Author-Friendly Electronic Submission to SGML-based Academic Journal

I and my co-workers developed an author-friendly method for electronic submission to an academic journal, which is published using a SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)-based system. The method uses a style function and RTF (rich text format), and can be used in popular word processing software: Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, PageMaker, etc. The method has been adopted in Bulletin of Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) since April 1994, which is the monthly English journal of CSJ, and has been published since 1937. The journal has been published in a SGML-based system since January 1993. Our electronic submission method will be included in SIST (Standards for Information of Science and Technology) No. 14 (draft): 'Guideline for electronic submission', which is considered in SIST Committee in Japan, and will be published in near future.

Ishizuka, Hidehiro. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Content Management>SGML

Building Web-Based Scholarly Communication Forums

Scholarly communication is the root of scientific progress. Research on how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the scholarly communication system is being carried out worldwide, particularly with respect to electronic journals which can and should be constructed as communication forums. Refereeing new contributions for these forums is a major means for their quality control and for the acceptance of the new media. We have implemented a web-based electronic refereeing system for an electronic journal (RIS - Review of Information Science) whose many value-added features are described in detail. Faster communication and enhanced interactivity between referees, editors and authors will be achieved by the use of this Web based electronic refereeing system. In order to ease access and browsing, articles already published will be integrated and managed in a database-based open hypertext system, in this case in KHS (Konstanz hypertext system). Finally, we describe the advantage of a real time communication system for authors, referees, editors and the domain-specific public. Further research will focus at improving the communicative features of this preliminary web-based communication forum and at evaluating it from a user point of view.

Kuhlen, Rainer and Zhongdong Zhang. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Research>Community Building>Social Networking

Conditions for Viable Scholarly Electronic Journals: The Role of Digital Libraries

Three characteristics of hard-copy scholarly journals--visibility, immutability and longevity--which electronic journals might emulate to gain more acceptance and trust of potential authors and readers, are pointed out. The role of digital libraries in helping electronic journals in the emulation is also discussed.

Yamamoto, Takeo. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Context-Dependent Information Filtering

People tend to use different terms to describe a similar concept. Due to the unique backgrounds, training and experiences of different people, it is impractical to force them to use the same set of terms for information retrieval. This paper presents an approach to allow different user groups to access and view information from heterogenous systems by using their own preferred vocabularies. In the meantime, the retrieval concept depends on the task context. A task ontology is used to reflect users' common perception of problem solving processes. The discovered concepts then uniquely reflects the contextual need of distinct user groups.

Lee, Maria R. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Information Design

Digital Libraries, Knowledge Networks, and Human-Centered Information Systems

One of the most dramatic changes in the ongoing information revolution is the rapid convergence of computing, communications and content industries. Digital content, especially in the form of large, distributed, heterogeneous collections of electronic objects - text, voice, images, graphics, video, and others - is fueling the growth of the computing and communications in each other. This paper discusses the role of digital libraries, and knowledge networks in general, in this process, in the context of human-centered information systems.

Chien, Y.T. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online>User Centered Design

Dissemination of Japanese Academic Journals over the Internet

NACSIS started an Internet-based document delivery service called NACSIS-ELS in April 1997. As of September 1997, 25 Japanese academic societies are participating in this service and 48 scientific journal pages will be captured and made available on NACSIS-ELS. The history for the development of NACSIS-ELS is described and the copyright charging strategy is discussed for two models, i.e., an individual user model and an institutional use model. Other issues related to electronic journals are also mentioned such as security protection measures, academic society activities over the Internet, and the issues for the establishment of globally distributed digital libraries.

Adachi, Jun. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Electronic Journals: What Do Users Think of Them?

The present paper describes a variety of user attitudes and behaviour towards electronic journals. It draws on projects conducted between the early 1980s and the present day. In general, electronic journals still do not support the tasks which users perform and tend to be negatively perceived. Because journal publishers tend to be author-oriented, they have ignored the human factors literature and produced electronic journals for which there is little demand.

McKnight, Cliff. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

The Evolving Metadata Architecture for the World Wide Web: Bringing Together the Semantics, Structure and Syntax of Resource Description

The Dublin Core is currently the best-developed candidate for a simple resource description model for electronic resources on the Web. It represents the results of a three year process of consensus-building through a series of focussed, invitational workshops involving librarians, digital library researchers, and various content specialists from many countries.

Weibel, Stuart. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Information Design>Metadata

Identifying and Representing Electronic Engineering Resources: A Case Study in Knowledge Management

Current methods of access to the electronic resources offered by the Internet make little use of basic principles of information organization and retrieval, relying instead on relatively informal and, at times, ad hoc approaches. This creates problems in terms of the volume of information retrieved by a user of the Internet and the precision with which that information matches the user's information need. There is a plethora of engineering resources available on the Internet, yet no systematic method of retrieval is available to engineers who are in need of the most current information in their discipline. The Internet is often the only immediate source of the most current engineering resources. The purpose of this project is to identify electronic resources that could be of value to engineers and to represent these resources in a manner that enables engineers to make timely, informed decisions about the usefulness of the resources. This paper addresses the specific objectives the project which include: 1) the development of selection criteria for electronic engineering resources; 2) the identification of electronic resources of interest to engineers, as defined by the selection policy; and 3) the creation of abstracts for these electronic resources that will include at least two hyperlinks to other related electronic resources.

Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, Rochelle Logan, Christopher Brown. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design>Engineering

An Information Retrieval Using Conceptual Index Term For Technical Paper on Digital Library

This paper presents a method for semantic Information Retrieval(IR) which is implemented on Digital Library. It is well known that Digital Library should have the IR system that user may automatically access every kind of media from anywhere. However, no improvement is made for the retrieval errors based on individual differences of user's request. This is one of the significant problem for the searching efficiency of IR. Our approach does not use the request itself but the concepts. This makes it possible to retrieve semantic information not merely to compare with the word strings of the request.

Horii, Chinatsu, Masakazu Imai and Kunihiro Chihara. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Information Design>Semantic>Search

Layered Data View for Searching, Browsing, and Presenting Scholarly Documents

This paper describes about the study result on text formats suitable for searching, browsing, and presenting scholarly documents as a digital library service, in relation with the document distribution formats and with the data production methods. Two types of data sources are considered in the context of their application to NACSIS-ELS. The printed document sources are first discussed mainly from the viewpoint of fulltext data production and their application, including application of OCR and document structure recognition technology. Electronic text sources are then discussed mainly from the viewpoint of format conversion and the mutual relation among formats for layered data view.

Oyama, Keizo. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Previewing Video Data: Browsing Key Frames at High Rates

As the amount of video data in digital libraries increases, support for fast and easy access to this information has become necessary. Our approach is to empower users with direct control of video surrogates and provide interaction flexibility. A video browsing interface prototype using a slide show-style presentation of video key frames was built and tested for user performance and subjective satisfaction. The interface allows display rates to be adjusted interactively. Subjects in this preliminary study performed two browsing-related tasks, object identification and gist determination, at display rates of 1, 4, 8, 12, and 16 key frames per second (kfps). A possible functional limit in accuracy for object identification (OI) was detected between 8 to 12 kfps. Performance for gist determination (GD) tended to degrad with increased display rates. However, no significant performance differences were detected. Furthermore, it was observed that lower rates were required for object identification than for gist determination. Suggestions for designing fast video browsing interfaces are provided.

Ding, Wei, Gary Marchionini and Tony Tse. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>User Interface>Video

Technical Aspect of Next Generation Digital Library Project

Digital libraries are one of the central and most compelling applications for the 21st century's highly information-based societies. The development of such system needs three kind of technologies. First one is a system architecture that defines overall system structure and provides common services and interfaces. Second one is individual technologies that include search technology, retrieval technology, contents entry technology and so on. Third one is an integration technology that enables to combine individual technology as a system on the system architecture. The system architecture that plays a central role should be designed to have a interoperability to the international standards and de fact standards. Because digital libraries have to be open and inter-connectable.

Mukaiyama, Hiroshi. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Towards a General Theory of the Digital Library

Debate about the digital library is clouded by emotion and self-interest. Emotion plays its part because the digital library is seen by some as a threat to the book, and a threat to the book is an attack on culture itself. Self-interest enters the fray because in the instability provoked by the digital library there will be winners and losers, whether in business, or the professions. Depending on your point of view the digital library can be the end of libraries as we know them, or the salvation of libraries as we know them.

Collier, Mel. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online>Emotions