A new "issue" of Information Research is available at:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~is/publications/infres/ircont.html
The following is -
Editorial
This issue of Information Research marks a change in
policy for the journal: a move towards a fully
peer-refereed scholarly journal. The next issue will be
composed almost entirely of refereed papers, but we shall
continue to publish unrefereed papers, if they are of
interest to our audience. In fact, it seems that the
quality of the papers in Information Research has been
such that the lack of a refereeing process has not
bothered those who cite them and refer their students to
them. Does this suggest that quality of Editorial control
is perhaps as important (or, possibly, more important)
than peer reviewing?
Our first refereed paper - from Dr. Elena Maceviciuté of
the Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University,
Lithuania (with apologies for the missing diacritic in her
name - my HTML editor lacks the appropriate special
symbol). Dr. Maceviciuté deals with a topic of great
interest everywhere - the growth of the market for
information professionals - but the topic is especially
pressing in the Baltic states, where educational
programmes are being quickly revised as a consequence of a
newly-gained independence at the height of a technological
revolution.
The second paper, also refereed, is on computer assistance
to human abstractors, by Tim Craven of Western Ontario.
Tim describes the use of software, developed by himself,
for speeding up the process of creating an abstract and
reports upon an evaluation of the software under a Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant.
The third paper is on The public reception of the Research
Assessment Exercise 1996 by Dr. Julian Warner of the
School of Management, The Queen's University of Belfast,
Northern Ireland. Dr. Warner has accomplished the very
interesting task of mapping the response in the various
daily and weekly newspapers to the results of the 1996 RAE
in the UK and his findings suggest that, while the
response may be limited to the "quality" newspapers, the
RAE has made an impact on the public image of research in
UK universities.
Finally, we have a paper from the Editor and a couple of
Master's students, who carried out research under his
direction in 1996 and 1997 into Business use of the World
Wide Web continuing the work that was reported in an
earlier issue.
Prof. Tom Wilson, Editor/Webmaster
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Professor Tom Wilson, Ph.D.
Research Professor in Information Management
Department of Information Studies
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, U.K.
Tel. +44-114-222-2631 Fax. +44-114-278-0300
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/I-M/is/lecturer/tom1.html
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"Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you
had the urge to pass it on." Terry Pratchett, "Hogfather".
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