Information Sciences and Technology (17355206)22(3)pp. 33-54
The growing number of specialized, scientific journals has made fast, batch identification and retrieval of articles a daunting task for the researchers. Furthermore, the rising cost of journal subscriptions, has deprived many researchers and even small libraries of individual subscriptions. The present research was conducted to assess the importance of establishing a full text database of Persian articles at the library of the faculty of law and political sciences in Shiraz University from the standpoint of the graduate and undergraduate students. Findings demonstrated that the average usefulness of the full-text article databases in students' view, was rated "high", given their experience with databases. About 61% of the respondents stated their "high" and "very high" approval for article digitization. Given the advantages offered by full-text article databases, the approval rating of the respondents have been "high.
Information Sciences and Technology (17355206)24(1)
Information Sciences and Technology (17355206)25(1)
Information Sciences and Technology (17355206)25(4)pp. 573-595
The present study determines the co-authorship factor in the Iranian scientific output between 2000 and 2006 as reflected in the science, social science art and humanities citation indexes made available through the Web of Science database. Webometric indicators were used. The data were extracted in plain text from WOS, analyzed using HistCite software and counted in MS Office Excel program. Of the Total of 25320 documents indexed, 24480 documents were in Science Citation Index, 783 in Social Citation Index and 57 in Art and Humanities index. The findings indicated that co-authorship factor in the period studied had been on the rise. The highest participation rate belonged to the documents with two or three authors. General coauthorship factor was 0.59. The year 2006 had the highest coauthorship factor (0.62) while the year 2000 had the least (0.55). Bradford and Lotka laws were applied to the data sets. The Lotka's Law only held true for the science citation index. The Bradford's Law, however, held true for all indexes. In all citation indexes, the United States with 1865 documents (7.38) had the highest degree of coauthorship in Iranian scientific output.
Communications in Computer and Information Science (18650937)96pp. 200-210
To visualize the structure of Iranian scientific output in Science Citation Index (SCI), accessible via Web of Science (WOS), during 2000-2006, we used scientometric techniques and HistCite software. The number of Iranian documents indexed in SCI during the study period was 24480. Generally HistCite analyzes citation data on two different levels: based on citations in WOS (Global Citation Scale), and citations in collection of retrieved documents (Local Citation Scale). The results of this study showed that, in the study period a total of 8 clusters have been formed on the two levels (GCS and LCS): Clusters 1 and 2 (with 3 sub-clusters) in GCS and clusters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 in LCS. The subject area of whole clusters was chemistry, but different areas of this discipline. The prominent subject area in our study was organic chemistry. The most effective document in this study was an article by Zolfigol with 123 global citations and 71 local citations. The subject category of cluster 1 was analytical chemistry and membrane electrodes. Cluster 2 consists of 3 sub-clusters (sub-cluster 1 hydrocarbons, sub-cluster 2 in the field of oxidation and nitrogen, and sub-cluster 3 catalysts). Cluster 4 was crystal structure, cluster 5 electrochemical analysis, cluster 6 macro cycles, cluster 7 aliphatic and aromatic complexes and the 8th cluster was polymers. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.
Iranian Journal of Information Processing Management (22518231)27(4)pp. 961-984
The present study investigated the analysis of search engines and meta search engines adoption process by University of Isfahan users during 2009-2010 based on the Rogers' diffusion of innovation theory. The main aim of the research was to study the rate of adoption and recognizing the potentials and effective tools in search engines and meta search engines adoption among University of Isfahan users. The research method was descriptive survey study. The cases of the study were all of the post graduate students of the University of Isfahan. 351 students were selected as the sample and categorized by a stratified random sampling method. Questionnaire was used for collecting data. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS 16 in both descriptive and analytic statistic. For descriptive statistic frequency, percentage and mean were used, while for analytic statistic t-test and Kruskal-Wallis non parametric test (H-test) were used. The finding of t-test and Kruscal-Wallis indicated that the mean of search engines and meta search engines adoption did not show statistical differences gender, level of education and the faculty. Special search engines adoption process was different in terms of gender but not in terms of the level of education and the faculty. Other results of the research indicated that among general search engines, Google had the most adoption rate. In addition, among the special search engines, Google Scholar and among the meta search engines Mamma had the most adopting rate. Findings also showed that friends played an important role on how students adopted general search engines while professors had important role on how students adopted special search engines and meta search engines. Moreover, results showed that the place where students got the most acquaintance with search engines and meta search engines was in the university. The finding showed that the curve of adoption rate was not normal and it was not also in S-shape. Morover, among simple and advanced pages of Google, a specific bias toward simple search pages could be seen in users. This part of the study confirmed Rogers' theory. Other results of the study indicated that renouncement of innovation was not only in decision phase. This part of the investigation was in conflict with Rogers' theory.
Asemi, A.,
Akbari, A.,
Kheradmandnia, M.,
Farazi, A. Electronic Library (02640473)30(6)pp. 833-843
Purpose - The aim of this paper is to investigate the pros and cons of Iranian library management software, focusing on the usage of open source technology. It seeks to analyse the viewpoints of librarians in the University of Isfahan as a sample to extend the findings to the Iranian Library management software community. Design/methodology/approach - In order to get the opinions of librarians, the descriptive method is used. The required data are collected by literature review, questionnaire and open interview from university top managers, software technical staff, libraries managers, librarians, end users, and companies providing similar products. However, because of time limitations, the authors could only gather data by researcher-made checklist of the librarians (informants) who directly have worked with University of Isfahan in the libraries. Findings - The main problem of many library management software platforms in Iran is that the focus of development is mainly on technical issues rather than management, operational, and end-user concerns. This is highlighted when open source software is used because it is common for an off-the-shelf product to be used with less consideration of the nontechnical issues. This is the reason that Iranian libraries are moving to replace their software with commercial versions. Research limitations/implications - There was insufficient cooperation of some librarians in identifying capabilities and deficiencies of UILMS and limited cooperation of some technical experts in reviewing the software. Originality/value - Considering the lack of standard checklists, this paper presents a relatively complete checklist to evaluate the library software. © Copyright - 2012 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
