The new issue is available at the usual place. Here's the Editorial.

Introduction

This issue is a little early in being 'put to bed' because other commitments
intervene. However, that doesn't really affect the content, which has been in
preparation for some time and, indeed, some of the papers have been on the site
for a month or so before publication. The search engines find them there and
the papers get a few more 'hits' before the world at large knows about them.

The numbers of papers coming forward continues to grow, although some (a
relatively small proportion) are so far outside the field of interest that one
wonders why on earth anyone would think the journal was appropriate for their
output. Such papers do not get any further than the Editor's screen and that is
also the case with papers that are evidently not sufficiently well prepared to
bother the referees with. However, I think that it is gradually sinking into
people's consciousness that the journal operates according to the same
standards for the selection of papers as other leading journals: we have the
same high standards of reviewing and, indeed, often have the same reviewers as
the other leading journals. This can be quite useful when, for example, a
reviewer tells us that he has previously reviewed a paper for another journal
and that it was rejected.

To an extent we can identify, also, papers that have been prepared for a
different journal and then rejected. Absurd as it may seem, authors do not
bother to re-organize their paper to fit the Instructions for Authors of
Information Research. The don't provide a structured abstract, the sections and
sub-sections are numbered and the references do not follow the APA 5th edition
standard. Sometimes these are rejected following their being read by myself
and/or another editor, sometimes the author is advised to think again,
re-organize the paper and re-submit. Some do resubmit, others realise that the
game is up and we never hear from them again.
In this issue

Once again, we have a variety of contributions, with authors from Cuba, Denmark,
Finland, Lithuania, Spain, Sweden and the USA. One of the contributions is the
multi-authored debate first published on the Weblog, with authors from
Australia, Canada, Finland and the UK.

The subjects of the papers are as diverse as the geographical distribution of
the authors: Pirkola explores the effectiveness of search engines in
identifying new Websites in different countries, noting that Google and Live
Search are biased towards sites in the USA, while the pan-European engine
Virgilio does a better job on European sites than either of the US search
engines. Not surprising, perhaps, but it does seem that Google and Live Search
really ought to be doing a better job with European sites by now. Perhaps their
managers will read this and think about what to do.

I must admit that much of what is written on bibliometrics bores me to tears, it
seems that much work in this area is done simply because it can be done, rather
than with the aim of casting any light on any information problem of concern.
I'm happy to say that Bo Jarneving's use of bibliometrics to explore the
research productivity of the Western Gotland region of Sweden is rather more
interesting, it reveals the complexity of research relationships and
collaboration in the regional and shows that global collaboration (i.e.,
between Swedish and foreign institutions) is the most common form, with
collaboration between Swedish institutions taking second place.

One of the interesting things that has happened since we begain to accept papers
in Portuguese and Spanish is that more authors with these native languages are
actually submitting papers in English. The paper by José Manuel
Morales-del-Castillo and his colleagues is a case in point. The subject here is
the development of an automatic 'selective dissemination of information' or
'recommender' system for the field of digital libraries. The system uses a
thesaurus, user profiles and RSS feeds to deliver information on resources to
those interested in digital libraries and, at this stage of development, is
said to be 'reasonably effective in terms of precision and recall'. The
difficult part for automatic systems, of course, is getting beyond the
'reasonably effective' level, so we await further reports on the development of
D-Fussion with interest.

Another paper with a Spanish interest (and collaboration with Cuba) is in
Spanish and deals with the historical and epistemological development of
paradigms in information science. Basing their research on a review of the
literature, the authors conclude that there have been three major paradigms in
the field: the physical, the cognitive and the social—ways of defining the
nature of information and information science. The authors suggest that the
literature reveals the collapse of the cognitive paradigm in recent years and
the emergence of the social (and, we might add, behavioural).

The role of memory institutions (archives, libraries and museums) in European
projects is the subject of Zinaida Manžuch's paper. Based on her Ph.D.
dissertation, the paper reveals that archives are the least visible of the
memory institutions in these projects and that the projects are concerned with
resources almost to the exclusion of the social and communicative role of the
institutions in society. This strikes me as an important point to make and one
that the various agencies of the European Union might take into account in
future funding.

Stephen Paling is our sole contributor from the USA in this issue and he is
concerned with identifying the emergence of a new area of research, which he
designates Literature and Art Informatics. To map this emergent field he
employs a statistical technique called multiple correspondence analysis, which
is used to present data graphically, in the hope of revealing relationships
that may be difficult to spot in data tables. In this paper, the author's aim
is mainly to demonstrate the method, but he also derives conclusions on the
relationships between authors and the application of information technology in
their work.

The final paper (properly speaking) is by Jette Hyldeg&oring;rd of the Royal
School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen and deals with the
relationship between personality traits and group-based information behaviour.
The author chooses (unlike some previous researchers) to use the full form of
the NEO Personality Inventory Revised, the most widely used of the instruments
based on the five-factor model of human personality. Perhaps the most
interesting finding (although not altogether surprising) is that the
associations between personality and group behaviour are rather complex. I say,
not altogether surprising because, of course, group dynamics and interpersonal
relationships will intervene in group situations and, for example, someone who
is uncertain about his or her abilities in searching may have their confidence
boosted by the way in which other members of the group support and reward
his/her behaviour. Clearly, there is more interesting work to be done in this
area.

We also have a 'non-paper' in this issue: I decided that it might be useful to
present here the debate that took place between Reijo Savolainen and myself
(with contributions from others) on the relationship between 'behaviour' and
'practice' as terms employed in information behaviour research. I am reprinting
it here because it may achieve wider readership and I think that debates of
this kind are too rare in our field.

We have the usual set of book reviews in this issue covering a wide range of
topics. Two of them deal with collections of reviews, the Annual Review of
Information Science and Technology and Information science in transition,
edited by Alan Gilchrist, which was originally published as an issue of the
Journal of Information Science. The remainder deal with topics as diverse as
iWork, Apple's answer to Microsoft Office and the role of book publishing in
the modern world. Something, in other words, for everyone.
Finally

There has been news, once again, of more financial problems in libraries and
their impact upon journal subscriptions. For example, in California the state
universities are facing significant budget cuts and the University of
California Libraries have already advised publishers that they are scrutinizing
all subscriptions. The University of Amsterdam has shut down its open access
publishing fund, which paid publishers in return for open access to
publications from staff members - a response to the economic climate, it is
said. No doubt this will be the first of a number of such economies.

One of these days, but I'm not holding my breath, those directing the affairs of
our universities will come to a realisation that spending money to subsidise
the publication of OA journals makes much more sense than bolstering the
profits of the commercial publishers. The problem of course, is that each Vice
Chancellor, Rector or university President is concerned only with his or her
little fiefdom and the amount of money involved at present, in terms of total
national spend, is too small in public accounts terms to attract the interest
of politicians. So, the antiquated process bumbles along, with self-archiving
as a kind of sticking plaster on the system.

We need a campaign for true open access journals like Information Research: no
author charges, no subscriptions, just free access to publish and free access
to read, achieving maximum social benefit.

We have one conference announcement on the contents page in this issue. ISIC:
the information behaviour conference (as it is now called) - an essential
meeting for all concerned with this area of research. There's a link to the
Call for Papers, which other editors may care to note and advertise. We also
have a Website for the whole series of conferences, which is still under
development.

My thanks, as usual, to the Associate Editors, copy-editors and referees for
helping to bring this collection to your screen.

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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