Subject Coverage Research Articles

Database Support for Public Policy Paper Location

This article analyzes the inclusion of public policy papers in three resources—Policy File, Policy Archives, and PAIS International. The databases were analyzed by searching for known policy papers across the three resources, analyzing the subject coverage of the policy papers contained in the databases, and the inclusion of particular policy institutes. PAIS International contained more policy papers based on subject and included more of the selected policy institutes. Policy File contained more of the preselected policy papers.

Exploiting relevance, coverage, and novelty for query-focused multi-document summarization

Summarization plays an increasingly important role with the exponential document growth on the Web. Specifically, for query-focused summarization, there exist three challenges: (1) how to retrieve query relevant sentences; (2) how to concisely cover the main aspects (i.e., topics) in the document; and (3) how to balance these two requests. Specially for the issue relevance, many traditional summarization techniques assume that there is independent relevance between sentences, which may not hold in reality. In this paper, we go beyond this assumption and propose a novel Probabilistic-modeling Relevance, Coverage, and Novelty (PRCN) framework, which exploits a reference topic model incorporating user query for dependent relevance measurement. Along this line, topic coverage is also modeled under our framework. To further address the issues above, various sentence features regarding relevance and novelty are constructed as features, while moderate topic coverage are maintained through a greedy algorithm for topic balance. Finally, experiments on DUC2005 and DUC2006 datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

F-Serials: Publishers, libraries, users and standards

This second edition retains most of the original chapters of the first, which was published in 1998;but the information has been brought up to date and new topics introduced. The editor acknowledges that there are bound to be gaps in the subject coverage, but to cover absolutely everything about electronic serialswould produce a volume the size of a 'James Michener novel'.

Max-sum diversification on image ranking with non-uniform matroid constraints

Different from conventional retrieval methods that focus on presenting users with relevant results, diversified ranking algorithms aim to provide a non-redundant and rich topic coverage of information in the top ranked list. Most existing approaches for diversified image ranking require a two-step process: (1) a set of potentially relevant images is determined; (2) these images are re-ranked to be diverse. However, the diversified ranking lists obtained from these methods are under the uniform constraint, which treats each image equally important. As such, the final diversified ranking list may come from one or several limited number of categories, where they are the most relevant to the query, rather than exhibiting a wide range of categories to the users. Motivated by this, in this paper, we propose a novel diversified ranking algorithm on image retrieval associated with a non-uniform matroid constraint (each image is weighted differently according to the category it belongs to, and the partition matroid constraints are posed on each category) to leverage the relevance and diversity in an optimized fashion, which jointly captures the relevance and diversity. We introduce hardness coefficient that can automatically set the weight parameters regarding each image to meet the requirement of non-uniform matroid partition constraints. We study our method regarding both in-sample queries and out-of-sample queries. For in-sample queries, we prove that maximizing the proposed objective function is NP-hard. As a result, we find a near-optimal solution with a guaranteed approximation ratio. To tackle the case of out-of-sample queries, four strategies are investigated. Extensive experimental evaluations on real image data sets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our method.

Deal or No Deal? Evaluating Big Deals and Their Journals

This paper presents methods to develop metrics that compare Big Deal journal packages and the journals within those packages. Deal-level metrics guide selection of a Big Deal for termination. Journal-level metrics guide selection of individual subscriptions from journals previously provided by a terminated deal. The paper argues that, while the proposed metrics provide helpful quantitative data for comparative analysis, selection of individual subscriptions must also involve informed judgment about a library’s subject coverage needs and alternative sources of access. The paper also discusses how replacing a Big Deal with a reduced number of individual subscriptions may affect the collections budget, use of other resources, and interlibrary loan.

Celebrating the golden jubilee of the Journal of Applied Ecology

In our time, as the need to expand the output of foodfor the rapidly rising population of the world becomesmore acutely felt, and as development acceleratesthroughout the world, the scope and tasks of appliedecology cannot but increase. Ours is an age in whichecological thinking and methods have more than everbefore to contribute to the progress of mankind: theJournal of Applied Ecology hopes to play a useful partin the common effort.These aspirations represent the closing statement of thevery first Editorial published in the first issue of Journalof Applied Ecology in 1964 (Bunting & Wynne-Edwards1964), and yet are still highly relevant today. It was withconsiderable vision that the British Ecological Society(BES) launched a new journal that not only spannedplant and animal ecology but addressed issues ofrelevance to human well-being.The Journal of Applied Ecology was founded to publishthe results of original research, particularly of a quantita-tive and experimental kind, on ecological subjects that areof economic or social importance. Fifty years ago, appliedecology was widely viewed as the poor relation of themore glamorous fundamental areas of this young science.Scientific research relating to the conservation of biologi-cal diversity was in its infancy, journals such as Conserva-tion Biology were not even on the horizon, while it wouldbe more than a decade before the integration of agricul-ture and the environment became a recognized area ofresearch with the launch of the journal Agriculture, Eco-system and Environment in the 1970s. The Journal ofApplied Ecology had already celebrated a quarter of acentury of publishing the best applied ecological researchwhen the Ecological Society of America launched Ecologi-cal Applications. Few applied journals can compete withthe Journal of Applied Ecology in terms of its heritage andits contribution to establishing applied ecology as animportant discipline in its own right.To celebrate our golden jubilee, we have launched avirtual issue online (http://www.journalofappliedecology.org/view/0/virtualissues/fiftyyearsvirtualissue.html) that re-views some of the key articles we have published over thelast five decades. Much of the focus of the first decadewas on improving the productivity of agricultural ecosys-tems rather than addressing agriculture’s potential impacton species conservation. Nonetheless, the Journal had aglobal outlook from the start, drawing its examples fromecosystems around the world. Surprisingly, given thelaunch of the journal less than 2 years after the publica-tion of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Carson, Darling &Darling 1962), studies describing the impact of agrochemi-cals on wildlife only appeared towards the end of the1960s. These studies did, however, include early classics inthe field. Work published at this time continues to haveimpact today. For example, Newman’s (1966) article, on amethod for estimating the total length of root in a sam-ple, is still heavily cited more than four decades later, with62 citations listed in Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.co.uk/) from January 2011 to November 2012.These recent citing articles include authors estimating car-bon stocks in Amazonia, understanding the effects ofmycorrhiza for coffee in Puerto Rico, and investigating thepotential for biocontrol of tomato root rot in Denmark.During the 1970s, much of what was published reflectedthe need for basic information about the biology of pestspecies that had large economic effects. This was a periodof rapid agricultural expansion and modernization, exem-plified by the so-called ‘green revolution’, and researcherswere acutely concerned with pests that lowered crop pro-ductivity. By the 1980s, while pests of agriculture werestill an important focus, models of their populationdynamics became increasingly more realistic and includedcrop phenology in assessments of the likely damage fromdefoliating insects. Furthermore, the management of agri-

Availability and visibility of open access digital repositories in ASEAN countries

This study reports on the 2011 survey of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) digital repositories, employing web analysis to highlight the current state of the repositories and describing their characteristics in terms of types, contents, subject coverage and language. It also identifies the web performance of these repositories as reflected through global visibility. Data obtained from the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and the Ranking Web of World Repositories (RWWR) were used to analyse the availability and global visibility. Findings indicate that the total number of digital repositories in ASEAN is 51 with Indonesia as the biggest contributor (20, 39 percent), followed by Malaysia (17, 33 percent) and Thailand (7, 13 percent). Out of the 51 ASEAN digital repositories identified from OpenDOAR and ROAR, only 23 (45 percent) are listed in RWWR. RWWR’s data indicates that only about 3 percent (33 out of 1,184 repositories worldwide) in ASEAN are visible. There are another 10 digital repositories identified in RWWR which are not listed under OpenDOAR or registered under ROAR. As such this study has identified a total of 61 ASEAN repositories participating in Open Access publishing through the Green Road. Findings suggest that ASEAN repositories which wish to be listed in RWWR need to have some degree of visibility and incorporate good practices in their web publication to fulfill the requirement of RWWR quantitative webometrics indicators, namely visibility, size, rich files and `scholar'.

A comparison of techniques for measuring sensemaking and learning within participant‐generated summaries

While it is easy to identify whether someone has found a piece of information during a search task, it is much harder to measure how much someone has learned during the search process. Searchers who are learning often exhibit exploratory behaviors, and so current research is often focused on improving support for exploratory search. Consequently, we need effective measures of learning to demonstrate better support for exploratory search. Some approaches, such as quizzes, measure recall when learning from a fixed source of information. This research, however, focuses on techniques for measuring open‐ended learning, which often involve analyzing handwritten summaries produced by participants after a task. There are two common techniques for analyzing such summaries: (a) counting facts and statements and (b) judging topic coverage. Both of these techniques, however, can be easily confounded by simple variables such as summary length. This article presents a new technique that measures depth of learning within written summaries based on Bloom's taxonomy (B.S. Bloom & M.D. Engelhart, 1956). This technique was generated using grounded theory and is designed to be less susceptible to such confounding variables. Together, these three categories of measure were compared by applying them to a large collection of written summaries produced in a task‐based study, and our results provide insights into each of their strengths and weaknesses. Both fact‐to‐statement ratio and our own measure of depth of learning were effective while being less affected by confounding variables. Recommendations and clear areas of future work are provided to help continued research into supporting sensemaking and learning.

Letters to the journal

The Critical/Biographical Coverage of SF and Fantasy: An Unscientific Snapshot of Subject Coverage in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database, ca. Summer 2013Some time ago, I queried listservs regarding interest in a data file showing subject coverage of science fiction and fantasy, as reflected in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database. The responses indicated enough interest to complete the datafile.The introduction and the Excel datafile on the Texas A&M University Library Institutional Repository. The link to the file is in the Introduction, following this note.The data file is functionally freely available for use by anyone who wants to use the data, to manipulate the data file, to add to the file and extract data (as the sample columns illustrate), or otherwise use it for any type of research.In the course of re-editing the subject entries in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database, it became obvious that for only a bit more work, a data file could be created that would give a snapshot of the material covered in the database. A quick query of SFRA members indicated interest in such a project.The data file is derived from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database as of June 2013, when the database consisted of 100,300 records. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database is a wide-ranging compilation, including scholarly articles and books, newspaper articles, news notes, motion picture reviews and comments, and some web content. Using this data file as a guide, it would be easy, if time consuming, to define the types of coverage in the database: scholarly article, book chapter, news note, and the like.The file is simple: a subject term, and the number of times that term was used in the database. It has the beginnings of other data columns. In the third column, I started coding for terms that would be useful for sorting. Terms such as AUTHOR, ARTIST, DIRECTOR, ACTOR and the like can be added, and used to sort the data for closed evaluation. Sample columns for other coding options are also included. Additional coding and use are left to anyone who may have an interest.The file is an unscientific and non-rigorous presentation of data. By that, I mean the file is a by-product of another project, not a tightly designed research effort. By non-rigorous, I mean that I exercised care in deriving the numerical data, but there are almost certainly some instances of miscounting. …

Impact of Interleukin 1 Gene Polymorphism and Smoking on Long-Term Stability Following Gingival Recession Treatment

Risk factors such as smoking, genetic factors, and tissue biotype play an important role in the etiology, predictability, and long-term stability of gingival recession treatment. This study was designed to evaluate the influence of interleukin 1 (IL-1) polymorphism and smoking on the stability of gingival recession treatment after 1 and 3 years. All patients (n = 55) were treated for type I and II recession defects using a connective tissue graft. Clinical evaluations were performed, which included assessment of vertical recession depth, gingival inflammation, and clinical attachment level. A fingerstick blood sample was collected using specially provided DNA filter paper and mailed for processing in a laboratory using polymerase chain reaction-based methodology. The results indicated that 19 subjects were genotype positive (34.5%). Treatment of the localized recessions was effective and provided a similar amount of coverage in genotype-positive and genotype-negative subjects within smoking and nonsmoking groups after 1 year. In a 3-year period, nonsmoking patients with positive IL-1 genotype lost approximately 20% of the root coverage gained at 1 year and were almost four times more inferior compared with genotype-negative patients. Patients who smoked and had a positive IL-1 genotype lost approximately 35% of the gained root coverage. IL-1 polymorphism and smoking habit did not affect gingival recession treatment at 1 year but had a great impact on long-term stability.

Citation Pattern in Ph.D. Theses in Library and Information Science at S.N.D.T. Women's University, Mumbai during 1996–2012

The study analyses the preferences and usage of different types of information resources in the Ph.D. theses submitted in the discipline of Library and Information Science (LIS). The citations examined types of cited literature such as journal articles, books, and chapters in books, databases, theses and reference sources. The subject coverage of cited references and the number of Indian and foreign citations were also analyzed. Authorship patterns of cited references were also examined. The study will be useful for the university libraries and other types of libraries having library science department in planning for collection development in library and information science. The results indicate that researchers have cited more foreign publications as compared to Indian resources. High use of Internet resources was observed as access to Internet has become easy in India now.

La conformación de valores noticia en un contexto de conflicto. Análisis pragmático de su funcionamiento en la información sobre el narcotráfico en México y el feminicidio de Ciudad Juárez.

This article ponders over the use of the traditional news value in a very specific situation of conflict: the information about the femicide in Ciudad Juarez and the drugs trade in Mexico. Therefore, the three media in the whole country with the biggest coverage of both subjects since 1976 till nowadays have been studied through a methodological triangular structure (bibliographie sources, interviews and content analysis). Along this research it is noticed the importance of the informative context in the news production and it is ascertained a dislocation using the traditional news value therewithal are revealed six newsworthiness factors the enable the visibility of a great amount of specific aspects about the femicide in Ciudad Juarez and about the drugs trade all around the country, that are concealed by the main mexican generalistic media.

Evaluation of E-Journals in Library and Information Science based on Three Websites: A Case Study

This article to explain the growth of e-journals in Library and Information Science along with the methodology employed in the study analyzed and interprets data, pertaining to a total sample of 136 e-journals available in three websites using only three popular search engines (Google, Altavista, Yahoo) in regard to their subject coverage, country of publication, year of publication, frequency and cost during the period 1995 to 2010. It reveals that 38.97% of the total e-journals in Library and Information Science cover IT (Information Technology) as their thrust area; 56.15% of them are published from USA; 96.18% of e-journals are published in English; 41.22% re published quarterly; and 61.02% of them are fee based journals.

Critical Infrastructure Security: Assessment, Prevention, Detection, Response

This book provides a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art techniques for the security of critical infrastructures, addressing both logical and physical aspects from an engineering point of view. Recently developed methodologies and tools for CI analysis as well as strategies and technologies for CI protection are investigated in the following strongly interrelated and multidisciplinary main fields: - Vulnerability analysis and risk assessment - Threat prevention, detection and response - Emergency planning and management Each of the aforementioned topics is addressed considering both theoretical aspects and practical applications. Emphasis is given to model-based holistic evaluation approaches as well as to emerging protection technologies, including smart surveillance through networks of intelligent sensing devices. Critical Infrastructure Security can be used as a self-contained reference handbook for both practitioners and researchers or even as a textbook for master/doctoral degree students in engineering or related disciplines. More specifically, the topic coverage of the book includes: - Historical background on threats to critical infrastructures - Model-based risk evaluation and management approaches - Security surveys and game-theoretic vulnerability assessment - Federated simulation for interdependency analysis - Security operator training and emergency preparedness - Intelligent multimedia (audio-video) surveillance - Terahertz body scanners for weapon and explosive detection - Security system design (intrusion detection / access control) - Dependability and resilience of computer networks (SCADA / cyber-security) - Wireless smart-sensor networks and structural health monitoring - Information systems for crisis response and emergency management - Early warning, situation awareness and decision support software

Editor’s Choice

Editor’s Choice

Use of Electronic Resources and its Impact: A Study of Dhaka University Library Users

This paper presents and analyses the status of electronic resources facilities and services provided by the Dhaka University Library (DUL). It also discusses the purpose of using e-resources, benefits, subject coverage status, overall user satisfactions, problems that are faced by DUL users while accessing e-resources and perceived impact of e-resources on users. Finally, it reports the results from questionnaire-based survey of e-resources use and its impact on DUL users. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/el.v23i1.12122 Eastern Librarian Vol.23(1) 2012 pp.74-90

Mapping a curriculum database to the USMLE Step 1 content outline

Assessing the completeness of topic coverage in medical curricula is difficult to establish as no universal standard for completeness has been agreed upon. However, the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 Exam Content Outline may provide a beginning framework. This project developed a computer-based tool that matched ArizonaMed curriculum content (Tucson track) against a modified USMLE content outline. The project involved three phases: (1) the USMLE Step 1 content outline was deconstructed and translated using equivalent Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms; (2) a report was made of all MeSH terms used to identify the content in the ArizonaMed curriculum database, compared to the MeSH-modified USMLE outline, and the resulting matches are graphically expressed. The frequency with which each MeSH term appeared across the years also was reported; and (3) a retreat was held with faculty and others to ensure the MeSH-translated outline was accurate and complete. Faculty were able to visualize how content was being expressed among instructional blocks across the first two years. Results also assured faculty and students that all subjects contained in the USMLE content outline were covered in the curriculum. The success of this effort is leading to improvements in content-tracking capability for the ArizonaMed database.

The new Medical Library Association research agenda: final results from a three-phase delphi study

The Medical Library Association’s (MLA’s) 2007 research policy statement [1] charged the MLA Research Section with defining the MLA research agenda on a recurring basis [2]. In 2008, the MLA Research Section’s Research Agenda Committee used a group consensus technique known as the Delphi method that involved both researchers and leaders to articulate MLA’s twelve highest priority research questions. The MLA Board adopted these twelve questions as the 2008 MLA research agenda. A subsequent article reporting these top twelve questions includes detailed description of the committee’s research methodology [3]. Following several months of deliberation and in consultation with the MLA Board of Directors, the MLA Research Section’s Executive Committee directed the Research Agenda Committee to conduct a new study during 2011, implementing the adaptations recommended in the previous report [4], while upgrading the methodology to improve the answerability of the questions. Although only a few years had passed, it also seemed possible that rapid technological changes and emerging societal conditions would produce a different set of top-ranked research questions. These deliberations led to important changes from the 2008 Delphi study. The 2008 study had generated two questions that were so lengthy and sprawling in their subject coverage that they would have been nearly impossible to answer, requiring that the authors strictly enforce a sixty-word limit during 2011. While the 2008 study had merged the MLA leaders and all members of the MLA Research Section into a single study population, the authors decided against including all Research Section members during 2011, because Research Section membership might reflect support for the research endeavor or a desire to learn more about research rather than actual research experience. Those Research Section members with research experience would be difficult to identify easily. A year after the 2008 study, the authors coincidentally learned of a concurrent 2008 Delphi method process that a team of Swedish researchers implemented for defining the research agenda for all Swedish librarians [5]. The authors otherwise know of no other Delphi method studies on defining a research agenda in librarianship, although, as indicated in the 2008 study report [3], this method has been used by other professions to define their research agendas.

School library research in Nigeria

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to analyse the content of the Nigerian School Library Journal (NSLJ) from 1979‐2010.Design/methodology/approach – This study adopts a descriptive research approach by means of bibliometric analysis. The NSLJ was examined for subject coverage, geographic distribution of authors, country of origin of authors, publication output, collaboration among authors, international visibility, gender of authors, research type, and language of articles. The international visibility of the journal was investigated through the web‐based version of Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Africa Journals OnLine (AJOL) and literature search.Findings – There have been nine issues since the first publication in 1979. The study discovered that NSLJ was not listed among the known LIS journals from Nigeria. The geographical distributions and nationality of the authors in NSLJ indicated that all the authors were Nigerians, and the level of collaboration among the authors was low (16.7 per cent) wh...

Choosing e‐books: a perspective from academic libraries

PurposeE‐books are an important and growing type of digital resource. Academic libraries have traditionally had a major role in selecting books and making them available to learners, scholars, and researchers. Therefore the processes and criteria that they apply in the selection and acquisition of e‐books may potentially have significant consequences for the future viability of e‐books as a product. This paper aims to report on research into the criteria and processes that academic libraries use to choose e‐books.Design/methodology/approachSemi‐structured interviews were conducted with 27 librarians in seven academic libraries in the UK.FindingsAcademic libraries purchase e‐books from a portfolio of different vendors. In order to select the books and packages that they acquire they apply a number of criteria, including business models, licence, price, platform, interface, subject coverage, and match to reading lists. High on the list of librarians' concerns are: the variation in and complexity of business models for purchasing, licence variety and digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, and perceived high prices.Originality/valueThis study focuses directly and in depth on the buying and selection processes and criteria. Insights offered by this study may be of value to publishers, aggregators and librarians.