Problem solving often requires crossing boundaries, such as those between disciplines. When policy‐makers call for “interdisciplinarity,” however, they often mean “synergy.” Synergy is generated when the whole offers more possibilities than the sum of its parts. An increase in the number of options above the sum of the options in subsets can be measured as redundancy; that is, the number of not‐yet‐realized

Frequency is one of the major factors for training quality word embeddings. Several studies have recently discussed the stability of word embeddings in general domain and suggested factors influencing the stability. In this work, we conduct a detailed analysis on the stability of concept embeddings in medical domain, particularly in relations with concept frequency. The analysis reveals the surprising

Performance assessment is ubiquitous and crucial in people analytics. Scientific impact, particularly, plays a significant role in the academia. This paper attempts to understand researchers' career trajectories by considering the research community as a social network, where individuals build ties with each other via coauthorship. The resulting linkage facilitates information flow and affects researchers'

Analyzing social media has become a common way for capturing and understanding people's opinions, sentiments, interests, and reactions to ongoing events. Social media has thus become a rich and real‐time source for various kinds of public opinion and sentiment studies. According to psychology and neuroscience, human emotions are known to be strongly dependent on sensory perceptions. Although sensation

This debut curated “virtual special issue” of JASIST is on the theme of “information informing design.” It comprises several excellent scholarly research articles previously published in JASIST with important implications for the design of digital information environments. It covers articles that motivate the need for Information Science research to inform design and those that have empirically examined

Badges are endemic to online interaction sites, from question and answer (Q&A) websites to ride sharing, as systems for rewarding participants for their contributions. This article studies how badge design affects people's contributions and behavior over time. Past work has shown that badges “steer” people's behavior toward substantially increasing the amount of contributions before obtaining the badge

This study investigated the validity of a survey measuring scientists' attitudes toward data reuse. Rasch analysis was used to examine the psychometric properties of the survey. Structural equation modeling was subsequently used to examine the validity of hypothesized relationships among the constructs measured by the survey. Overall, findings supported validity of the existing measure for use among

On April 2, 2018, the State Council of China formally released a national Research Data Management (RDM) policy “Measures for Managing Scientific Data”. In this context and given that university libraries have played an important role in supporting RDM at an institutional level in North America, Europe, and Australasia, the aim of this article is to explore the current status of RDM in Chinese universities

Making use of search systems to foster learning is an emerging research trend known as search as learning. Earlier works identified result diversification as a useful technique to support learning‐oriented search, since diversification ensures a comprehensive coverage of various aspects of the queried topic in the result list. Inspired by this finding, first we define a new research problem, multidimensional

According to recent studies, search engine users have little knowledge of Google's business model. In addition, users cannot sufficiently distinguish organic results from advertisements, resulting in result selections under false assumptions. Following on from that, this study examines how users' understanding of search‐based advertising influences their viewing and selection behavior on desktop computer

While it is widely recognized that value perception increases when individuals engage in making physical objects, the impact of peer presence on value perception during production or consumption has not been studied. Peer production is prevalent for information products, which are the focus of the present study. Most research to date has focused on value as perceived by consumers, while consumers are

Educational preventing violent extremism (EPVE) programs have had (to date) little if any theoretical underpinning. Given their proliferation in jurisdictions such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other European countries, such an absence is notable but not unexpected given the political sensitivities attached to them. These programs remain an emerging policy area which is still “finding

In this commentary, the authors, an international group data curation researchers and educators, reflect on some of the challenges and opportunities for data curation in the wake of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We focus on some topics of particular interest to the information science community: data infrastructures for scholarly communication and research, the politicization of data curation and visualization

In this opinion paper, we frame a discussion on paradigm shift(s) in the field of information. We believe that in this astonishing historical moment of new directions and new opportunities both the existing paradigms and conceptual models in the field of information can benefit from re‐examination to stay current with the times. We propose a framework articulating key narratives associated with the

Information grounds emerge as people share information with others in a common place. Many studies have investigated the emergence of information grounds in public places. This study pays attention to the emergence, peak, and abeyance of an online information ground. It investigates a Facebook group used by youth for sharing information when misinformation spread wildly during the 2011 violence in

With the development of Web‐based social networks, many personalized tag recommendation approaches based on multi‐information have been proposed. Due to the differences in users' preferences, different users care about different kinds of information. In the meantime, different elements within each kind of information are differentially informative for user tagging behaviors. In this context, how to

Finding new ways to help researchers and administrators understand academic fields is an important task for information scientists. Given the importance of interdisciplinary research, it is essential to be aware of disciplinary differences in aspects of scholarship, such as the significance of recent changes in a field. This paper identifies potential changes in 25 subject categories through a term

The recognition of named entities in Spanish medieval texts presents great complexity, involving specific challenges: First, the complex morphosyntactic characteristics in proper‐noun use in medieval texts. Second, the lack of strict orthographic standards. Finally, diachronic and geographical variations in Spanish from the 12th to 15th century. In this period, named entities usually appear as complex

Previous research has found that improved search engine effectiveness—evaluated using a batch‐style approach—does not always translate to significant improvements in user task performance; however, these prior studies focused on simple recall and precision‐based search tasks. We investigated the same relationship, but for realistic, complex search tasks required in clinical decision making. One hundred

Conventional rule‐based approaches use exact template matching to capture linguistic information and necessarily need to enumerate all variations. We propose a novel flexible template generation and matching scheme called the principle‐based approach (PBA) based on sequence alignment, and employ it for reference metadata extraction (RME) to demonstrate its effectiveness. The main contributions of this

A common intermediate language representation in neural machine translation can be used to extend bilingual systems by incremental training. We propose a new architecture based on introducing an interlingual loss as an additional training objective. By adding and forcing this interlingual loss, we can train multiple encoders and decoders for each language, sharing among them a common intermediate representation

When developing university‐based research data curation services, libraries face critical decisions around organization and sustainability that can affect dataset producers' satisfaction with these services. We present a study, involving interviews (n = 43) and ethnographic observation, of how two libraries partnered with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to curate a significant astronomy dataset

In recent years, cross‐modal retrieval has been a popular research topic in both fields of computer vision and natural language processing. There is a huge semantic gap between different modalities on account of heterogeneous properties. How to establish the correlation among different modality data faces enormous challenges. In this work, we propose a novel end‐to‐end framework named Dual Multi‐Angle

Although the Internet allows people to circulate messages using different media, most censorship studies discuss the removal of text content. This article presents a systematic study regarding the censorship of both plain text and multimedia content on the Chinese Internet. By analyzing both censored and surviving posts on the Chinese social media platform Weibo during the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

The use of intelligent machines—digital technologies that feature data‐driven forms of customization, learning, and autonomous action—is rapidly growing and will continue to impact many industries and domains. This is consequential for communities of researchers, educators, and practitioners concerned with studying, supporting, and educating information professionals. In the face of new developments

This study considers commons‐based peer production (CBPP) by examining the organizational processes of the free/libre open‐source software community, Drupal. It does so by exploring the sociotechnical systems that have emerged around both Drupal's development and its face‐to‐face communitarian events. There has been criticism of the simplistic nature of previous research into free software; this study

Citation analysis, as a tool for quantitative studies of science, has long emphasized direct citation relations, leaving indirect or high‐order citations overlooked. However, a series of early and recent studies demonstrate the existence of indirect and continuous citation impact across generations. Adding to the literature on high‐order citations, we introduce the concept of a citation cascade : the

This article explores technological sovereignty as a way to respond to anxieties of control in digital urban contexts, and argues that this may promise a more meaningful social license to operate smart cities. First, we present an overview of smart city developments with a critical focus on corporatization and platform urbanism. We critique Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs development in Toronto, which faces

Though there is a tension between citizens' privacy concerns and their acceptance of government surveillance, there is little systematic research in this space and less still in a cross‐cultural context. We address the research gap by modeling the factors that drive public acceptance of government surveillance, and by exploring the influence of national culture. The research involved an online survey

Smart electric meters collect data on electricity use to potentially improve efficiency for utilities, shape power consumption, and ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Consumer groups and experts have raised concerns about privacy, as smart meters can provide detailed information about activity within the home. This study examines privacy beliefs of U.S. consumers using qualitative data from

This paper examines the role of privacy in the health context by investigating the influence of privacy concerns and perceived benefits on individuals' acceptance of health technologies used by healthcare providers and their own adoption of mobile health technologies. The study adopts a two‐stage sequential mixed‐methods design. The first stage is a quantitative survey of 447 citizens from two countries

This conceptual article argues for the value of an approach to privacy in the digital information environment informed by Luciano Floridi's philosophy of information and information ethics. This approach involves achieving informational privacy, through the features of anonymity and obscurity, through an optimal balance of ontological frictions. This approach may be used to modify models for information

Social media data (SMD) offer researchers new opportunities to leverage those data for their work in broad areas such as public opinion, digital culture, labor trends, and public health. The success of efforts to save SMD for reuse by researchers will depend on aligning data management and archiving practices with evolving norms around the capture, use, sharing, and security of datasets. This paper

This article discusses the sources of information used by refugees as they navigate integration systems and processes. The study used interviews to examine how refugees and asylum seekers dealt with their information needs, finding that information gaps were bridged through people and places. People included friends, solicitors, and caseworkers, whereas places included service providers, detention

As news headlines report on high‐profile online privacy breaches and the potential negative consequences for users, users are becoming concerned about their privacy. While much research has focused on the concerns of younger generations, few studies have investigated older adults, specifically those aged 65+ years. This study analyzes in‐depth interviews with 40 older adults living in East York, Toronto

Filtering, vetting, and verifying digital information is an area of core interest in information science. Online fake news is a specific type of digital misinformation that poses serious threats to democratic institutions, misguides the public, and can lead to radicalization and violence. Hence, fake news detection is an important problem for information science research. While there have been multiple

The relationship between information and control interests social scientists; however, much prior work has focused on organizations rather than families. Work on interactive information behaviors has also focused on organizations and on collaboration rather than conflict. Therefore, in families managing chronic illness, we investigated information behaviors in the context of health‐related social control

Higher education institutions are continuing to develop their capacity for learning analytics (LA), which is a sociotechnical data‐mining and analytic practice. Institutions rarely inform their students about LA practices, and there exist significant privacy concerns. Without a clear student voice in the design of LA, institutions put themselves in an ethical gray area. To help fill this gap in practice

University libraries are partnering with disciplinary data producers to provide long‐term digital curation of research data sets. Managing data set producer expectations and guiding future development of library services requires understanding the decisions libraries make about curatorial activities, why they make these decisions, and the effects on future data reuse. We present a study, comprising

Privacy expectations during disasters differ significantly from nonemergency situations. This paper explores the actual privacy practices of popular disaster apps, highlighting location information flows. Our empirical study compares content analysis of privacy policies and government agency policies, structured by the contextual integrity framework, with static and dynamic app analysis documenting

Data protection laws, including the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, regulate aspects of online personalization. However, the data protection lens is too narrow to analyze personalization. To define conditions for personalization, we should understand data protection in its larger fundamental rights context, starting with the closely connected right to privacy. If the right to privacy

In this opinion paper, we argue that global health crises are also information crises. Using as an example the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) epidemic, we (a) examine challenges associated with what we term “global information crises”; (b) recommend changes needed for the field of information science to play a leading role in such crises; and (c) propose actionable items for short‐ and long‐term

Employers are increasingly using information and communication technologies to monitor employees. Such workplace surveillance is extensive in the United States, but its experience and potential consequences differ across groups based on gender. We thus sought to identify whether self‐reported male and female employees differ in the extent to which they find the use of workplace cameras equipped with

File sharing is an integral component of modern work. Files can be shared either using Group Information Management (GIM), where collaborators exploit a common repository (e.g., the cloud), or Personal Information Management (PIM), where files are sent via email attachments, and collaborators store files individually in personal collections. Given the recent prevalence of GIM, we compare the effects

The emergence of open access (OA) publishing has altered incentives and opportunities for academic stakeholders and publishers. These changes have yielded a variety of new economic and academic niches, including journals with questionable peer‐review systems and business models, commonly dubbed “predatory publishing.” Empirical analysis of Cabellʼs Journal Blacklist reveals substantial diversity in

Credibility assessment is a crucial component in the process of peopleʼs health information seeking, especially in the web context. Finding “credible” health information from a plethora of information on the web may be more challenging for older adults, who have relatively less experience with the Internet. This article reports on the findings of an exploratory study of older adultsʼ credibility assessments

This study investigated the stability of Twitter counts of scientific publications over time. For this, we conducted an analysis of the availability statuses of over 2.6 million Twitter mentions received by the 1,154 most tweeted scientific publications recorded by Altmetric.com up to October 2017. The results show that of the Twitter mentions for these highly tweeted publications, about 14.3% had

Open access has long been an ideal of academic publishing. Yet, contrary to initial expectations, cost of access to published scientific knowledge increased following the advent of the Internet and electronic processing. An analysis of the ethicality of current arrangements in academic publishing shows that monetization and the sequestering of scientific knowledge behind paywalls breach the principle

For laypeople, searching online health information resources can be challenging due to topic complexity and the large number of online sources with differing quality. The goal of this article is to examine, among all the available online sources, which online sources laypeople select to address their health‐related information needs, and whether or how much the severity of a health condition influences

The benefits of open data for helping to address societal problems and strengthen communities are well recognized, and unfortunately previous studies found that smaller communities are often excluded from the current data ecosystem because of existing technological, technical, cognitive, and practical barriers. This study aims to investigate the process of communitiesʼ data use for community development

Recent efforts in biomedical visual question answering (VQA) research rely on combined information gathered from the image content and surrounding text supporting the figure. Biomedical journals are a rich source of information for such multimodal content indexing. For multipanel figures in these journals, it is critical to develop automatic figure panel splitting and label recognition algorithms to

Media platforms, technological systems, and search engines act as conduits and gatekeepers for all kinds of information. They often influence, reflect, and reinforce gender stereotypes, including those that represent occupations. This study examines the prevalence of gender stereotypes on digital media platforms and considers how human efforts to create and curate messages directly may impact these

The beginning of the 21st century attested to the first movements toward information architecture (IA), originating from the field of library and information science (LIS). IA is acknowledged as an important meta‐discipline concerned with the design, implementation, and maintenance of digital information spaces. Despite the relevance of IA, there is little research about the subject within LIS, and

We investigate the state of multilingualism across the social sciences and humanities (SSH) using a comprehensive data set of research outputs from seven European countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders [Belgium], Norway, Poland, and Slovenia). Although English tends to be the dominant language of science, SSH researchers often produce culturally and societally relevant work in their

We unpack the complexities of the crowdfunder community by identifying different archetypes of crowdfunders funding technology projects on Kickstarter.com. Drawing on the extant literature on innovation adoption and opinion leadership, we propose two dimensions of crowdfunders that capture the heterogeneity in crowdfundersʼ behavior: opinion leadership and interest specialization of crowdfunders. Using

The rapid and wide dissemination of up‐to‐date, localized information is a central issue during disasters. Being attributed to the original 140‐character length, Twitter provides its users with quick‐posting and easy‐forwarding features that facilitate the timely dissemination of warnings and alerts. However, a concern arises with respect to the terseness of tweets that restricts the amount of information

The documentary's core argument is that big data and targeted data have been used successfully to influence enough “persuadable” voters to influence the outcome of key elections such as the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential race, and the film pushes this theme by picking just the right facts to make a case. This review will attempt to put The Great Hack in its historical, political, and

Characterizing the leadership in research is important to revealing the interaction pattern and organizational structure through research collaboration. This research defines the leadership role based on the corresponding author's affiliation, and presents the first quantitative research on the factors and evolution of 5 proximity dimensions (geographical, cognitive, institutional, social, and economic)

There is currently a paucity of evidence‐based strategies that have been shown to increase citations of peer‐reviewed articles following their publication. We conducted a 12‐month randomized controlled trial to examine whether the promotion of article links in an online cross‐publisher distribution platform (TrendMD) affects citations. In all, 3,200 articles published in 64 peer‐reviewed journals across

Higher education institutions are mining and analyzing student data to effect educational, political, and managerial outcomes. Done under the banner of “learning analytics,” this work can—and often does—surface sensitive data and information about, inter alia, a student's demographics, academic performance, offline and online movements, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and social network. With these