Volume 12 No. 2 of Information Research is now available at the Website:

http://InformationR.net/ir/

Here is the Editorial:

Introduction

Managing an electronic journal is a non-trivial task and, although I have
Associate Editors who help greatly in the process of evaluating submissions,
the main work of getting the issues out is down to me. With the loss of my
volunteer proof-reader, Rae-Ann Hughes, the checking is an additional load. It
is something of a relief, therefore, to know that Lund University Libraries
(our host institution for the server) is implementing the journal management
package, Open Journal Systems. Together with the Associate Editors, I am in the
process of testing the system and hope, shortly, that all submissions will be
handled through OJS.

This said, there is still room for more volunteers to help with the production
of the journal: ideally, a proof-reader who knows British English and an XHTML
code editor would be very useful. So, if you have a little time on your hands
(a vain hope in these days of overwork!), or if you are recently retired and
interested in helping the open access movement, do contact me.

And, speaking of volunteers, thanks to Elena Maceviciute for her link checking
this issue - a bigger task than usual, and to Pedro Dias and Jose Vicente
Rodriguez for the Spanish abstracts; again, a much bigger task than
previously.
In this issue

The main work of this issue has been in preparing the final batch of papers from
the Information Seeking in Context Conference, which was held in Sydney last
year. As usual, the range is very wide, from the information needs of Iranian
engineers, to the information behaviour of Taiwanese aborigines—evidence that
the information behaviour field is dynamic and growing. Very few of the
authors, however, explore the implications of their work for information
practice, and I hope that the 2008 conference (to be held in Vilnius,
Lithuania) will address this issue.

We also have five other peer-reviewed papers and another open access case study.
The five papers cover very different topics: professional education in Brazil,
Internet services in the countries of the European Union, students' use of the
Internet for their Finnish Masters' theses, the impact of the Terrorist
bombings in Madrid on the 11th March, 2004, on newspaper documentation centres
(in Spanish) and a workflow model for scholarly communication. This last one is
very long for a paper and the author has provided a link to a .pdf file so that
you may print it out more easily. The case study deals with Medical Education
Online, which was established (like Information Researh) by an individual,
enthused by the idea of open access publishing.

Partly because of the ISIC papers, we have a good geographic spread of papers in
this issue: USA - 4, Finland - 3, Japan - 2, Spain - 2, Brazil - 1, Canada - 1,
Iran - 1, Singapore - 1, Taiwan - 1, UK - 1.
Google Analytics

As I noted in the previous issue, I now use Google Analytics to monitor the use
of the journal and (at the time of writing) I now have four months of data. The
data show that the top page of the journal has had 35,323 'unique views' and
66,145 'page views' in this time - which I assume means that each visitor comes
back to the top page ('home' on the navigation bar) at least once after the
initial click. Extrapolating that for 2006 as a whole suggests that the top
page has had 105,969 unique views and 198,435 page views. I've also been using
OneStat.com since last April and it shows 32,517 page views for the top page in
eight months - extrapolating gives us 48,775 for the year, which is
significantly fewer than suggested by Google Analytics, so I'm not quite sure
what's going on there :-). However, in 2005 we had 47,117 hits, so usage
continues to increase. One thing is certain: the papers in Information Research
are getting a lot of exposure!
The Editorial Board

I am making changes to the Editorial Board, with a view to stabilizing
membership by the beginning of the next volume. Membership is for a period of
three years, renewable, and some members are now due to retire, so with this
issue, we welcome three new members of the Editorial Board: Jim Jansen, Victor
Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi. Jim strengthens our representation of the Web
research community, while Bonnie and Victor, apart from helping review papers
for the activity theory issue due in April, strengthen the information systems
area. Welcome folks!

The journal's publication schedule will also be changing, partly to bring the
volume year into line with the calendar year and partly to avoid holiday
periods as far as possible. So, this year, the final two issues of Volume 12
will be published in April and October and Volume 13 will have its four issues
in March, June, September and December of 2008, with subsequent volumes having
the same publication pattern. This way, I might actually have some holiday time
at Christmas!

Given how far the month is advanced, it may seem a little late, but... a very
Happy New Year!

Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD
Publisher/Editor in Chief
Information Research
InformationR.net
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web site: http://InformationR.net/
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