The most influential journals: Impact Factor and Eigenfactor

Bibliometricians have introduced various scales of ranking journals; some based on publications, some based on usage as well, including the internet, using social networking analysis. Bollen et al. (1) recently concluded that no single indicator adequately measures impact and the IF is at the periphery of 39 scales analyzed. But there is a new parameter, the Eigenfactor™, which attempts to rate the influence of journals (www.eigenfactor.org). The Eigenfactor™ ranks journals in a manner similar to that used by Google for ranking the importance of Web sites in a search.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

SLA 2009 Annual Conference Handouts
Many of these are already online — mostly PDFs and PowerPoints.

Source: Special Libraries Association

The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms (PDF; 2.2 MB)

Unless you work for or own an online business, chances are you’ve never heard the terms “search engine optimization” (SEO) and “search engine marketing” (SEM). Yet these two phrases—SEO (the effort by site owners to get their website ranked higher by search engines) and SEM (the use of paid advertising to gain prominent placement on search engines) are increasingly important vocabulary for businesses that seek to prosper on the web. Unfortunately, legitimate businesses are not the only ones gaining fluency with this new language.

The scammers—from solo operators to organized criminals—have quickly realized that the same search engines that enable legitimate businesses to reach more consumers can also be used by criminals to separate more victims from more of their money.

This paper examines a new phenomenon—the use of search engines as a conduit for profit-driven hackers—by analyzing the risk of searching for more than 2,000 of the most popular words and phrases (“keywords”) used in search engines in 2008. From “Jonas Brothers tickets” to “game cheats” to “Viva la Vida lyrics,” these keywords represent a broad slice of what search expert John Battelle calls our “database of intentions.”

Along with our “intentions,” this database also reveals how much risk we expose ourselves to each and every time we put our favorite search engines to use. How much risk? For some keywords like “popular screensavers” and “descargar google” and certain of their resulting pages, the risk can be pervasive— 75% or more results (three out of four) can lead to increased web security risk. This should not be surprising to observers of security trends. Since hacking for fame has given way to hacking for profit, malicious players have grown increasingly sophisticated in their ability to find large pools of potential victims. By measuring the relative risk of popular search terms, this study confirms that scammers continue to target the largest pools of victims.

But this study also found some interesting evidence to the contrary. Previous McAfee® studies of web safety have shown about 4% of sites to be risky. This is a broad measure of the overall risk we face when we use the web. By contrast, the average risk level of all results pages we studied was just 1.7%. This study is broad and directional. New tools and research methods need to be deployed to allow us to better understand the mechanics of how search is being misused. We hope this study helps pave the way for other studies that take on these important questions.

Source: McAfee

Hat tip: DG

This revolution will be digitized: online tools for radical collaboration

What if everyone in the world were in your lab – a ‘hive mind’ of sorts, but composed of countless creative intellects rather than mindless worker ants, and one in which resources, reagents and effort could be shared, along with ideas, in a manner not dictated by institutional and geographical constraints?

Source: Disease Models & Mechanisms

Arts Brochure

Over the past several years, RAND has been building a research capability in the arts to provide useful data and analysis to policymakers, arts practitioners, and the academic community. This downloadable brochure features several of these titles, with links to each of the publications on the RAND web site.

+ Full Document (PDF: 700 KB)

Source: RAND Corporation

Review of the European Data Protection Directive

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) asked a multidisciplinary international research team led by RAND Europe with time-lex and GNKS-Consult to review the strengths and weaknesses of the European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and propose avenues for improvement.

The Directive can be regarded as a unique legal instrument in how it supports the exercise of a right to privacy and rules for personal data protection. Its principles are regarded in many quarters as a gold standard or reference model for personal data protection in Europe and beyond. However, the Directive must remain valid in the face of new challenges, including globalisation, the ongoing march of technological capability and the changing ways that personal data is used. Although the flexibility of the Directive helps it to remain current, its effectiveness is undermined by the complexity of the cultural and national differences across which it must operate.

In order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the Directive and to suggest ways in which European data protection arrangements may remain fit for purpose, the study team reviewed the relevant literature, conducted 50 interviews with privacy practitioners and regulators, experts and academics, and ran a scenario-based workshop to explore and evaluate potential avenues for improvement.

The ideas presented here provide some food for thought on how to improve the data protection regime for citizens living in European countries and are intended to spark debate and interaction between policy-makers, industry and experts. Such a review cannot claim to be the last word.

+ Summary (PDF; 200 KB)
+ Full Document (PDF; 700 KB)

Source: RAND Corporation

The Next Generation of Legal Citations: A Survey of Internet Citations in the Opinions of the Washington Supreme Court and Washington Appellate Courts, 1999-2005

As more legal research is conducted online, it is reasonable to conclude that there will be a corresponding increase in citations to the Internet by judges in their opinions. With the widespread public use of the Internet to access information along with the constant changes and impermanence of websites, citing to the Internet should be an issue of increasing concern to the legal community across the country. This paper surveys the types of Internet sources the Washington state Supreme Court and Appellate Court justices are citing. It discusses the interrelated issues of link rot and the impermanence of web pages, citation format, authentication and preservation of online electronic legal information.

Several options available for retrieval of full text.

Source: Journal of Appellate Practice and Process (via SSRN)

Hat tip: Law Librarian Blog

H1N1 Influenza Center

To monitor the H1N1 outbreak, we have established the H1N1 Influenza Center. The Center presents original research reports and other commentary, as well as news updates, summaries from Journal Watch, and an interactive map of H1N1 influenza cases worldwide. The Center also includes articles from our archive on the 1918 influenza epidemic and the “swine flu” epidemic of the 1970s.

Source: New England Journal of Medicine

Hat tip: PW

From a WWW 2009 Conference Report by Christoph Wieser

According to Tim Berners-Lee the Web is still static and consists mostly of archived HTML and PDF documents. There is still a need for a read/write Web and the standards are still not used to a sufficient extend. Changes in the Web are the ‘move to mobile’ and the climb up of ‘advertizing to being a science’.

Beside the still existing challenges of the current Web, additional ones arrived. Web Applications as well as Open Social Networking and Open Linked Data count to the area of current interest.

See Also: Review the Key Points of Tim Berners-Lee Presentation

See Also: Direct to WWW 2009 Conference Home Page

Source: The Semantic Puzzle

Legally Speaking: The Dead Souls of the Google Booksearch Settlement

This short article argues that the proposed settlement of the Authors Guild v. Google lawsuit is a privately negotiated compulsory license primarily designed to monetize millions of orphan works. It will benefit Google and certain authors and publishers, but it is questionable whether the authors of most books in the corpus (the “dead souls” to which the title refers) would agree that the settling authors and publishers will truly represent their interests when setting terms for access to the Book Search corpus.

Several options available for retrieval of full text.

Source: Communications of the ACM, forthcoming (Pamela Samuelson), via SSRN

A Layered United States Universal Service Fund for an Everything-over-IP World

Support through the United States Federal Universal Service Fund for high-cost areas has been principally defined in terms of telephone service. Fund growth due to increases in wireless lines and implicit support for broadband infrastructure has created an untenable situation, and fundamental reform is expected. The cause underlying this growth is convergence between the telephone network, wireless networks, the Internet, and cable networks. This convergence will pose additional serious long term challenges to the Fund. This paper proposes a restructuring of the high-cost funds based on a layered model. Both contributions and distributions are focused on network infrastructure, without distinction between voice and broadband. The proposal uses a new definition of communication services to guarantee technology neutrality, and includes service area reform and cost efficiency measures. This layered approach repositions the Fund for future converged networks.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 359 KB)

Source: Telecommunications Policy (via eScholarship Repository, University of California)

The Library-Community Convergence Framework for Community Action: Libraries as Catalysts of Social Change

This paper presents a library-community convergence framework (LCCF) to extend the library’s role to participate more fully in community action and enhance its role as a proactive catalyst of social change, as compared to a sometimes perceived role of bystander. The LCCF for community action is relevant in the contemporary context of changing public demographics and an increasing need for library interactions with ethnic and multicultural publics. It provides a holistic approach for libraries to extend their existing functionalities and serve as catalysts for community-wide advocacy for people on the margins. The paper discusses select application of the LCCF for community action in two qualitative research studies with local immigrant communities and sexual minorities, that use methods pioneered in ethnographic outreach and participatory action research (PAR) respectively. We briefly present our field-based research in these two cases and connect them to our advocacy of the LCCF.

Ethnographic methods in the first study provide understanding of cross-cultural issues and uncover how local immigrant classifications can be induced from an ethnographic perspective to generate library classifications and information services that are locally relevant and empowering. PAR ideologies in the second study underlie implementation of library and information interventions and community action while partnering with local sexual minorities and their allies, to address specific and contextualized community facets in ways that may promote community-wide social changes. Points of intersection from the two studies help identify key elements in the LCCF framework that extend the role of libraries as leaders and cultural planners of progressive community-based action.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 432 KB)

Source: Bharat Mehra and Ramesh Srinivasan (via eScholarship Repository, University of California)

Feeds as Query Result Serializations

Many Web-based data sources and services are available as feeds, a model that provides consumers with a loosely coupled way of interacting with providers. The current feed model is limited in its capabilities, however. Though it is simple to implement and scales well, it cannot be transferred to a wider range of application scenarios. This paper conceptualizes feeds as a way to serialize query results, describes the current hardcoded query semantics of such a perspective, and surveys the ways in which extensions of this hardcoded model have been proposed or implemented. Our generalized view of feeds as query result serializations has implications for the applicability of feeds as a generic Web service for any collection that is providing access to individual information items. As one interesting and compelling class of applications, we describe a simple way in which a query-based approach to feeds can be used to support location-based services.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 238 KB)

Source: UC-Berkeley — School of Information

More Than 9,000 National Academies Reports Now Available in Open Access

The National Academies today announced the completion of the first phase of a partnership with Google to digitize the library’s collection of reports from 1863 to 1997, making them available – free, searchable, and in full text – through Google Book Search. The Academies plan to have their entire collection of nearly 11,000 reports digitized by 2011.

“Much has changed since the National Academy of Sciences began advising the government in the late 1800s,” said Victoria Harriston, manager of library and information services at the National Academies’ George E. Brown Jr. Library. “Our early reports are essential to understanding the scientific advances made in this country as well as the science and technology issues the government struggled with in the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Notable reports from the library’s archives that are now available include:

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1 (1863–1894). This was the first NAS publication series, and it includes information about the Academy’s early work for the government on topics such as how to prevent compass deviation which sent iron warships off course, whether the metric system of weights and measures should be adopted, and how the new U.S. Geological Service should be organized.
• Investigation of the Scientific and Economic Relations of the Sorghum Sugar Industry (1882). This report was the Academy’s first self-initiated study, produced by the first committee to include non-Academy members.
• Proposed U.S. Program for the International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958. American participation in the International Geophysical Year – a historic, worldwide scientific effort that investigated the workings of the Earth and saw the launch of the first satellites – was guided and coordinated by a committee of the Academy.
• The Polar Regions and Climatic Change (1984) Changes in Earth’s polar regions are widely covered in the news today, but the Academies have been studying this phenomenon for more than 20 years.

Prior to this project, the Academies digitized more than 4,000 books and made them available online through the National Academies Press; most of those can also be found in Google Book Search. However, researchers who needed to gain access to hard copies of older reports, part of a legacy collection in the library, could not always find what they wanted. Many of these reports exist as single copies, and the library feared potential damage or loss of this important collection. These older reports have been digitized and are now accessible through Google. In addition, the “digitizing of these materials will add another dimension to the preservation of our reports,” said Harriston. The Academies hope that wider availability of its reports will be of use to scientists in developing countries, who often rely on the Internet to gather information.

Source: The National Academies

Do Statistical Reporting Standards Affect What Is Published? Publication Bias in Two Leading Political Science Journals (PDF; 96 KB)

Our analysis employs a broad interpretation of publication bias, which we define as the outcome that occurs when, for whatever reason, publication practices lead to bias in the published parameter estimates. We examine the effect of the 0.05 significance level on the pattern of published findings using a “caliper” test, a novel method for comparing studies with heterogeneous effects, and find that we can reject the hypothesis of no publication bias at the 1 in 32 billion level. Our findings therefore raise the possibility that the results reported in the leading political science journals may be misleading due to publication bias. We also discuss some of the reasons for publication bias and propose reforms to reduce its impact on research.

Source: Quarterly Journal of Political Science