access July 26, 2018

Value Perception of Information Sources in the Context of Learning

Daphne Ruth Raban, Yonit Rusho

Page range: 83-101

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Abstract

Information sources require consumers to use them in order to evaluate their quality, meaning that they are experience goods. The value perceived before acquisition and use may be different from the value obtained by actual use. Understanding the value perception gap is likely to inform more efficient selection of information sources. The current research studies the value gap in a learning situation. We examine information value perceptions before and after experiencing information in an experiment with 113 software engineers engaged in a problem-based learning task while using and evaluating three types of information sources: supportive, reflective and reciprocal. The results indicate that before using an information source, the subjective value for supportive information is lower than for reflective information. In addition, 55% of the participants preferred to obtain information when presented with a choice. After using an information source no correlation was observed between perceived value of information before and after the use of information source (value gap); participants assigned a higher user experience (UX) value to reflective and reciprocal information than to supportive information; positive correlation between UX value and revealed information value; positive correlation between learning achievement and revealed information value; Reciprocal information is associated with higher learning achievement than reflective and supportive; use of information led to higher learning achievement than avoidance of information. Reciprocal information supports high achievement in software engineering informal learning. Reflective information is valued higher than supportive information sources. If supportive information is essential, learning environments designers should invest heavily in interface design combining reciprocal and reflective elements, such as forums and "try it yourself", respectively

Open Access December 31, 2018

User education, adjustment factors and use of online databases by postgraduate students in Nigeria

Anuoluwa Maria Ajala, Airen Adetimirin

Page range: 203-224

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Abstract

Postgraduate students use online databases for various academic activities. However, past studies have revealed low utilisation of online databases by postgraduate students in Nigeria. The general objective of this study was to examine the influence of user education and adjustment factors (perceived enjoyment and objective usability) on use of online databases by postgraduate students of four private universities in southwest Nigeria. A descriptive survey research design of the correlational type was used, and the population was comprised of 1,067 postgraduate students in four private universities. A sample size of 513 was selected through a purposive sampling technique. Data was collected using a questionnaire and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings revealed varying degrees of usage, perceived enjoyment and objective usability of online databases among the respondents. The study established a significant relationship between: user education and use of online databases; perceived enjoyment and use of online databases; and objective usability and use of online databases. User education, perceived enjoyment and objective usability therefore influenced the use of online databases by the postgraduate students of the four universities.

Topical issue: Openly about Open Access

Open Access March 2, 2018

Defining the role of libraries in the Open Science landscape: a reflection on current European practice

Paul Ayris, Tiberius Ignat

Page range: 1-22

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Abstract

This collaborative paper looks at how libraries can engage with and offer leadership in the Open Science movement. It is based on case studies and the results of an EU-funded research project on Research Data Management taken from European research-led universities and their libraries. It begins by analysing three recent trends in Science, and then links component parts of the research process to aspects of Open Science. The paper then looks in detail at four areas and identifies roles for libraries: Open Access and Open Access publishing, Research Data Management, E-Infrastructures (especially the European Open Science Cloud), and Citizen Science. The paper ends in suggesting a model for how libraries, by using a 4-step test, can assess their engagement with Open Science. This 4-step test is based on lessons drawn from the case studies.

Open Access December 13, 2018

Scholarly Communication Practices in Humanities and Social Sciences: A Study of Researchers’ Attitudes and Awareness of Open Access

Bhuva Narayan, Edward J. Luca, Belinda Tiffen, Ashley England, Mal Booth, Henry Boateng

Page range: 168-180

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Abstract

This paper examines issues relating to the perceptions and adoption of open access (OA) and institutional repositories. Using a survey research design, we collected data from academics and other researchers in the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) at a university in Australia. We looked at factors influencing choice of publishers and journal outlets, as well as the use of social media and nontraditional channels for scholarly communication. We used an online questionnaire to collect data and used descriptive statistics to analyse the data. Our findings suggest that researchers are highly influenced by traditional measures of quality, such as journal impact factor, and are less concerned with making their work more findable and promoting it through social media. This highlights a disconnect between researchers’ desired outcomes and the efforts that they put in toward the same. Our findings also suggest that institutional policies have the potential to increase OA awareness and adoption. This study contributes to the growing literature on scholarly communication by offering evidence from the HASS field, where limited studies have been conducted. Based on the findings, we recommend that academic librarians engage with faculty through outreach and workshops to change perceptions of OA and the institutional repository.

Special Issue: Habits and Rituals, ed. by Raffaela Giovagnoli, and Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic

Open Access August 1, 2018

The Conception of Habit as a Stage of Hegel’s Naturalistic Theory of Mind

Guido Seddone

Page range: 75-82

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Abstract

This contribution aims to address the nature of the normative in Hegel’s theory of habits and to highlight that social practices are the outcome of natural and biological characteristics related to the homeostasis of the organism and to the common biological features of the individuals of the same species. This should point out that habits and human practices have a concrete biological background and are the outcome of humans’ eagerness to inhabit the world through socially codified activities. The contribution deals also with the relation habits have with the self-conscious life and human world history.

Open Access September 15, 2018

Transdisciplinarity across the Qualitative and Quantitative Science through C.S. Peirce’s Semiotic Concept of Habit

Søren Brier

Page range: 102-114

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Abstract

This paper investigates how Peirce manages to establish a transdisciplinary fallibilist view of the sciences that is not hostile to religious spirituality viewed as a complementary fallibilist knowledge type. I focus on Peirce’s attempt to construct an alternative to classical mechanical ontology with its reversible time concept and the ontological view of absolute transcendental laws of nature. His triadic semiotic pragmaticism has empiricism in common with the logical positivists, but it shares the fallibilist critical stance with Popper, with whose critical rationalism Peirce also shares a thorough-going evolutionary approach. With Hegel and Schelling, Peirce shares a kind of evolutionary objective idealism and with Whitehead a thoroughgoing process view, and finally with Wittgenstein, he shares a pragmatic view of the meaning of words and concepts. What knits together all these apparently incompatible views is his dynamic Tychism and his Synechist field view. Together these produce a transdisciplinary irreversible view of habits as “laws” of nature, mind, and society that emerge in the development of the cosmos. Though Peirce is somehow close to Hegel’s phenomenological and dialectical view on cosmogony, a number of aspects are quite unique about his approach: the most important of these are his dynamic triadic categorically-based semiotics that makes him understand human beings as well as the universe as symbolic self-organizing developing processes. This is an interesting alternative to modern mechanical info-computationalism.

Open Access October 18, 2018

What is a rite? Émile Durkheim, a hundred years later

Lorenzo D’Orsi, Fabio Dei

Page range: 115-126

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Abstract

This paper is focused on the anthropological concept of ritual, starting from Emile Durkheim's approach in Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912). We discuss three different aspects of the Durkheimian perspective on religion and rituals: a) the sacred/profane dichotomy; b) the concept of collective representations - which establishes a substantial continuity between religious and scientific thought; c) a ‟practical” and performative interpretation of rites as the basis of social bond. During the twentieth century, these aspects have influenced different and sometimes opposing theoretical approaches (including ‟symbolist” and ‟neo-intellectualist” theories and Victor Turner's ‟anthropology of experience”). We briefly review each of them, arguing for the importance of reconsidering them into a unitary perspective, centred on religious phenomena as basically moral experiences and as the language of social relations. In the conclusions, we will show how such unitary approach helps us understand the transformations as well as the continuities of rituality in the individualized and secularized societies of what we call nowadays the Western world.

Open Access October 30, 2018

Transformations in Breakthrough Research: The Emergence of Mirnas as a Research Routine in Molecular Biology

Paweł Kawalec

Page range: 127-146

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Abstract

Of the three main areas of science studies that emerged after WWII (Kawalec, 2018), namely social studies of science, economics of knowledge and scientometrics, it was the latter that gained particular prominence in science policy around the 1990’s with the advent of New Public Management (Pollitt, Thiel, & Homburg, 2007). One of its focal areas has been identification of emerging topics in science. They are incessantly assumed to be an outcome of a simple cumulative progress of scientific knowledge (Price, 1976; Merton, 1988; Bird, 2007; Fochler, 2016). In my paper I challenge this assumption of simple cumulativity and argue that the emergence of breakthrough topics in science is preceded by a sequence of transformation phases. Using the example of “microRNA&cancer” as an emergent topic identified by a quantitative analysis of a large dataset of publications (Small et al. 2014) I demonstrate that the proposed analysis of transformation phases complements big data quantitative analyses with theoretical understanding of the dynamics mechanism and, in effect, leads to a more adequate characterization of the topic itself as well as a more precise identification of the source publications. While the proposed method uses a more complex (meso-level) unit of analysis (i.e. “research routines”) instead of citations and co-occurrence of single publications (micro-level), it integrates quantitative with qualitative analyses.

Open Access November 10, 2018

Ritual Artifacts as Symbolic Habits

Lorenzo Magnani

Page range: 147-155

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Abstract

The concepts of manipulative abduction and of extending, disembodying, and distributing the mind can help delineate important aspects of the role of habits, rituals, and symbols in human cognition, including when new concepts are created. Taking advantage of some psychoanalytical and anthropological issues, I will show how symbolic habits in rituals can function as memory mediators which are able to play significant roles in human cognition and action. They can maximize abducibility and so recoverability of knowledge contents, including at the unconscious level.

Open Access November 10, 2018

Helping the Planet with Healthy Eating Habits

Luciana Baroni, Denise Filippin, Silvia Goggi

Page range: 156-167

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Abstract

A growing number of people are paying more attention to the concept of environmental sustainability, implementing sustainable eating practices to minimize the waste of resources, and the production of waste products related to the food production process. The careful application of sustainable eating practices makes it possible to help the environment, public health, and society by increasing the availability of food and farmland to feed every inhabitant on Earth. Individuals impact the environment through their eating because of three factors: food, energy used in the home, and transport. The most powerful of these factors is food. Animal food production involves a greater use of resources (raw materials, land, water, energy) and produces more pollutants (chemical residues from agriculture, greenhouse gases, manure) than plant-based food. Thus, a lifestyle based on eating plant foods is not only beneficial for the environment, but also protective of a consumer’s health. Alternative practices, such as using renewable energy sources or alternative fuels, however desirable they may be in combination with limiting the consumption of animal foods, are more difficult to implement across society. To change one’s eating habits is, on the other hand, a simple, fast, and inexpensive approach.

Open Access December 31, 2018

From Habits to Rituals: Rituals as Social Habits

Raffaela Giovagnoli

Page range: 181-188

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Abstract

The present contribution aims at investigating the relationship between habits and rituals; they are based on the same processes even though they have different functions depending on the context (personal or social). Our discussion will mostly focus on the nature and function of rituals, as necessary practices in human and other animals’ social lives. After a brief introduction of the notion of “habit” by reference to relevant studies that cross philosophy and neurobiology, we propose an interpretation of rituals as collective activity, which is based on the same mechanisms of habits formation, but it is expressed in a “We-form”, from which it is created and institutionalized

Open Access December 31, 2018

Human, not too Human: Technology, Rites, and Identity

Stefania Operto

Page range: 189-202

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Abstract

In the social sciences, the term “rite” identifies a set of practices and knowledge that contribute to forming the cultural models of a given society and has the aim of transmitting values and norms, institutionalization of roles, recognition of identity and social cohesion. This article examines the relationship between technology and ritual and the transformations in society resulting from the diffusion of new technologies. Technological progress is not a novelty in human development; though it is the first time in the history of humanity that technology has pervaded the lives of individuals and their relationships. The analyses conducted seem to show that the ritual is not intended to disappear but to change; to change forms and places. Postmodern societies have undergone profound modifications, but the conceptual category of ritual continues to be applicable to many human behaviors and it would be a mistake to support the idea that rituals are weakening.

About this journal

Topical Issue:
Information Behaviour and Information Ethics
Guest Editors:
Aurora González-Teruel, University of Valencia, Spain
Margarita Pérez-Pulido, University of Extremadura, Spain
Submission deadline: 15th of June 2023

Open Information Science is an international, open access, cross-disciplinary, single-blind peer-reviewed journal that presents original research on all areas of library and information sciences. It aims to publish the research papers on the most recent issues and developments in the field. Open Information Science is particularly interested in the dissemination of the intellectual efforts of the global academic community in this field. This journal is going to be helpful for researchers, specialists, teachers and practitioners of librarianship.

Scope of the journal includes, but is not limited to:

library and information science - theory and practice
management of library and information systems
organization of knowledge
information technology
research methods
information behavior
information and media literacy
health information seeking behavior
information management
information governance
digital libraries and information systems
school and academic libraries
scholarly communication
library education
public libraries
archival science
cultural heritage
preservations
media studies
media education
social media
e-infrastructures
electronic communications
mass communication
networking
open access

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Open Special Issues:

Open Information Science welcomes proposals for Special Issues from prospective Guest Editors. Please contact the Managing Editor (Joanna.Kosinska@degruyter.com) for more information.

Published Special Issues:

Habits and Rituals, ed. by Raffaela Giovagnoli and Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Gender Issues in Library and Information Science: Focusing on Visual Aspects, ed. by Lesley S.J. Farmer
Fake News in Library and Information Science, ed. by Renate Chancellor
Access to Information: Freedom and Censorship, ed. by Shannon Oltmann
Information Studies, Race and Racism, ed. by Melissa Villa-Nicholas
Information Management and Digital Information, ed. by Adrienne Muir
Handwriting and Paleography Studies in the Digital Age, ed. by Diego Navarro Bonilla
Paleography Nowadays: Achievements and Challenges, ed. by Diego Navarro Bonilla
Disinformation in the Middle East, ed. by Ahmed Al-Rawi
Digital Wellness, ed. by Valerie Karno