Isola Ajiferuke - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Isola Ajiferuke

Research paper thumbnail of Information and Communication Technologies Provision to Rural Communities

IGI Global eBooks, Jan 18, 2011

This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aid... more This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aiding the sustainable development of rural communities through distance education, telemedicine, and the provision of timely information on agriculture and the environment. It argues that telecenters offer practical and community-oriented ways to bring information and communication technologies services to the rural people. Furthermore, based on the outcome of an evaluation of a telecenter in Zimbabwe, it is suggested that in order for a telecenter to offer effective, efficient and sustainable services, local needs assessment would need to be conducted, the telecenter located at a central place, and an awareness-building campaign targeted at potential users.

Research paper thumbnail of Information and Communication Technologies Provision to Rural Communities

IGI Global eBooks, Jan 18, 2011

This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aid... more This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aiding the sustainable development of rural communities through distance education, telemedicine, and the provision of timely information on agriculture and the environment. It argues that telecenters offer practical and community-oriented ways to bring information and communication technologies services to the rural people. Furthermore, based on the outcome of an evaluation of a telecenter in Zimbabwe, it is suggested that in order for a telecenter to offer effective, efficient and sustainable services, local needs assessment would need to be conducted, the telecenter located at a central place, and an awareness-building campaign targeted at potential users.

Research paper thumbnail of Editorial: Research Collaboration and Networks: Characteristics, Evolution and Trends

Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics

Research paper thumbnail of Semantic similarity-based credit attribution on citation paths: a method for allocating residual citation to and investigating depth of influence of scientific communications

Research paper thumbnail of 語彙サイズとその効果話題表現【Powered by NICT】

Information Processing and Management, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of A Proposed Method for Residual Citation Allocation Based on Citation Contexts’ Similarity

This article proposes an approach for allocating residual citations to scientific publications an... more This article proposes an approach for allocating residual citations to scientific publications and demonstrating this proposed approach with a sample of biomedical publications. Residue citations (i.e., citations that are lost due to citation practices termed “Obliteration by Incorporation” and the “Palimpsestic Syndrome”) in consequent citations in the second, third or nth generations are then reconstituted. The proposed approach takes into account citation contexts (i.e., the contribution of a cited publication) for allocating residual citation. The proposed method for allocating residual citation is based on the similarity between the citation contexts of a publication and those of its nth generation citations in their n+1th generation citations. The proposed method was demonstrated using a sample with ten base articles and their five generations of citations, from which 5,272 citation context pairs were obtained. The proposed indirect citation weighting was compared with the exi...

Research paper thumbnail of Manually collected Citation Context Datasets from moderately cited Biomedical Publications

This dataset consists of citation contexts that were collected from one hundred (100) moderately ... more This dataset consists of citation contexts that were collected from one hundred (100) moderately cited biomedical articles that were sampled from the MEDLINE database. The 100 sampled articles received 7317 citations (maximum=179, minimum=31, average=73.17) from which 11,228 citation contexts were extracted. The citation contexts were manually identified as the span of texts around the citation marker that describes the contribution that was referenced from the cited articles. Unlike other studies that identified citation contexts using a predetermined window of texts before and after the citation marker, citation contexts in this dataset were identified by reading the texts around the citation marker to understand the context in which a cited publication was referenced. Citation contexts data that are collected using a predetermined window of words/paragraphs are prone to errors(overrepresentation or underrepresentation). The first sheet in the excel files contains bibliographic details of the cited article, while the second and third sheets contain bibliographic details of the cited articles and the citation contexts, respectively. Four information types were collected on the third sheet containing the citation contexts: No, title, number of mentions, and citation contexts. "No" refers to a citing article's unique serial number that also corresponds to the serial number of the citing article on the second sheet of the excel file. "Title" refers to the title of the citing article, "number of mentions" connotes the number of times the cited article is referenced in the citing article, and "citation context" is the text that represents the contribution of the cited article. This dataset is useful for citation identification, classification, and weighting studies. This dataset was collected as part of the first author's doctoral thesis

Research paper thumbnail of Citer analysis as a measure of research impact: library and information science as a case study

Scientometrics, 2009

The investigators studied author research impact using the number of citers an author's research ... more The investigators studied author research impact using the number of citers an author's research is able to attract, as opposed to the more traditional measure of citations. A focus on citers provides a complementary measure of an author's reach or influence in a field, whereas citations, although possibly numerous, may not reflect this reach, particularly if many citations are received from a small number of citers. In this exploratory study, Web of Science was used to tally citer and citation-based counts for 25 highly cited researchers in information studies in the United States and 26 highly cited researchers from the United Kingdom. Outcomes of the tallies using several different measures, including an introduced ch-index, were used to determine whether differences arise in author rankings when using citer-based versus citation-based counts. The findings indicate a strong correlation between some citation and citer-based measures, but not with others. The findings of the study have implications for the way authors' research impact may be assessed.

Research paper thumbnail of Multi-lingual information access tools

Proceedings of the 2012 iConference on - iConference '12, 2012

ABSTRACT This research presents the results of a case study on potential users of Cross Language ... more ABSTRACT This research presents the results of a case study on potential users of Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) systems --- international students at a Canadian University. The study is designed to test their awareness of Multi-Lingual Information Access (MLIA) tools on the internet and in select electronic databases. The study investigates how non-native English speakers cope with language barriers while searching for information online. We advocate for designing systems that incorporate CLIR options and other MLIA tools to support users from diverse linguistic backgrounds with varying proficiency levels.

Research paper thumbnail of Knowledge Management Practices in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry

Knowledge and Process Management, 2013

The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leve... more The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leverage knowledge in achieving organizational performance and competitive advantage. Forty organizations were selected by using stratified random sampling from the 150 organizations in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Twenty-nine of the selected organizations agreed to participate in the study, and questionnaires were then distributed to 14 senior executives in each of these organizations. Four hundred and six questionnaires were returned, but only 329 complete ones were used for analysis. The results from the study showed the following: that there is poor management of human capital in the Nigerian telecommunications industry; that lack of effective communication appears to be the bane of structural capital management in the industry; that most of the telecommunications companies in Nigeria have had a long-term relationship with their customers; and that Nigerian telecommunications organizations are familiar with knowledge management as a concept. The results also showed slight differences among the six groups of organizations in their management of intellectual capital with the Local Exchange operators and National Carrier as the best and worst performers, respectively. In conclusion, it is suggested that Nigerian telecommunications organizations should strive to provide a conducive and an enabling working environment, where people can share ideas about work without being shut down by bosses and bureaucrats, and that they should try harder to implement their customers' suggestions, especially when such suggestions have to do with meeting the customers' needs.

Research paper thumbnail of Analysis of Web page image tag distribution characteristics

Information Processing & Management, 2005

The authors investigate the frequency distribution of the use of image tags in Web pages. Using d... more The authors investigate the frequency distribution of the use of image tags in Web pages. Using data sampled from top level Web pages across five top level domains and from sample pages within individual websites, the authors model observed patterns in the frequency of image tag usage by fitting collected data distributions to different theoretical models used in informetrics. Models tested include the modified power law (MPL), Mandelbrot (MDB), generalized waring (GW), generalized inverse Gaussian-Poisson (GIGP), and generalized negative binomial (GNB) distributions. The GIGP provided the best fit for data sets for top level pages across the top level domains tested. The poor fits of the models to the observed data distributions from specific websites were due to the multimodal nature of the observed data sets. Mixtures of the tested models for the data sets provided better fits. The ability to effectively model Web page attributes, such as the distribution of the number of image tags used per page, is needed for accurate simulation models of Web page content, and makes it possible to estimate the number of requests needed to display the complete content of Web pages.

Research paper thumbnail of Informetric modelling of Internet search and browsing characteristics

Canadian journal of information and library …, 2004

Résumé/Abstract Deux vastes ensembles de requêtes soumises au service de recherche Excite sont ut... more Résumé/Abstract Deux vastes ensembles de requêtes soumises au service de recherche Excite sont utilisés pour obtenir différentes distributions de requêtes et de comportements de recherche (traitement des termes de requêtes à travers les requêtes, termes utilisés par ...

Research paper thumbnail of Characteristics and Effectiveness of Tags in Public Library Online Public Access Catalogues/Les caractéristiques et l’efficacité des balises dans les catalogues publics en ligne des bibliothèques publiques

Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics and effectiveness of tags in pub... more The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics and effectiveness of tags in public library online public access catalogues (OPACs). Three public libraries that have adopted BiblioCommons’ OPAC system—Edmonton Public Library, Seattle Public Library, and Christchurch City Libraries—were selected for the study. In the OPAC of each of these libraries, fifty queries were searched using tags as well as keyword and subject as access point. The results of the study showed that a large number of items in public libraries are still not being tagged, while for those items that have been tagged, the tags were mostly made up of one or two words and were subject related. In terms of effectiveness, the precision level of a tag search was found acceptable and somewhat comparable to the precision levels of keyword and subject searches, but of the three access points, tags retrieved the fewest number of items. Le but de cette étude était d’étudier les caractéristiques et l’efficacit...

Research paper thumbnail of Who are the research disciples of an author? Examining publication recitation and oeuvre citation exhaustivity

Journal of Informetrics, 2011

Recitation patterns for individual publications are examined and mathematically modeled by focusi... more Recitation patterns for individual publications are examined and mathematically modeled by focusing on the origin of citations (citers) using data from Thomson Reuters Web of Science. The authors outline oeuvre citation exhaustivity, or the practice of citing across the body of work of an author, and model the resulting frequency distributions to identify research disciples and admirers. A Geeta distribution provided the best fits for both recitation frequency and oeuvre citation exhaustivity distributions. The findings provide a novel way to identify the influence of an author based on citer analysis.

Research paper thumbnail of Sample size and informetric model goodness-of-fit outcomes: a search engine log case study

Journal of Information Science, 2006

Abstract The influence of sample size on informetric characteristics is examined to determine whe... more Abstract The influence of sample size on informetric characteristics is examined to determine whether theoretical mathematical models can adequately fit large data sets. Two large data sets of queries submitted to the Excite search service were sampled for search ...

Research paper thumbnail of Knowledge Management Practices in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry

ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizat... more ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leverage knowledge in achieving organizational performance and competitive advantage. Forty organizations were selected by using stratified random sampling from the 150 organizations in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Twenty-nine of the selected organizations agreed to participate in the study, and questionnaires were then distributed to 14 senior executives in each of these organizations. Four hundred and six questionnaires were returned, but only 329 complete ones were used for analysis. The results from the study showed the following: that there is poor management of human capital in the Nigerian telecommunications industry; that lack of effective communication appears to be the bane of structural capital management in the industry; that most of the telecommunications companies in Nigeria have had a long-term relationship with their customers; and that Nigerian telecommunications organizations are familiar with knowledge management as a concept. The results also showed slight differences among the six groups of organizations in their management of intellectual capital with the Local Exchange operators and National Carrier as the best and worst performers, respectively. In conclusion, it is suggested that Nigerian telecommunications organizations should strive to provide a conducive and an enabling working environment, where people can share ideas about work without being shut down by bosses and bureaucrats, and that they should try harder to implement their customers' suggestions, especially when such suggestions have to do with meeting the customers' needs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research paper thumbnail of Multi-lingual Information Access Tools

Research paper thumbnail of Knowledge Management Practices in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry

Knowledge and Process Management, 2013

ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizat... more ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leverage knowledge in achieving organizational performance and competitive advantage. Forty organizations were selected by using stratified random sampling from the 150 organizations in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Twenty-nine of the selected organizations agreed to participate in the study, and questionnaires were then distributed to 14 senior executives in each of these organizations. Four hundred and six questionnaires were returned, but only 329 complete ones were used for analysis. The results from the study showed the following: that there is poor management of human capital in the Nigerian telecommunications industry; that lack of effective communication appears to be the bane of structural capital management in the industry; that most of the telecommunications companies in Nigeria have had a long-term relationship with their customers; and that Nigerian telecommunications organizations are familiar with knowledge management as a concept. The results also showed slight differences among the six groups of organizations in their management of intellectual capital with the Local Exchange operators and National Carrier as the best and worst performers, respectively. In conclusion, it is suggested that Nigerian telecommunications organizations should strive to provide a conducive and an enabling working environment, where people can share ideas about work without being shut down by bosses and bureaucrats, and that they should try harder to implement their customers' suggestions, especially when such suggestions have to do with meeting the customers' needs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research paper thumbnail of Optimizing search strategies to identify randomized controlled trials in MEDLINE

BMC Medical Research Methodology, 2006

Background: The Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS), which contains three phases, is... more Background: The Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS), which contains three phases, is widely used to identify Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in MEDLINE. Lefebvre and Clarke suggest that reviewers might consider using four revisions of the HSSS. The objective of this study is to validate these four revisions: combining the free text terms volunteer, crossover, versus, and the Medical Subject Heading CROSS-OVER STUDIES with the top two phases of the HSSS, respectively. Methods: We replicated the subject search for 61 Cochrane reviews. The included studies of each review that were indexed in MEDLINE were pooled together by review and then combined with the subject search and each of the four proposed search strategies, the top two phases of the HSSS, and all three phases of the HSSS. These retrievals were used to calculate the sensitivity and precision of each of the six search strategies for each review. Results: Across the 61 reviews, the search term versus combined with the top two phases of the HSSS was able to find 3 more included studies than the top two phases of the HSSS alone, or in combination with any of the other proposed search terms, but at the expense of missing 56 relevant articles that would be found if all three phases of the HSSS were used. The estimated time needed to finish a review is 1086 hours for all three phases of the HSSS, 823 hours for the strategy versus, 818 hours for the first two phases of the HSSS or any of the other three proposed strategies. Conclusion: This study shows that compared to the first two phases of the HSSS, adding the term versus to the top two phases of the HSSS balances the sensitivity and precision in the reviews studied here to some extent but the differences are very small. It is well known that missing relevant studies may result in bias in systematic reviews. Reviewers need to weigh the trade-offs when selecting the search strategies for identifying RCTs in MEDLINE.

Research paper thumbnail of Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Tag as an Access Point in a Public Library OPAC

Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS / Actes du congrès annuel de l'ACSI

The objective of this study is to compare the retrieval effectiveness of using tag as an access p... more The objective of this study is to compare the retrieval effectiveness of using tag as an access point as against subject heading or keyword in a public library OPAC. Thirty queries were searched in Oakville Public Library, and tag retrieved a fewer number of items per query than keyword or subject. However, there was no significant difference in the average precision values.L’objectif de cette étude est de comparer l’efficacité du repérage à l’aide des étiquettes comme point d’accès à celui des vedettes matières ou des mots-clés d’un OPAC de bibliothèque publique. Trente requêtes ont été analysées à la bibliothèque publique d’Oakville et le repérage par étiquette a retourné moins de résultats par requête que les mots-clés ou les vedettes matières. Cependant, aucune différence significative n’a été notée pour les valeurs de précision moyenne.

Research paper thumbnail of Information and Communication Technologies Provision to Rural Communities

IGI Global eBooks, Jan 18, 2011

This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aid... more This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aiding the sustainable development of rural communities through distance education, telemedicine, and the provision of timely information on agriculture and the environment. It argues that telecenters offer practical and community-oriented ways to bring information and communication technologies services to the rural people. Furthermore, based on the outcome of an evaluation of a telecenter in Zimbabwe, it is suggested that in order for a telecenter to offer effective, efficient and sustainable services, local needs assessment would need to be conducted, the telecenter located at a central place, and an awareness-building campaign targeted at potential users.

Research paper thumbnail of Information and Communication Technologies Provision to Rural Communities

IGI Global eBooks, Jan 18, 2011

This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aid... more This chapter introduces information and communication technologies as having the potential of aiding the sustainable development of rural communities through distance education, telemedicine, and the provision of timely information on agriculture and the environment. It argues that telecenters offer practical and community-oriented ways to bring information and communication technologies services to the rural people. Furthermore, based on the outcome of an evaluation of a telecenter in Zimbabwe, it is suggested that in order for a telecenter to offer effective, efficient and sustainable services, local needs assessment would need to be conducted, the telecenter located at a central place, and an awareness-building campaign targeted at potential users.

Research paper thumbnail of Editorial: Research Collaboration and Networks: Characteristics, Evolution and Trends

Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics

Research paper thumbnail of Semantic similarity-based credit attribution on citation paths: a method for allocating residual citation to and investigating depth of influence of scientific communications

Research paper thumbnail of 語彙サイズとその効果話題表現【Powered by NICT】

Information Processing and Management, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of A Proposed Method for Residual Citation Allocation Based on Citation Contexts’ Similarity

This article proposes an approach for allocating residual citations to scientific publications an... more This article proposes an approach for allocating residual citations to scientific publications and demonstrating this proposed approach with a sample of biomedical publications. Residue citations (i.e., citations that are lost due to citation practices termed “Obliteration by Incorporation” and the “Palimpsestic Syndrome”) in consequent citations in the second, third or nth generations are then reconstituted. The proposed approach takes into account citation contexts (i.e., the contribution of a cited publication) for allocating residual citation. The proposed method for allocating residual citation is based on the similarity between the citation contexts of a publication and those of its nth generation citations in their n+1th generation citations. The proposed method was demonstrated using a sample with ten base articles and their five generations of citations, from which 5,272 citation context pairs were obtained. The proposed indirect citation weighting was compared with the exi...

Research paper thumbnail of Manually collected Citation Context Datasets from moderately cited Biomedical Publications

This dataset consists of citation contexts that were collected from one hundred (100) moderately ... more This dataset consists of citation contexts that were collected from one hundred (100) moderately cited biomedical articles that were sampled from the MEDLINE database. The 100 sampled articles received 7317 citations (maximum=179, minimum=31, average=73.17) from which 11,228 citation contexts were extracted. The citation contexts were manually identified as the span of texts around the citation marker that describes the contribution that was referenced from the cited articles. Unlike other studies that identified citation contexts using a predetermined window of texts before and after the citation marker, citation contexts in this dataset were identified by reading the texts around the citation marker to understand the context in which a cited publication was referenced. Citation contexts data that are collected using a predetermined window of words/paragraphs are prone to errors(overrepresentation or underrepresentation). The first sheet in the excel files contains bibliographic details of the cited article, while the second and third sheets contain bibliographic details of the cited articles and the citation contexts, respectively. Four information types were collected on the third sheet containing the citation contexts: No, title, number of mentions, and citation contexts. "No" refers to a citing article's unique serial number that also corresponds to the serial number of the citing article on the second sheet of the excel file. "Title" refers to the title of the citing article, "number of mentions" connotes the number of times the cited article is referenced in the citing article, and "citation context" is the text that represents the contribution of the cited article. This dataset is useful for citation identification, classification, and weighting studies. This dataset was collected as part of the first author's doctoral thesis

Research paper thumbnail of Citer analysis as a measure of research impact: library and information science as a case study

Scientometrics, 2009

The investigators studied author research impact using the number of citers an author's research ... more The investigators studied author research impact using the number of citers an author's research is able to attract, as opposed to the more traditional measure of citations. A focus on citers provides a complementary measure of an author's reach or influence in a field, whereas citations, although possibly numerous, may not reflect this reach, particularly if many citations are received from a small number of citers. In this exploratory study, Web of Science was used to tally citer and citation-based counts for 25 highly cited researchers in information studies in the United States and 26 highly cited researchers from the United Kingdom. Outcomes of the tallies using several different measures, including an introduced ch-index, were used to determine whether differences arise in author rankings when using citer-based versus citation-based counts. The findings indicate a strong correlation between some citation and citer-based measures, but not with others. The findings of the study have implications for the way authors' research impact may be assessed.

Research paper thumbnail of Multi-lingual information access tools

Proceedings of the 2012 iConference on - iConference '12, 2012

ABSTRACT This research presents the results of a case study on potential users of Cross Language ... more ABSTRACT This research presents the results of a case study on potential users of Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) systems --- international students at a Canadian University. The study is designed to test their awareness of Multi-Lingual Information Access (MLIA) tools on the internet and in select electronic databases. The study investigates how non-native English speakers cope with language barriers while searching for information online. We advocate for designing systems that incorporate CLIR options and other MLIA tools to support users from diverse linguistic backgrounds with varying proficiency levels.

Research paper thumbnail of Knowledge Management Practices in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry

Knowledge and Process Management, 2013

The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leve... more The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leverage knowledge in achieving organizational performance and competitive advantage. Forty organizations were selected by using stratified random sampling from the 150 organizations in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Twenty-nine of the selected organizations agreed to participate in the study, and questionnaires were then distributed to 14 senior executives in each of these organizations. Four hundred and six questionnaires were returned, but only 329 complete ones were used for analysis. The results from the study showed the following: that there is poor management of human capital in the Nigerian telecommunications industry; that lack of effective communication appears to be the bane of structural capital management in the industry; that most of the telecommunications companies in Nigeria have had a long-term relationship with their customers; and that Nigerian telecommunications organizations are familiar with knowledge management as a concept. The results also showed slight differences among the six groups of organizations in their management of intellectual capital with the Local Exchange operators and National Carrier as the best and worst performers, respectively. In conclusion, it is suggested that Nigerian telecommunications organizations should strive to provide a conducive and an enabling working environment, where people can share ideas about work without being shut down by bosses and bureaucrats, and that they should try harder to implement their customers' suggestions, especially when such suggestions have to do with meeting the customers' needs.

Research paper thumbnail of Analysis of Web page image tag distribution characteristics

Information Processing & Management, 2005

The authors investigate the frequency distribution of the use of image tags in Web pages. Using d... more The authors investigate the frequency distribution of the use of image tags in Web pages. Using data sampled from top level Web pages across five top level domains and from sample pages within individual websites, the authors model observed patterns in the frequency of image tag usage by fitting collected data distributions to different theoretical models used in informetrics. Models tested include the modified power law (MPL), Mandelbrot (MDB), generalized waring (GW), generalized inverse Gaussian-Poisson (GIGP), and generalized negative binomial (GNB) distributions. The GIGP provided the best fit for data sets for top level pages across the top level domains tested. The poor fits of the models to the observed data distributions from specific websites were due to the multimodal nature of the observed data sets. Mixtures of the tested models for the data sets provided better fits. The ability to effectively model Web page attributes, such as the distribution of the number of image tags used per page, is needed for accurate simulation models of Web page content, and makes it possible to estimate the number of requests needed to display the complete content of Web pages.

Research paper thumbnail of Informetric modelling of Internet search and browsing characteristics

Canadian journal of information and library …, 2004

Résumé/Abstract Deux vastes ensembles de requêtes soumises au service de recherche Excite sont ut... more Résumé/Abstract Deux vastes ensembles de requêtes soumises au service de recherche Excite sont utilisés pour obtenir différentes distributions de requêtes et de comportements de recherche (traitement des termes de requêtes à travers les requêtes, termes utilisés par ...

Research paper thumbnail of Characteristics and Effectiveness of Tags in Public Library Online Public Access Catalogues/Les caractéristiques et l’efficacité des balises dans les catalogues publics en ligne des bibliothèques publiques

Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics and effectiveness of tags in pub... more The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics and effectiveness of tags in public library online public access catalogues (OPACs). Three public libraries that have adopted BiblioCommons’ OPAC system—Edmonton Public Library, Seattle Public Library, and Christchurch City Libraries—were selected for the study. In the OPAC of each of these libraries, fifty queries were searched using tags as well as keyword and subject as access point. The results of the study showed that a large number of items in public libraries are still not being tagged, while for those items that have been tagged, the tags were mostly made up of one or two words and were subject related. In terms of effectiveness, the precision level of a tag search was found acceptable and somewhat comparable to the precision levels of keyword and subject searches, but of the three access points, tags retrieved the fewest number of items. Le but de cette étude était d’étudier les caractéristiques et l’efficacit...

Research paper thumbnail of Who are the research disciples of an author? Examining publication recitation and oeuvre citation exhaustivity

Journal of Informetrics, 2011

Recitation patterns for individual publications are examined and mathematically modeled by focusi... more Recitation patterns for individual publications are examined and mathematically modeled by focusing on the origin of citations (citers) using data from Thomson Reuters Web of Science. The authors outline oeuvre citation exhaustivity, or the practice of citing across the body of work of an author, and model the resulting frequency distributions to identify research disciples and admirers. A Geeta distribution provided the best fits for both recitation frequency and oeuvre citation exhaustivity distributions. The findings provide a novel way to identify the influence of an author based on citer analysis.

Research paper thumbnail of Sample size and informetric model goodness-of-fit outcomes: a search engine log case study

Journal of Information Science, 2006

Abstract The influence of sample size on informetric characteristics is examined to determine whe... more Abstract The influence of sample size on informetric characteristics is examined to determine whether theoretical mathematical models can adequately fit large data sets. Two large data sets of queries submitted to the Excite search service were sampled for search ...

Research paper thumbnail of Knowledge Management Practices in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry

ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizat... more ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leverage knowledge in achieving organizational performance and competitive advantage. Forty organizations were selected by using stratified random sampling from the 150 organizations in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Twenty-nine of the selected organizations agreed to participate in the study, and questionnaires were then distributed to 14 senior executives in each of these organizations. Four hundred and six questionnaires were returned, but only 329 complete ones were used for analysis. The results from the study showed the following: that there is poor management of human capital in the Nigerian telecommunications industry; that lack of effective communication appears to be the bane of structural capital management in the industry; that most of the telecommunications companies in Nigeria have had a long-term relationship with their customers; and that Nigerian telecommunications organizations are familiar with knowledge management as a concept. The results also showed slight differences among the six groups of organizations in their management of intellectual capital with the Local Exchange operators and National Carrier as the best and worst performers, respectively. In conclusion, it is suggested that Nigerian telecommunications organizations should strive to provide a conducive and an enabling working environment, where people can share ideas about work without being shut down by bosses and bureaucrats, and that they should try harder to implement their customers' suggestions, especially when such suggestions have to do with meeting the customers' needs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research paper thumbnail of Multi-lingual Information Access Tools

Research paper thumbnail of Knowledge Management Practices in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry

Knowledge and Process Management, 2013

ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizat... more ABSTRACT The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leverage knowledge in achieving organizational performance and competitive advantage. Forty organizations were selected by using stratified random sampling from the 150 organizations in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Twenty-nine of the selected organizations agreed to participate in the study, and questionnaires were then distributed to 14 senior executives in each of these organizations. Four hundred and six questionnaires were returned, but only 329 complete ones were used for analysis. The results from the study showed the following: that there is poor management of human capital in the Nigerian telecommunications industry; that lack of effective communication appears to be the bane of structural capital management in the industry; that most of the telecommunications companies in Nigeria have had a long-term relationship with their customers; and that Nigerian telecommunications organizations are familiar with knowledge management as a concept. The results also showed slight differences among the six groups of organizations in their management of intellectual capital with the Local Exchange operators and National Carrier as the best and worst performers, respectively. In conclusion, it is suggested that Nigerian telecommunications organizations should strive to provide a conducive and an enabling working environment, where people can share ideas about work without being shut down by bosses and bureaucrats, and that they should try harder to implement their customers' suggestions, especially when such suggestions have to do with meeting the customers' needs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research paper thumbnail of Optimizing search strategies to identify randomized controlled trials in MEDLINE

BMC Medical Research Methodology, 2006

Background: The Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS), which contains three phases, is... more Background: The Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS), which contains three phases, is widely used to identify Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in MEDLINE. Lefebvre and Clarke suggest that reviewers might consider using four revisions of the HSSS. The objective of this study is to validate these four revisions: combining the free text terms volunteer, crossover, versus, and the Medical Subject Heading CROSS-OVER STUDIES with the top two phases of the HSSS, respectively. Methods: We replicated the subject search for 61 Cochrane reviews. The included studies of each review that were indexed in MEDLINE were pooled together by review and then combined with the subject search and each of the four proposed search strategies, the top two phases of the HSSS, and all three phases of the HSSS. These retrievals were used to calculate the sensitivity and precision of each of the six search strategies for each review. Results: Across the 61 reviews, the search term versus combined with the top two phases of the HSSS was able to find 3 more included studies than the top two phases of the HSSS alone, or in combination with any of the other proposed search terms, but at the expense of missing 56 relevant articles that would be found if all three phases of the HSSS were used. The estimated time needed to finish a review is 1086 hours for all three phases of the HSSS, 823 hours for the strategy versus, 818 hours for the first two phases of the HSSS or any of the other three proposed strategies. Conclusion: This study shows that compared to the first two phases of the HSSS, adding the term versus to the top two phases of the HSSS balances the sensitivity and precision in the reviews studied here to some extent but the differences are very small. It is well known that missing relevant studies may result in bias in systematic reviews. Reviewers need to weigh the trade-offs when selecting the search strategies for identifying RCTs in MEDLINE.

Research paper thumbnail of Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Tag as an Access Point in a Public Library OPAC

Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS / Actes du congrès annuel de l'ACSI

The objective of this study is to compare the retrieval effectiveness of using tag as an access p... more The objective of this study is to compare the retrieval effectiveness of using tag as an access point as against subject heading or keyword in a public library OPAC. Thirty queries were searched in Oakville Public Library, and tag retrieved a fewer number of items per query than keyword or subject. However, there was no significant difference in the average precision values.L’objectif de cette étude est de comparer l’efficacité du repérage à l’aide des étiquettes comme point d’accès à celui des vedettes matières ou des mots-clés d’un OPAC de bibliothèque publique. Trente requêtes ont été analysées à la bibliothèque publique d’Oakville et le repérage par étiquette a retourné moins de résultats par requête que les mots-clés ou les vedettes matières. Cependant, aucune différence significative n’a été notée pour les valeurs de précision moyenne.