http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/Science A listing of works published by Science in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Science http://tc.eserver.org/35560.html http://tc.eserver.org/35560.html New research shows that highly embellished graphs and charts may actually help people understand data more effectively than traditional graphs. http://tc.eserver.org/35416.html http://tc.eserver.org/35416.html The microblogging service Twitter is in the process of being appropriated for conversational interaction and is starting to be used for collaboration, as well. In order to determine how well Twitter supports user-to- user exchanges, what people are using Twitter for, and what usage or design modifications would make it (more) usable as a tool for collaboration, this study analyzes a corpus of naturally-occurring public Twit- ter messages (tweets), focusing on the functions and uses of the @ sign and the coherence of exchanges. The findings reveal a surprising degree of conversa- tionality, facilitated especially by the use of @ as a marker of addressivity, and shed light on the limita- tions of Twitter's current design for collaborative use. http://tc.eserver.org/34608.html http://tc.eserver.org/34608.html Online journals promise to serve more information to more dispersed audiences and are more efficiently searched and recalled. But because they are used differently than print—scientists and scholars tend to search electronically and follow hyperlinks rather than browse or peruse—electronically available journals may portend an ironic change for science. Using a database of 34 million articles, their citations (1945 to 2005), and online availability (1998 to 2005), I show that as more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tended to be more recent, fewer journals and articles were cited, and more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles. The forced browsing of print archives may have stretched scientists and scholars to anchor findings deeply into past and present scholarship. Searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon. http://tc.eserver.org/34392.html http://tc.eserver.org/34392.html Our capacity for mimesis -- the capacity to represent experiences and states-of-affairs in iconic and indexical formats under strict bodily control -- molds later symbolic thought and action. Culture is not the initial product of language, language is the product of a particular manifestation of Mimetic Culture. http://tc.eserver.org/34394.html http://tc.eserver.org/34394.html Does law, or even the presence of the law, shape composing practices? Do fair use/copyright play a part in the web composing practices/pedagogy of students and teachers in technical communication programs as they construct web sites and design curriculum? The pilot study was intended to test the design for a larger study. The study aims to fill in gaps and resolve confusion about how fair use/copyright shapes digital writing. http://tc.eserver.org/34395.html http://tc.eserver.org/34395.html Research on risk communication relates basic risk perception studies to the formulation of policies, the currently evolving legislation dealing with hazards, the key issues of public involvement, the risk and environmental management. Risk communication is a relatively new field based on a sociological approach. The discipline comes from risk perception studies (psychological approach), which try to investigate how the public is influenced by certain variables in perceiving risk as "acceptable" or not. Risk communication involves some aspects of risk analysis methodology, since it results that also the technical analysis is influenced by the co-operation between the actors involved. http://tc.eserver.org/34396.html http://tc.eserver.org/34396.html One of the main issues crossing the fields of organization theory, communication theory, and information technology is whether email communication does increase participation in decision making. Common sense and some case studies suggest the so-called "democratization argument": since email allows direct (non-filtered) communication between people and identity/status concealment, it enhances more freely and easy participation in decision making. http://tc.eserver.org/34397.html http://tc.eserver.org/34397.html This study contributes to a discussion on collaboration and technical/professional communication in indeterminate zones or less familiar sites for collaboration. The interdisciplinary group for this case study collaborated to write a project proposal to solicit funds from the US government for constructing a test bed for immune buildings as a tactic for combating potential biological and chemical terrorist incidents. Their approach to collaboration coincided with several approaches previously addressed in professional and technical communication research. Novel and creative approaches emerged as a result of this collaboration, but in some instances, disciplinary differences, as manifested by disputes over concepts and terminologies, posed obstacles to collaboration. Such challenges necessitated strong leadership, which was also critical for managing group process. http://tc.eserver.org/34228.html http://tc.eserver.org/34228.html Students and teachers alike must understand how systems of knowledge creation and archivization are changing. Encyclopedias are no longer static collections of facts and figures; they are living entities. Just check the entry on Global Warming. http://tc.eserver.org/34057.html http://tc.eserver.org/34057.html The term "medical writing" encompasses different kinds of work for clients in media, government, and industry. Pharmaceutical companies, medical-device manufacturers, and clinical-research organizations (CROs) all employ writers to prepare regulatory documents used to seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for drugs and devices. Medical writers help doctors write research articles, monographs, and reviews on medical topics. Continuing medical education (CME) companies employ medical writers to produce educational materials and slide kits that doctors and nurses use to prepare for license renewals. Medical writers produce sales training materials, press releases for industry, and fact sheets or Web site materials for government organizations. Medical writers also write about research discoveries for medical journals, Web sites, newsletters, magazines, newspapers, and any other medium that includes coverage of health and medical issues. http://tc.eserver.org/32294.html http://tc.eserver.org/32294.html Recently, the need for knowledge management has been drastically increasing so organizations may meet the high level of dynamic, complex business change and uncertainty. In particular, knowledge sharing has been recognized as a critical process through which organizational knowledge can be utilized. For successful knowledge sharing, companies need to capitalize on various socio-technical enablers. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how these enablers can affect knowledge sharing intention and behavior, and explore practical implications for knowledge sharing. For this purpose, the paper proposes a theoretical model to investigate these enablers from a socio-technical perspective. PLS (Partial Least Square) analysis was employed to validate the model. This field study involves 164 users. Furthermore, interviews with experts were investigated for practical implications. Our analysis reveals that social enablers such as trust and reward mechanisms are more important than technical support in isolation for facilitating knowledge sharing. http://tc.eserver.org/32295.html http://tc.eserver.org/32295.html With the overall purpose of improving the information literacy skills of librarianship and information science students, an academic portal specifically centred on abstracts and abstracting resources is proposed. We take the existing literature, together with our knowledge and experience of abstract/abstracting topics and web-based technologies to conceive the research design. The research mainly consists of the selection, assessment and web-display of the most relevant abstracts on knowledge management, information representation, natural language processing, abstract/abstracting, modelling the scientific document, information retrieval and information evaluation. The resulting Cyberabstracts portal presents its products consistently and includes reference, abstract, keywords, assessment and access to the full document. Improvement opportunities for this unique subject-based gateway, representing much more than a mere subject catalogue, are uncovered as the starting point on a planned route towards excellence. http://tc.eserver.org/32296.html http://tc.eserver.org/32296.html The present study examines whether the use of humor in scientific article titles is associated with the number of citations an article receives. Four judges rated the degree of amusement and pleasantness of titles of articles published over 10 years (from 1985 to 1994) in two of the most prestigious journals in psychology, Psychological Bulletinand Psychological Review. We then examined the association between the levels of amusement and pleasantness and the article’s monthly citation average. The results show that, while the pleasantness rating was weakly associated with the number of citations, articles with highly amusing titles (2 standard deviations above average) received fewer citations. The negative association between amusing titles and subsequent citations cannot be attributed to differences in the title length and pleasantness, number of authors, year of publication, and article type (regular article vs comment). These findings are discussed in the context of the importance of titles for signalling an article’s content. http://tc.eserver.org/32297.html http://tc.eserver.org/32297.html Qualitative analyses were used to launch a preliminary exploration of the dominant knowledge organization (KO) trends in the pre- and post-web eras. Data for this study was assembled by searching the Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts database for articles that have used the term `knowledge organization' or `information organization' in their titles, abstracts, or descriptors. Taken as a whole, these preliminary results suggest that the content of the KO literature has shifted since the advent of the web. Although classic KO principles remain prominent throughout both eras, the presence of new content areas, such as metadata, denotes a shift in KO trends. In the pre-web era, the literature was related in large part to indexing and abstracting. In contrast, cataloging and classification issues dominate the landscape in the post-web era. The findings from this paper will be of particular use to those interested in learning about upcoming trends in the KO literature. http://tc.eserver.org/32298.html http://tc.eserver.org/32298.html This is the era of social networking, collective intelligence, participation, collaborative creation, and borderless distribution. Every day we are bombarded with more publicity about collaborative environments, news feeds, blogs, wikis, podcasting, webcasting, folksonomies, social bookmarking, social citations, collaborative filtering, recommender systems, media sharing, massive multiplayer online games, virtual worlds, and mash-ups. This sort of anarchic environment appeals to the digital natives, but which of these so-called `Web 2.0' technologies are going to have a real business impact? This paper addresses the impact that issues such as quality control, security, privacy and bandwidth may have on the implementation of social networking in hide-bound, large organizations. http://tc.eserver.org/32299.html http://tc.eserver.org/32299.html Health informatics concerns the use of information and information and communication technologies within healthcare. Health informatics and information science need to take account of the unique aspects of health and medicine. The development of information systems and electronic records within health needs to consider the information needs and behaviour of all users. The sensitivity of personal health data raises ethical concerns for developing electronic records. E-health initiatives must actively involve users in the design, development, implementation and evaluation, and information science can contribute to understanding the needs and behaviour of user groups. Health informatics could make an important contribution to the ageing society and to reducing the digital divide and health divides within society. There is a need for an appropriate evidence base within health informatics to support future developments, and to ensure health informatics reaches its potential to improve the health and well-being of patients and the public. http://tc.eserver.org/32300.html http://tc.eserver.org/32300.html A review of recent developments in electronic publishing, with a focus on Open Access (OA) is provided. It describes the two main types of OA, i.e. the `gold' OA journal route and the `green' repository route, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of the two, and the reactions of the publishing industry to these developments. Quality, cost and copyright issues are explored, as well as some of the business models of OA. It is noted that whilst so far there is no evidence that a shift to OA will lead to libraries cancelling subscriptions to toll-access journals, this may happen in the future, and that despite the apparently compelling reasons for authors to move to OA, so far few have shown themselves willing to do so. Conclusions about the future of scholarly publications are drawn. http://tc.eserver.org/32301.html http://tc.eserver.org/32301.html At the time when the Institute of Information Scientists was launched, well established principles of classification, especially faceted classification, provided an excellent springboard for developments in knowledge organization thereafter. The principles of thesaurus construction and use were worked out during the first two decades of the Institute's existence. Up until the end of the 1980s, most practical systems to exploit any of these vocabularies were held on cards, some of them highly ingenious. The subsequent arrival of the desktop computer, soon followed by the growth of networks providing access to an almost unimaginable quantity and variety of resources, has stimulated evolution of the knowledge organization schemes to exploit the technology available. Anecdotes of events and practical applications of controlled vocabularies illustrate this account of developments over the period. http://tc.eserver.org/32302.html http://tc.eserver.org/32302.html This paper seeks to provide a brief overview of those developments which have taken the theory and practice of image and video retrieval into the digital age. Drawing on a voluminous literature, the context in which visual information retrieval takes place is followed by a consideration of the conceptual and practical challenges posed by the representation and recovery of visual material on the basis of its semantic content. An historical account of research endeavours in content-based retrieval, directed towards the automation of these operations in digital image scenarios, provides the main thrust of the paper. Finally, a look forwards locates visual information retrieval research within the wider context of content-based multimedia retrieval. http://tc.eserver.org/32303.html http://tc.eserver.org/32303.html The emergence of research on various aspects of `information behaviour' is explored and its growth as a subject of academic research is documented. The origin of the field as a potential aid to the development of library and information services is noted, as is the transition from this status to that of a subject for research at PhD level and beyond. The development of the field has thus led to a division between the needs of academia for theoretically grounded work, and the needs of the field of practice for guidance for service development. There is, today, a disconnection between research and practice, to a significant extent: early research was undertaken by practitioners but today academic research dominates the scene. Suggestions are made as to how this disconnection can be repaired. http://tc.eserver.org/32304.html http://tc.eserver.org/32304.html This article presents a brief history of the development of ideas about national and organizational information policies, from the first establishment of a UK Ministry of Information in the First World War to the present day. The issues and tensions that have characterized attempts to develop and implement policies on the national and organizational scale are discussed, with particular reference to: the power relations between the parties to them; the relative significance accorded to information technology and information content; the transition from formulating policy to acting on it; and the threats to the survival of those policies that get as far as implementation. In conclusion, the contribution to date of information science to the theory and practice of information policies is assessed, and suggestions are offered on directions for future efforts, in the light of the past of this interesting field. http://tc.eserver.org/32305.html http://tc.eserver.org/32305.html This paper explores the history of `the social' in information science. It traces the influence of social scientific thinking on the development of the field's intellectual base. The continuing appropriation of both theoretical and methodological insights from domains such as social studies of science, science and technology studies, and socio-technical systems is discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/32306.html http://tc.eserver.org/32306.html This paper is a personal take on the history of evaluation experiments in information retrieval. It describes some of the early experiments that were formative in our understanding, and goes on to discuss the current dominance of TREC (the Text REtrieval Conference) and to assess its impact. http://tc.eserver.org/32307.html http://tc.eserver.org/32307.html Bibliometrics has changed out of all recognition since 1958; becoming established as a field, being taught widely in library and information science schools, and being at the core of a number of science evaluation research groups around the world. This was all made possible by the work of Eugene Garfield and his Science Citation Index. This article reviews the distance that bibliometrics has travelled since 1958 by comparing early bibliometrics with current practice, and by giving an overview of a range of recent developments, such as patent analysis, national research evaluation exercises, visualization techniques, new applications, online citation indexes, and the creation of digital libraries. Webometrics, a modern, fast-growing offshoot of bibliometrics, is reviewed in detail. Finally, future prospects are discussed with regard to both bibliometrics and webometrics. http://tc.eserver.org/32317.html http://tc.eserver.org/32317.html Knowledge management (KM) is now widely recognized to be important to the success or failure of business management. Seeking to better understand the determinants of the evolution of KM, this study focuses on two main problems: (1) whether firms change their KM processes over time to improve KM effectiveness as well as develop their KM practices, and (2) whether socio-technical support results in more mature KM practices. This study draws on the previous literature to identify key dimensions of KM process (knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, knowledge application and knowledge protection), KM effectiveness (individual-level and organizational-level KM effectiveness) and socio-technical support (organizational support and information technology diffusion). The evolution of these dimensions is studied in the form of a stage model of KM that includes initiation, development, and mature stages. Data gathered from 141 senior executives in large Taiwanese organizations were employed to test the propositions. The results show that different stages of KM evolution can be distinguished across dimensions of KM process, KM effectiveness, and socio-technical support. Implications for organizations are also discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/32318.html http://tc.eserver.org/32318.html This paper compares two JISC-funded surveys. The first was undertaken by the Rights MEtadata for Open Archiving (RoMEO) project and focused on the rights protection required by academic authors sharing their research outputs in an open-access environment. The second was carried out by the Rights and Rewards project and focused on the rights protection required by authors sharing their teaching materials in the same way. The data are compared. The study reports confusion amongst both researchers and teachers as to copyright ownership in the materials they produced. Researchers were more restrictive about the permissions they would allow, but were liberal about terms and conditions. Teachers would allow many permissions, but under stricter terms and conditions. The study concludes that a single rights solution could not be used for both research and teaching materials. http://tc.eserver.org/32319.html http://tc.eserver.org/32319.html Publication in quality journals has become a major indicator of research performance in UK universities. This paper investigates the notion of `quality journal' and finds dizzying circularity in its definitions. Actually, what a quality journal is does not really matter: agreement that there are such things matters very much indeed. As so often happens with indicators of performance, the indicator has become the target. So, the challenge is to publish in quality journals, and the challenge rewards gamesmanship. Vested interests have become particularly skilful at the game, and at exercising the winners' prerogative of changing the rules. All but forgotten in the desperation to win the game is publication as a means of communicating research findings for the public benefit. The paper examines the situation in management studies, but the problem is much more widespread. It concludes that laughter is both the appropriate reaction to such farce, and also, perhaps, the stimulus to reform. http://tc.eserver.org/32320.html http://tc.eserver.org/32320.html In this research, the development of a 'concept-clumping algorithm' designed to improve the clustering of technical concepts is demonstrated. The algorithm developed first identifies a list of technically relevant noun phrases from a cleaned extracted list and then applies a rule-based algorithm for identifying synonymous terms based on shared words in each term. An assessment of the algorithm found that the algorithm has an 89-91% precision rate, was successful in moving technically important terms higher in the term frequency list, and improved the technical specificity of term clusters. http://tc.eserver.org/32321.html http://tc.eserver.org/32321.html In this article, indigenous knowledge is defined as holistic of all forms of knowledge emanating from an indigenous community. The critical relevance of local science and technology information (STI) databases in the development and sustainability of Africa's indigenous knowledge is discussed. It is advocated that local African STI databases should be considered required development infrastructures because they will provide information resources that are more adequate for national planning and management than their international counterparts. Furthermore, the various stakeholders and their roles are identified and the policy environment of STI databases in Africa examined. Constraints notwithstanding, local databases for African STI resources are envisaged to enhance global distribution and sharing of Africa's indigenous knowledge. http://tc.eserver.org/32322.html http://tc.eserver.org/32322.html This paper challenges the popular notions of tacit and explicit organizational knowledge and argues that its philosophical underpinnings derived from Gilbert Ryle are problematic due to their logical behaviourist perspective. The paper articulates the philosophical problem as the neglect of any role for the mind in organizational activity and the representation of mental activity as purely a set of behaviours. An alternative realist philosophy is advanced taking into account the potential of adopting a number of competing philosophical perspectives. The paper forwards a realist theory of organizational knowledge that moves beyond the surface behaviours of tacit and explicit knowledge and argues that collective consciousness and organizational memory play primary and deeper roles as knowledge processes and structures. Consciousness is not a Hegelian world spirit but rather a real process embedded in people's brains and mental activity. Further, the paper argues that organizational routines provide the contingent condition or `spark' to activate organizational knowledge processes. The implications of this model are explored in relation to the measurement of intellectual capital. The theory developed in this paper represents the first attempt to provide a coherent philosophically grounded framework of organizational knowledge that moves organizational theory beyond neat conversion processes of tacit and explicit knowledge. http://tc.eserver.org/32323.html http://tc.eserver.org/32323.html As a measure of information shared between two fuzzy pattern vectors, the fuzzy information proximity measure (FIPM) plays an important part in fuzzy pattern recognition, fuzzy clustering analysis and fuzzy approximate reasoning. In this paper, two novel FIPMs are set up. Firstly, an axiom theory about the FIPM is given, and different expressions of the FIPM are discussed. A new FIPM is then proposed based on the axiom theory of the FIPM and the concept of fuzzy subsethood function. Two concepts based on the idea of Shannon information entropy, fuzzy joint entropy (FJE) and fuzzy conditional entropy (FCE), are proposed and the basic properties of FJE and FCE are given and proved. Finally, classical similarity measures such as dissimilarity measure (DM) and similarity measure (SM) are studied, and two new measures, fuzzy absolute information measure (FAIM) and fuzzy relative information measure (FRIM), are set up, which can be used as measures of the proximity between fuzzy sets A and B. http://tc.eserver.org/32324.html http://tc.eserver.org/32324.html Well reported research published in conference and journal abstracts is important as individuals reading these reports often base their initial assessment of a study based on information reported in the abstract. However, there is growing concern about the reliability and quality of information published in these reports. This article provides an overview of research evidence underpinning the need for better reporting of abstracts reported in conference proceedings and abstracts of journal articles; with a particular focus in the area of health care. Where available we highlight evidence which refers specifically to abstracts reporting randomized trials. We seek to identify current initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of these reports and recommend that an extension of the CONSORT Statement (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials), CONSORT for Abstracts, be developed. This checklist would include a list of essential items to be reported in any conference or journal abstract reporting the results of a randomized trial. http://tc.eserver.org/32325.html http://tc.eserver.org/32325.html Mining association rules from large databases of business data is an important topic in data mining. In many applications, there are explicit or implicit taxonomies (hierarchies) for items, so it may be useful to find associations at levels of the taxonomy other than the primitive concept level. Previous work on the mining of generalized association rules, however, assumed that the taxonomy of items remained unchanged, disregarding the fact that the taxonomy might be updated as new transactions are added to the database over time. If this happens, effectively updating the generalized association rules to reflect the database change and related taxonomy evolution is a crucial task. In this paper, we examine this problem and propose two novel algorithms, called IDTE and IDTE2, which can incrementally update the generalized association rules when the taxonomy of items evolves as a result of new transactions. Empirical evaluations show that our algorithms can maintain their performance even for large numbers of incremental transactions and high degrees of taxonomy evolution, and are faster than applying contemporary generalized association mining algorithms to the whole updated database. http://tc.eserver.org/32326.html http://tc.eserver.org/32326.html In this article, theories of human judgement and decision making are reviewed and their use by library and information science researchers examined. A different perspective on judgement and decision making is offered by the field of naturalistic decision making (NDM) and the implications of this approach are considered for an expanded understanding of how judgements and decisions are made during information seeking. This discussion is illustrated by a case from a recent empirical investigation into how judgements of enough information are made in the workplace. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of the NDM approach. It is argued that NDM, a recent development in decision theory, offers a new perspective from which to investigate judgements and decisions during information seeking. http://tc.eserver.org/32327.html http://tc.eserver.org/32327.html This study investigated use of collaborative recommendations in web searching. An experimental system was designed. In the experimental system, recommendations were generated in a group report format, including items judged relevant by previous users, search queries and the URLs of documents. The study explored how users used these items, the effects of their use, and what factors contributed to this use. The results demonstrate that users preferred using queries and document sources (URLs), rather than relevance judgment (document ratings). The findings also show that using recommended items had a significant effect on the number of documents viewed, but not on precision or number of queries. Task difficulty and search skills had significant impact on the use. Possible reasons for the results are analyzed. Implications and future directions are discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/32328.html http://tc.eserver.org/32328.html The typical structure of a scientific report involves highly standardized sections. The key concept of a scientific report is the reproducibility of results. Because not only clarity but also conciseness is a tool for the advancement of science, a new format using nested tables is proposed with the aim of improving the design of short reports in scientific journals, namely short communications, short technical reports, case reports, etc. This format is based on the ergonomic philosophy of visual encyclopaedias (one topic, one page) and on the quality system of the Deming's cycle (plan--do--check--act) for continuous improvement. This new editing tool has several advantages over existing forms, because it provides quick and ergonomic, reader-friendly research reports that, at the same time, would render a saving in terms of available space and publishing costs of the printed version of scientific journals. http://tc.eserver.org/32329.html http://tc.eserver.org/32329.html This paper addresses the influence of two competing views of social identity on knowledge integration. One view sees social identity primarily as a coherent characteristic of organizations, which can leverage knowledge integration by unconditional cooperative behaviour, shared values, mindsets, trust, and loyalty. The opposing view considers social identity as multiple and fragmented. This fragmented view emphasizes the problematic nature of social identity for knowledge integration and states that social identity is an additional barrier to knowledge integration in organizations. The aim of this paper is to examine these competing accounts and to develop insight into the underlying mechanisms that lead to the different effects of social identity on knowledge integration. Two polar case studies illustrate the different effects of a coherent versus multiple identity on knowledge integration and the need for a coherent company-wide social identity, instead of a multiple community or group based social identity, to leverage knowledge integration in organizations. http://tc.eserver.org/32330.html http://tc.eserver.org/32330.html This paper describes a new concept-based multi-document summarization system that employs discourse parsing, information extraction and information integration. Dissertation abstracts in the field of sociology were selected as sample documents for this study. The summarization process includes four major steps — (1) parsing dissertation abstracts into five standard sections; (2) extracting research concepts (often operationalized as research variables) and their relationships, the research methods used and the contextual relations from specific sections of the text; (3) integrating similar concepts and relationships across different abstracts; and (4) combining and organizing the different kinds of information using a variable-based framework, and presenting them in an interactive web-based interface. The accuracy of each summarization step was evaluated by comparing the system-generated output against human coding. The user evaluation carried out in the study indicated that the majority of subjects (70%) preferred the concept-based summaries generated using the system to the sentence-based summaries generated using traditional sentence extraction techniques. http://tc.eserver.org/32331.html http://tc.eserver.org/32331.html This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing research in knowledge management (KM) by presenting a study conducted in six public service agencies in Singapore. The study was guided by three research foci, namely, (1) to elucidate the nebulous nature of KM initiatives, (2) to uncover the motivation behind KM measurement and (3) to identify the various elements of a KM initiative that can be measured. Data collected from the public service agencies revealed that KM initiatives were generally top-down and technology-focused. Project management and the need to quantify the value of KM initiatives drove KM measurement. The measurement indicators adopted by the agencies encompassed four elements of measurement: activities, knowledge assets, organizational processes and business outcomes. In conclusion, this paper highlights two practical implications for the design of a KM measurement regime and suggests a number of possible directions for further research. http://tc.eserver.org/32332.html http://tc.eserver.org/32332.html This paper examines a large number of failed queries submitted to a web image search engine, including real users' search terms and written requests. The results show that failed image queries have a much higher specificity than successful queries because users often employ various refined types to specify their queries. The study explores the refined types further, and finds that failed queries consist of far more conceptual than perceptual refined types. The widely used content-based image retrieval technique, CBIR, can only deal with a small proportion of failed queries; hence, appropriate integration of concept-based techniques is desirable. Based on using the concepts of uniqueness and refinement for categorization, the study also provides a useful discussion on the gaps between image queries and retrieval techniques. The initial results enhance the understanding of failed queries and suggest possible ways to improve image retrieval systems. http://tc.eserver.org/32333.html http://tc.eserver.org/32333.html Archival science, like other disciplines, is evolving into more specific interdisciplinary subfields. To determine this intellectual structure of archival science, the text mining method was used. The data were 432 articles from 2001 to 2004, and we produced 43 clusters of documents using the within-group average method in SPSS. Then we generated pathfinder networks of 43 clusters and grouped them into seven subject categories: digital libraries and digital archiving technologies, online resources and finding aids, archives and archivists, legal and political issues, electronic records and technical issues, records and information management, and e-mail and information professionals. Finally, these seven subject categories were merged into three sectors: digital library, archives and RIM (Business). This study describes dynamic change in the 2001—4 research themes from traditional single-subject areas to emerging, complex subject areas. These results also show that research areas in archival sciences have much growth potential and will continue to expand. http://tc.eserver.org/32334.html http://tc.eserver.org/32334.html This paper describes the process of creating a controlled vocabulary which can be used to systematically analyse the copyright transfer agreements (CTAs) of journal publishers with regard to self-archiving. The analysis formed the basis of the newly created Copyright Knowledge Bank of publishers' self-archiving policies. Self-archiving terms appearing in publishers' CTAs were identified and classified, then simplified, merged, and discarded to form a definitive list. The controlled vocabulary consists of three categories describing `what' can be self-archived, the `conditions' and the `restrictions' of self-archiving. Condition terms include specifications such as `where' an article can be self-archived; restriction terms include specifications such as `when' the article can be self-archived. Additional information on any of these terms appears in `free-text' fields. Although this controlled vocabulary provides an effective way of analysing CTAs, it will need continual review and updating in light of any major new additions to the terms used in publishers' copyright and self-archiving policies. http://tc.eserver.org/32335.html http://tc.eserver.org/32335.html Much research has been done on the favourable influence of social environment and social networks on knowledge production. The aim of this article is to design a theoretical framework where both information behaviour (IB) research and social capital (SC) research are integrated. Integrating these areas is seen as an advantage when focusing on the social construction of knowledge, and a model is proposed to illuminate sources and consequences of social capital and knowledge sharing. This framework will function as a basis on which to build when the authors proceed with a number of empirical studies involving the university context, social networks of the unemployed, and virtual networks of young people. http://tc.eserver.org/32336.html http://tc.eserver.org/32336.html The paper explores the interrelation and differences between the concepts of occupational community, community of practice, online community and social network. It uses as a case study illustration the domain of UK university web site production and specifically a listserv for those involved in it. Different latent occupational communities are explored, and the potential for the listserv to help realize these as an active sense of community is considered. The listserv is not (for most participants) a tight knit community of practice, indeed it fails many criteria for an online community. It is perhaps best conceived as a loose knit network of practice, valued for information, implicit support and for the maintenance of weak ties. Through the analysis the case for using strict definitions of the theoretical concepts is made. http://tc.eserver.org/32291.html http://tc.eserver.org/32291.html An increasing number of robots harvest information on the world wide web for a wide variety of purposes. Protocols developed at the inception of the web laid out voluntary procedures in order to identify robot behaviour, and exclude it if necessary. Few robots now follow this protocol and it is now increasingly difficult to filter for this activity in reports of on-site activity. This paper seeks to demonstrate the issues involved in identifying robots and assessing their impact on usage in regard to a project which sought to establish the relative usage patterns of open access and non-open access articles in the Oxford University Press published journal Glycobiology, which offers in a single issue articles in both forms. A number of methods for identifying robots are compared and together these methods found that 40% of the raw logs of this journal could be attributed to robots. http://tc.eserver.org/32270.html http://tc.eserver.org/32270.html is paper presents early findings of a unique analysis that related questionnaire data to site usage as recorded in the transaction log reports of ScienceDirect, for the same people. Its focus is the differences in the online behaviour of three types of navigational users: those accessing the site via a gateway (either via a reference hyperlink or subject search facility), those using the on site search facility and those employing menus. Towards this end 16,865 sessions were analysed and grouped by navigational entry and compared over three types of online behaviour: the viewing of articles in press (AIP), the number of different journals viewed in a session and the viewing of old material. A strong association was found between form of navigation and behavioural trait. Those using menus were more likely to view AIPs, while those using the search facility were more likely to view a greater number of different journals and were more likely to view older material. This supports a hypothesis proposed by Nicholas et al. (2006) that use of the online searching facility increases the visibility of material irrespective of journal and age and results in a greater use of older material and a more diverse journal use compared to other online and off-line information retrieval methods. Although research has been undertaken on the different strategies that users employ to navigate and find their way around a collection of content (e.g. a digital library), this we believe is the first time the effect of different navigational strategies on outcomes (for example, what is viewed) has been investigated. http://tc.eserver.org/32271.html http://tc.eserver.org/32271.html The study investigates the ways in which people experience information overload in the context of monitoring everyday events through media such as newspapers and the internet. The findings are based on interviews with 20 environmental activists in Finland in 2005. The perceptions of the seriousness of problems caused by information overload varied among the participants. On the one hand, information overload was experienced as a real problem particularly in the networked information environments. On the other hand, information overload was perceived as an imagined problem with some mythical features. Two major strategies for coping with information overload were identified. The filtering strategy is based on the determined weeding out of material deemed useless. This strategy is favoured in networked information environments. The withdrawal strategy is more affectively oriented, emphasizing the need to protect oneself from excessive information supply by keeping the number of information sources to a minimum. http://tc.eserver.org/32272.html http://tc.eserver.org/32272.html This paper argues that metrics can be generated from search transactional web logs that can help evaluate search engine effectiveness. Search logs from the BBC website were analysed and metrics extracted. Two search metrics — the time lapse between searches and the number of searches in a session — were developed to see whether they could measure search success or satisfaction. In all, 4 million search statements by 900,000 users were evaluated. The BBC search engine possessed a number of functional attributes which sought to improve retrieval and these were subjected to the two metrics to help determine how successful they were in practice. There was some evidence to support the proposition that the search outcome metrics did indeed indicate the effectiveness of engine functionality. The authors argue that this result is significant in that the identification of search outcome metrics will pave the way for assessing the effectiveness of site specific search engines and a greater understanding of the effectiveness of search engine functionality. http://tc.eserver.org/32273.html http://tc.eserver.org/32273.html Searching the web is a common activity of web users. English and non-English speakers utilize international or local search engines so as to satisfy their information needs. Most of the attempts at evaluation of search engines focus on English queries and on English document collections. In this paper an evaluation methodology is presented and the capabilities of international and local web retrieval systems using Greek queries are evaluated based on this method. We aim at identifying difficulties and knowledge requirements when using a Greek supporting search engine. The importance of interface localization and the effects of standard information retrieval techniques such as case insensitivity, stopword removal and simple stemming are studied in international and local search engines. The evaluation methodology is applicable to other non-English natural languages as well. http://tc.eserver.org/32274.html http://tc.eserver.org/32274.html Authors of scientific articles in one language are often required to provide abstracts of their papers in a second language, and they use a variety of ways to achieve this. http://tc.eserver.org/32275.html http://tc.eserver.org/32275.html SHIL on the Web is the website of the Israeli Citizens' Advice Bureau. It provides information about rights, social benefits, government and public services and civil obligations. Activity on the site approaches 10,000 pages visited per day. It has interfaces in four languages: Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English. Logfile analysis of the SHIL website revealed to our surprise that about 60.7% of the requests reaching SHIL from external sites (excluding requests from robots) are from general search engines (e.g. Google and MSN), and users reach a specific page on the site linked from the search results page. This finding seems to indicate that the site is not known well enough to the public. On the other hand the site is very active, thus it seems to serve Israeli citizens well, even without being a well known brand. In this paper we analyzed the external requests coming from search engines. The analysis is based on the 266,295 queries from search engines that reached SHIL during March—October 2005. Studying queries submitted to search engines is a novel technique for analyzing the access patterns to the site and provides a better understanding of the user needs and intentions than analyzing the distribution of the visited pages only. We are not aware of any previous study that analyzed the relation between the query submitted to the search engine and the webpage the user clicked on the search results page. Since search engines provide snippets, when the user clicks on a specific page he already has some information on what is to be found on the page and the user makes a conscious decision to click on the specific result. Thus, this type of analysis provides additional information about the users' actual information needs. http://tc.eserver.org/32276.html http://tc.eserver.org/32276.html The weighted list, known popularly as a `tag cloud', has appeared on many popular folksonomy-based web-sites. Flickr, Delicious, Technorati and many others have all featured a tag cloud at some point in their history. However, it is unclear whether the tag cloud is actually useful as an aid to finding information. We conducted an experiment, giving participants the option of using a tag cloud or a traditional search interface to answer various questions. We found that where the information-seeking task required specific information, participants preferred the search interface. Conversely, where the information-seeking task was more general, participants preferred the tag cloud. While the tag cloud is not without value, it is not sufficient as the sole means of navigation for a folksonomy-based dataset. http://tc.eserver.org/32277.html http://tc.eserver.org/32277.html The viability of KM partly rests on how researchers garner empirical support for their purported theories. One aspect of this would involve the evaluation of the evidence provided in KM research. This paper presents a comparative study of the evidence that is presented in scholarly and professional literature on KM. For this purpose, the paper introduces a typology of evidence to analyze the data obtained from the survey of the literature. The classification based on this typology reveals quantitative differences between the types of evidence put forth in the scholarly and practitioner literature. More interestingly, however, our analysis reveals differences in terms of the questions they ask, the perspective they adopt, and the methods they follow to convince others of the validity of their claims. We explain these differences in terms of the notions of `blackboxing' and `performance' borrowed from actor-network theory. http://tc.eserver.org/32278.html http://tc.eserver.org/32278.html Copyright issues are significant for worldwide information sharing, while mutual understanding about the commonalities and differences among international copyright law articles is difficult due to the diversity of legal knowledge representation. The goal of our research is to propose an appropriate methodology and capture a uniform conceptual model that will provide semantic level representation for processing and modelling international legal knowledge using ontological technology. This paper proposes a preliminary intention-oriented legal knowledge model as a pivotal model that, from the viewpoint of intention behind the law, manages and models legal knowledge derived from international law documents. We develop a domain ontology — international copyright law ontology, which is used as a fundamental conceptual framework to maintain consistency among diverse legal knowledge representations. http://tc.eserver.org/32279.html http://tc.eserver.org/32279.html Longitudinal studies of web change are needed to assess the stability of webometric statistics and this paper forms part of an on-going longitudinal study of three national academic web spaces. It examines the relationship between university inlinks and research productivity over time and identifies reasons for individual universities experiencing significant increases and decreases in inlinks over the last six years. The findings also indicate that between 66 and 70% of outlinks remain the same year on year for all three academic web spaces, although this stability conceals large individual differences. Moreover, there is evidence of a level of stability over time for university site inlinks when measured against research productivity. Surprisingly, however, inlink counts can vary significantly from year to year for individual universities, for reasons unrelated to research which undermines their use in webometrics studies. http://tc.eserver.org/32280.html http://tc.eserver.org/32280.html This paper describes the initial results of a qualitative field study of the work required to review and approve the content on government agency web sites. The study analyzes content management work in terms of Strauss’s conceptualization of articulation. The analysis describes examples of high and low level articulation in content review and approval including using paper, personal contact, and surveillance. Study results suggest that the articulation work present in non-software based review and approval processes helps to balance conflicting agency goals of publishing content and achieving absolute oversight over published content. It also suggests that software based content management systems may prove helpful for the management of some types of content in some situations, but it hypothesizes that actors will choose paper and face to face communication mechanisms to review and approve large amounts of new content and sensitive content. http://tc.eserver.org/31927.html http://tc.eserver.org/31927.html Landing the best jobs, like snagging the best fish, takes hard work and patience. http://tc.eserver.org/31923.html http://tc.eserver.org/31923.html Although we are allowed to put more into a cover letter than can appear on a magazine cover, the challenge is still to keep it succinct. In fact, writing something that is powerful and yet short is the single most difficult kind of business writing. You already know that although it's easy to go on and on in a company memorandum, saying the same thing in half the space can make your work twice as powerful. http://tc.eserver.org/31934.html http://tc.eserver.org/31934.html How do I present my academic experience and background in a way which won't turn employers off? I've found lots of example CVs on the Web, but none that shows how to promote postdocing to the "outside world". http://tc.eserver.org/31924.html http://tc.eserver.org/31924.html Resume and CV writing is a huge subject, and thousands of books have been written about it. My goal in this column is to give you a brief refresher on some of the most common concerns that you may have regarding the preparation of your own personal "marketing materials." And please don't be put off by that description. Despite the low regard you may have for sales and marketing, it is exactly this job that a resume or CV needs to do when it arrives at its destination. http://tc.eserver.org/31935.html http://tc.eserver.org/31935.html In this column I'll give you my strategy for preparing a CV and point you towards useful resources, but first of all let me assume that you are planning to start your career within the UK job market. CV styles vary across the world. http://tc.eserver.org/31919.html http://tc.eserver.org/31919.html It's your main marketing tool -- and a sink for potentially endless tweaking and anxiety. Here's some advice from our experts on how to put together that all-important résumé/CV (and its frequent traveling companion, the cover letter). http://tc.eserver.org/31930.html http://tc.eserver.org/31930.html The process leading up to your first faculty job is almost guaranteed to be a nerve-racking ordeal. Many applicants don't know how to make a good first impression. It is common--and reasonable--to question whether you have the right set of skills and credentials for a particular faculty job. Whether at a large research-intensive university on the West Coast or a small teaching college in New England, the recruitment process is much the same all across the country. http://tc.eserver.org/31920.html http://tc.eserver.org/31920.html Writing a bad résumé is easy. Writing a good résumé is hard. It will take time and many drafts. Because research scientists are often targeting several very different career paths simultaneously, it is important to have several different résumés that accent different skills. http://tc.eserver.org/31926.html http://tc.eserver.org/31926.html Competition is tight and readers are right to be concerned. But the numbers sound scarier than they really are. http://tc.eserver.org/31925.html http://tc.eserver.org/31925.html Many people start on their resume by worrying about fonts and spacing. Unless you get the wording down perfectly first, you will only be creating more work for yourself. http://tc.eserver.org/31929.html http://tc.eserver.org/31929.html Curriculum vitae (CVs) tell the stories of the professional lives of university scientists, documenting their careers and showcasing their accomplishments. A well-crafted CV can help a job applicant land an interview--instead of having her materials shredded or buried in a file. The CV is no less important for scientists with tenure and no intention of changing jobs, because it is an essential part of any application for grants, awards, and promotions. It should, therefore, be kept up-to-date at every academic career stage. http://tc.eserver.org/31922.html http://tc.eserver.org/31922.html Scientists and engineers sometimes reveal how scary the job search feels to them when they talk to recruiters. Often this comes couched in complaints about "how the job market works." It's true that the job search does take us out of our comfort zones. But not all of that fear is justified. http://tc.eserver.org/31921.html http://tc.eserver.org/31921.html I may sound unorthodox when I say that you really don’t need to be all that concerned about writing the perfect CV or résumé. If you are interested in an industry job, you want your CV to open doors as it gets routed from person to person inside an organization. But you also want it to represent you accurately when you make a good networking connection. http://tc.eserver.org/31928.html http://tc.eserver.org/31928.html While it is true that employers far prefer electronic submittals to paper CV's, if you rely exclusively on the 'net for your job search, it will tank. Here's the trap: It feels like you are really accomplishing something by filling out online job applications, with very little risk. But you are just scattering seeds, few of which are likely to grow. While there is the possibility that someone will look at that package you've attached and call you for an interview, a great deal of your time is wasted. http://tc.eserver.org/31933.html http://tc.eserver.org/31933.html Usually, a resumé will show a chronology of a professional career that is almost continuous. But what if the unexpected happens, and you are left with a "resumé hole"? A resumé hole is a large period of unaccounted time in your resumé. http://tc.eserver.org/31932.html http://tc.eserver.org/31932.html Your curriculum vitae cover letter is both an introduction and a sales pitch. It should show what sets this individual apart from all others, advises Professor Jeffrey Stansbury, chair of the faculty search committee at the Department of Craniofacial Biology of the University of Colorado School of Dentistry in Denver. Like any good sales pitch, your cover letter should motivate the customer to learn more about the product--in this case, you. http://tc.eserver.org/31931.html http://tc.eserver.org/31931.html Take pity on me and my colleagues. As a faculty member who serves on faculty search committees and a frequent reader of job applications, I dread reading teaching statements. I have even considered asking search committees to stop asking for these essays (in which applicants discuss their teaching philosophies and their anticipated approaches to teaching) because they are so often insipid and painful to read. I've never actually made that suggestion, though, and for now, at my institution (and many others), teaching statements remain a required part of an application for a faculty position. So for every permanent-faculty search I'm involved in, I end up reading as many as several hundred insipid teaching statements. Have mercy. http://tc.eserver.org/29255.html http://tc.eserver.org/29255.html 'The importance of the work is inversely proportional to the number of people who can understand it' is an outdated attitude in today's scientific arena. The trend toward plain language is gathering force in government, academe, and scientific journals. http://tc.eserver.org/27280.html http://tc.eserver.org/27280.html We describe the system architecture and data template design for the Animal Diversity Web (http://www.animaldiversity.org), an online natural history resource serving three audiences: 1) the scientific community, 2) educators and learners, and 3) the general public. Our architecture supports highly scalable, flexible resource building by combining relational and object-oriented databases. Content resources are managed separately from identifiers that relate and display them. Websites targeting different audiences from the same database handle large volumes of traffic. Content contribution and legacy data are robust to changes in data models. XML and OWL versions of our data template set the stage for making ADW data accessible to other systems. http://tc.eserver.org/27289.html http://tc.eserver.org/27289.html In this paper, the idea of building a project-oriented information system based upon a specialized information database was discussed. It attempts to provide tools for helping researchers use Internet resources effectively in the course of their research. Based on this idea, a web-based project-oriented information system was constructed. The paper systematically expounds the design and development process of the project-oriented information system. Furthermore, examples of utilizing the project-oriented information system to obtain useful information and suggestions for specific projects were described. According to our discussion and utilization of the system, we believe that building a project-oriented information system can help researchers with their research projects. http://tc.eserver.org/27282.html http://tc.eserver.org/27282.html Defining a 'designated user community' for a data collection is essential to good scientific data stewardship. It enables data managers to determine what information is necessary to ensure the usability of the data now and into the future. It helps managers present and enable access to the data and may determine the format of the data. However, defining a community is difficult, and it is impossible to predict how the use of a data collection may change over time. This creates a series of data management problems for data stewards that may be mitigated by a set of best practices. http://tc.eserver.org/27278.html http://tc.eserver.org/27278.html The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a system for identifying content objects in the digital environment. DOIs are names assigned to any entity for use on Internet digital networks. Scientific data sets may be identified by DOIs, and several efforts are now underway in this area. This paper outlines the underlying architecture of the DOI system, and two such efforts which are applying DOIs to content objects of scientific data. http://tc.eserver.org/27286.html http://tc.eserver.org/27286.html Many steps are involved in the process of turning an initial concept for a database into a finished product that meets the needs of its user community. In this paper, we describe those steps in the context of a four-phase process with particular emphasis on the quality-related issues that need to be addressed in each phase to ensure that the final product is a high quality database. The basic requirements for a successful database quality process are presented with specific examples drawn from experience gained in the Standard Reference Data Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. http://tc.eserver.org/27284.html http://tc.eserver.org/27284.html In 1998 ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment, launched an e-learning platform with the mission of sharing scientific knowledge among everyone, not just workers but also students and the unemployed, in order to use its research results to support competitiveness and sustainable development. In 6 years, more than 20.000 users have followed one or more of the 46 on line courses. Many agreements with schools, universities, private and public training organisation are now under way to improve the dissemination of scientific knowledge and to build an open data base of scientific learning objects that anyone can use. http://tc.eserver.org/27288.html http://tc.eserver.org/27288.html The availability of the Internet has provided unprecedented opportunities for both data compilers and users. With respect to materials data, this paper explores: how do we know what is available? how can data be accessed, interpreted, exchanged? what novel modes of presentation are now available? what organizations are active in this field and what are their programs? what improvements are needed? where do we go from here and how? Examples will be illustrated of specific materials databases available on the Internet from a variety of materials data fields, e.g. fundamental data, engineering design properties, environmental data, and materials safety data. While there is no question that large and widely varied bodies of data are accessible on the Internet, significant improvements are needed promptly. The paper concludes by summarizing these problems and possible means for their alleviation. http://tc.eserver.org/27279.html http://tc.eserver.org/27279.html This paper proposes an overview of the IMSA application, a patient-oriented medical information system. IMSA stands for Interactive Multimedia System for Auto-medication and aims to provide a health-care Internet tool for the end-user. This system proposes an environment that integrates on-line health information, medical and pharmaceutical databases and a knowledge-based system for medical diagnosis. The implementation process focuses on cognitive science, knowledge representation and human-computer interaction. http://tc.eserver.org/27281.html http://tc.eserver.org/27281.html Heterogeneous research environments, interests and locations do not necessarily coincide, thus hitherto the primary method of communication amongst researchers has been email. In this article a novel unified polythematic, real-time, synergistic, data telecommunication system is proposed with peer-reviewed, bidirectional fuzzy feedback for research scientists, to facilitate scientific information exchange via the extensible markup language (XML) on multiple scientific topics, e.g. in mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry. http://tc.eserver.org/27287.html http://tc.eserver.org/27287.html Access to and sharing of data are essential for the conduct and advancement of science. This article argues that publicly funded research data should be openly available to the maximum extent possible. To seize upon advancements of cyberinfrastructure and the explosion of data in a range of scientific disciplines, this access to and sharing of publicly funded data must be advanced within an international framework, beyond technological solutions. The authors, members of an OECD Follow-up Group, present their research findings, based closely on their report to OECD, on key issues in data access, as well as operating principles and management aspects necessary to successful data access regimes. http://tc.eserver.org/27283.html http://tc.eserver.org/27283.html If we were to start from scratch today to design a quality-controlled archive and distribution system for scientific and technical information, it could take a very different form from what has evolved in the past decade from pre-existing print infrastructure. Ultimately, we might expect some form of global knowledge network for research communications. Over the next decade, there are many technical and non-technical issues to address along the way, everything from identifying optimal formats and protocols for rendering, indexing, linking, querying, accessing, mining, and transmitting the information, to identifying sociological, legal, financial, and political obstacles to realization of ideal systems. What near-term advances can we expect in automated classification systems, authoring tools, and next-generation document formats to facilitate efficient data mining and long-term archival stability? How will the information be authenticated and quality controlled? What differences should be expected in the realization of these systems for different scientific research fields? Can recent technological advances provide not only more efficient means of accessing and navigating the information, but also more cost-effective means of authentication and quality control? Relevant experiences from open electronic distribution of research materials in physics and related disciplines during the past decade are used to illuminate these questions, and some of their implications for proposals to improve the implementation of peer review are then discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/27285.html http://tc.eserver.org/27285.html The fact that many decisions need a combination of information sources makes easy integration of geospatial data an important data usability issue. Our vision is to achieve automated just-in-time integration. As a foundation, we present a system architecture with distributed data and services. Existing and evolving standards and technologies fitting into this architecture are presented along with their scope and shortcomings. A major point is the appropriate definition of data and operation semantics. Further research is needed here to make the automatic formation of service chains for data integration possible. http://tc.eserver.org/27124.html http://tc.eserver.org/27124.html Scientists who study encryption or computer security or otherwise reverse engineer technical measures, who make tools enabling them to do this work, and who report the results of their research face new risks of legal liability because of recently adopted rules prohibiting the circumvention of technical measures and manufacture or distribution of circumvention tools. Because all data in digital form can be technically protected, the impact of these rules goes far beyond encryption and computer security research. The scientific community must recognize the harms these rules pose and provide guidance about how to improve the anticircumvention rules. http://tc.eserver.org/27118.html http://tc.eserver.org/27118.html Science has advanced in part because data and scientific methodologies have traditionally not been subject to intellectual property protection. In recent years, intellectual property has played a greater role in scientific work. While intellectual property rights may have a positive role to play in some fields of science, so does the public domain. This paper will discuss some of the positive functions of the public domain and ways in which certain legal developments may negatively impact the public domain. It suggests some steps that scientists can take to preserve the positive functions of the public domain for science. http://tc.eserver.org/27095.html http://tc.eserver.org/27095.html In our role as writing teachers, we’ve been asked to adopt 'post-modern practice' by releasing old-fashioned notions of single authorship and obsolete pedagogy that forbids plagiarism under a 'detect-and-punish' regime. Instead, we are to teach 'digital ethics' and Fair Use. But what exactly is 'Fair Use'? This is a doctrine we as writing teachers need to understand because while public figures such as Lawrence Lessig, Jessica Litman, and Siva Vaidhyanathan argue that the law needs to be changed, in the meantime we have classes to teach. Writing teachers increasingly teach writing on networked computers, and therefore our need to understand the basic doctrine of Fair Use is as great as our need to understand the rules of anti-plagiarism. This paper first reviews current US Copyright Law, and then briefly traces the concept of 'Fair Use' from its inception as 'fair abridgment' in 1700’s England to its current interpretation in US case law. US Copyright policy, the regime legally defining invention, imitation, compilation, and appropriation, is set through complex interactions between a variety of players. These influential interactions include the habits of writers. The tension between stakeholders who wish to share, and stakeholders who wish to contain and control information is viewed as a 'battle,' 'war,' and 'fight'. In this fight, the writing student and teacher thus become actors, willingly or not, determining how copyright operates. Because we as teachers are key players in the continual remediation of copyright policy, we should have a basic critical understanding of US Copyright Law and how Fair Use is situated within our copyright regime. http://tc.eserver.org/27094.html http://tc.eserver.org/27094.html What kind of textual evidence do courts now look at in light of the recent Grokster decision? What place does technical communication have in recent P2P court decisions? After examining the evidence courts have used from the Sony case to the Grokster case, the author argues that since texts generated and researched by technical communication have surfaced in P2P contexts as important evidentiary objects in court rulings (Napster, Aimster, Grokster), the field and its allies would do well to take notice. Using a lens of activity theory, the author argues that technical communication as a field can control its own future and ability to innovate by reseeing the texts that it creates, texts that are collected by courts as objects influencing determinations of the presence of intent to infringe (the current standard of liability in P2P contexts). With respect to legal liability, the best technical writing might be writing that stays invisible. http://tc.eserver.org/26803.html http://tc.eserver.org/26803.html The objective of this study is to provide empirical evidence of the role of information professionals in knowledge management programs. 386 information professionals working in Canadian organizations were selected from the Special Libraries Association’s Who’s Who in Special Libraries 2001/2002 and questionnaire with a stamped self-addressed envelope for its return was sent to each one of them. 63 questionnaires were completed and returned, and 8 in-depth interviews conducted. About 59% of the information professionals surveyed are working in organizations that have knowledge management programs with about 86% of these professionals being involved in the programs. Factors such as gender, age, and educational background (i.e. highest educational qualifications and discipline) did not seem to have any relationship with involvement in knowledge management programs. Many of those involved in the programs are playing key roles, such as the design of the information architecture, development of taxonomy, or content management of the organization’s intranet. Others play lesser roles, such as providing information for the intranet, gathering competitive intelligence, or providing research services as requested by the knowledge management team. http://tc.eserver.org/25996.html http://tc.eserver.org/25996.html Looks at a number of institutions that are finding ways to insert plain English into communication between scientists and the public, as well as among scientists of different disciplines. http://tc.eserver.org/25997.html http://tc.eserver.org/25997.html This article outlines the benefits you can realize by articulating your science clearly and succinctly; next time, we'll look at how and why several academic and government institutions as well as some publications are encouraging this trend. http://tc.eserver.org/25653.html http://tc.eserver.org/25653.html An important part of modern communication is the use of images, both with oral presentations and in publications, to convey the essence of the author's message. As the methods of preparing, transmitting, and presenting images proliferate, we are all challenged to make the best use possible of each imaging technology. http://tc.eserver.org/25651.html http://tc.eserver.org/25651.html This page presents a brief description of how JPEG compresses images. JPEG, unlike other formats like PPM, PGM, and GIF, is a lossy compression technique; this means visual information is lost permanently. The key to making JPEG work is choosing what data to throw away. http://tc.eserver.org/25652.html http://tc.eserver.org/25652.html This paper provides a brief review of the various paths undertaken in the development of ink-jet printing. Highlights of recent progress and trends in this technology are discussed. The technologies embedded in the latest ink-jet products from current industry leaders in both thermal and piezoelectric drop-on-demand ink-jet methods are also described. Finally, this article presents a list of the potential ink-jet technology applications that have emerged in the past few years. http://tc.eserver.org/25650.html http://tc.eserver.org/25650.html This scholarship is granted by the society to a student or students of photographic or imaging science or engineering for use in continuing their studies as graduate or undergraduate students. This grant is made for academic study or research in the theory or practice of image formation by radient energy. http://tc.eserver.org/25413.html http://tc.eserver.org/25413.html Information about various classes of algebraic, ordinary differential, partial differential (mathematical physics), integral, and other mathematical equations. It also outlines some methods for solving equations, includes interesting articles, gives links to mathematical websites, lists useful handbooks, textbooks, and monographs, and refers to scientific publishers, journals, etc. http://tc.eserver.org/25310.html http://tc.eserver.org/25310.html A Controlled Language is a form of language with special restrictions on grammar, style, and vocabulary usage. Typically, the restrictions are placed on technical documents, including instructions, procedures, descriptions, reports, and cautions. One might consider formal written English to be the ultimate Controlled Language: a form of English with restricted word and grammar usages, but a standard too broad and too variable for use in highly technical domains. Whereas formal written English applies to society as a whole, CLs apply to the specialized sublanguages of particular domains. http://tc.eserver.org/23964.html http://tc.eserver.org/23964.html The field of human language technology covers a broad range of activities with the eventual goal of enabling people to communicate with machines using natural communication skills. Research and development activities include the coding, recognition, interpretation, translation, and generation of language. http://tc.eserver.org/21897.html http://tc.eserver.org/21897.html Grappling with grant applications at your desk is as central to scientific success as is wrestling with experimental conundrums at the bench. In the fight for research dollars, grant writing can make or break a research career no matter how good or innovative a scientist's ideas are. http://tc.eserver.org/20887.html http://tc.eserver.org/20887.html A collection of HCI resources provided as part of ScienceDaily Magazine. http://tc.eserver.org/19198.html http://tc.eserver.org/19198.html This essay examines when and why a 'safe' approach to visual design for web pages is attractive to writers and writing teachers. It considers typical reasons for choosing a 'safe' approach to designing the visual dimensions of web pages, traditional sources in print graphics and writing for safe advice about visual design, and design challenges posed by issues of a web design's stability and navigation. The essay then turns to the fact that the additional media included in a web site bring more design traditions into consideration. It discusses the differing concerns and aims that issue from visual design traditions that focus on prose graphics versus those that focus on theatrical graphics. Keeping these differences in mind, the essay ends with a consideration of the forces shaping visual rhetoric on the web. http://tc.eserver.org/13716.html http://tc.eserver.org/13716.html Y2K was a unique event, particularly for any organization that relies on information and communication technology to accomplish its mission and adhieve its strategic goals. There were various impacts on the design, development, and maintenance of systems and applications throughout the organization, as well as various impacts on the roles and responsibilites of people who deal with them. The fact that Y2K did not result in widespread catastrophic failures actually makes it a richer potential source of critical lessons for longterm strategic management of information and communication technology. We are now in a position to learn from this 'test' and apply those lessons to evolving organizational strategies for managing information and communications. This presentation explores issues and initial progress in the following five areas: (1) organizational roles and responses; (2) information gathering, use, and value; (3) life cycle management of systems and software; (4) information assurance and critical infrastructure protection; and (5) understanding the relationship between risk and response. http://tc.eserver.org/10786.html http://tc.eserver.org/10786.html This is the text of a booklet prepared by the Association of British Science Writers and edited by Richard Stevenson (editor, Chemistry in Britain). Particular thanks are due to Fabian Acker (freelance and NCTJ tutor), Wendy Barnaby (freelance), Ted Poulter (Edward Poulter Associates), Martin Redfern (BBC World Service), Peter Beer (freelance) and, not least, the late Anthony Tucker (formerly science editor, The Guardian). While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the ABSW cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions.