Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology最新文献

In this conceptual article, we argue that artificial intelligence (AI) systems are contributing to the generation of an environment of affordances for everyday information practices through which they exert influence on people and the planet in ways that often are left unrecognized. We illustrate our insights by focusing on the practices of information seeking in everyday life, suggesting that the affordances of AI systems integrated into search engines, social media platforms, streaming services, and media generation, shape such practices in ways that may, paradoxically, result both in the increase and reduction of diversity of and access to information. We discuss the potential implications of these developments in terms of the sustainability of information ecosystems and suggest solutions for addressing them through regulation and education. Drawing from the fields of library and information science and science and technology studies and research on affordances, everyday information practices, and sustainability, the article seeks to respond to the need for more nuanced theoretical insights on the impact and implications of AI on information practices and to develop conceptual tools with which to examine the co-evolution of humans and information systems from a systemic perspective.

Death is an inevitable part of life and highly relevant to information management: its approach often requires preparation, and its occurrence often demands a response. Many works in information science have acknowledged so much, and yet death is rarely a focused topic, appearing instead sporadically and disconnected across research. As a result there is no introduction to, overview of, or synthesis across studies on death and information. We therefore conducted an extensive literature search and reviewed nearly 300 scholarly publications at the intersection of death and information (and data) management. Covering seven topics in total, we review two groups of work directly engaging information management in relation to death (digital possessions, inheritance, and legacy; information behavior, needs, and practices around death), three engaging death and technology that require information and its management (death and the Internet, thanatosensitive design and technology-augmented death practices, and the digital afterlife and digital immortality), and two reflecting the ethical and legal dimensions unique to death and information. We then integrate the collective findings to summarize the landscape of death-related information research, outline remaining challenges for individuals, families, institutions, and society, and identify promising directions for future information science research.

The purpose of this study is to examine what types of domain and task-solving information media scholars need while interacting with research data to create new knowledge. The study is situated within information interaction research in information science. The approach is user-oriented and qualitative. The research data consist of interviews of 25 media scholars about their interactions with research data. In the analysis, deductive and inductive approaches were combined to identify domain and task-solving information types from the interview data. The results show that media scholars needed two domain information types and three task-solving information types while interacting with research data. The domain information types were (1) earlier research information and (2) experience-based domain information. The task-solving information types were (1) information about methods and tools, (2) information about rules and norms, and (3) self-created task-supporting information. Of these, experience-based domain information and self-created task-supporting information have been less considered in prior research on domain and task-solving information. The findings of this study are useful for providing support for data interaction. Furthermore, the study sheds light on the concepts of domain information and task-solving information in the context of interacting with research data.

Value co-creation as a research topic has been a critical proposition of interest to a wide range of disciplines. In recent years, the field of cultural heritage has also developed a range of information practices to promote different forms of value co-creation. While the body of literature has begun to accumulate, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of conceptual foundations and how value co-creation is implemented in cultural heritage information practices. This paper conducted a hermeneutic literature review to understand and conceptualize the core aspects of value co-creation in various cultural heritage information works. In particular, this paper provides a research mapping of the genres of co-creation in cultural heritage information practices, the actors, and the roles played by the stakeholders. Further, this review provides an overview of the dominant value co-creation models in the cultural heritage field. It distills the drivers of value co-creation and the core value consequences that arise from a process perspective. Finally, this paper puts forward a thematic, theoretical, and methodological agenda for future work based on these findings. The review contributes to the literature by proposing an integrated conceptual framework that summarizes the core elements of value co-creation in cultural heritage information practices. The framework also serves as a call for action, providing a general understanding of the conceptual foundation for future research.

Like information science more broadly, search engine research has largely been fragmented into two factions: system-oriented and user-oriented studies. This limits our capacity for answering some fundamental questions surrounding an integral—often invisible—part of modern life. Given the “search-ification” of this life, given an oligopolous global market and an information-wealthy but attention-poor audience, methods capable of studying search engines, as well as their relationship with users and society are increasingly necessary. This paper proposes critical discourse analysis (CDA) as an effectual, oft-overlooked method for search engine research, one capable of interrogating both search engines and their use. The paper outlines CDA, provides examples of its application, and highlights its capacity for progressing our critical understanding of search engines. This developing understanding, evidenced by a review of the literature, suggests that challenges brought by search cannot be resolved by critiquing the power of systems alone. Rather, a reclaiming of today's information infrastructure requires we also illuminate the socio-political environments of search systems, and the metacognitive, invisible processes pivotal to our communication with them. While power-analyses of search continue, and some have begun to employ CDA, little recognition exists of this theoretical perspective's capacity for supporting both system-oriented and user-oriented studies.

In the context of the increasing global connectivity in science, this article investigates the internal heterogeneity of international research collaborations (IRCs). We focus on the prevalence of shared heritage collaborations and the rise of multiple institutional affiliations as a collaboration mechanism. An analytical typology of IRCs based on the characteristics of collaborating researchers' location and heritage is developed and empirically tested on the dataset of Russia's publications in 2015. We found that shared heritage IRC and IRC via multiple affiliations are the cornerstones of internationalization. Significant structural differences are revealed between conventional IRC and these nonconventional IRCs across fields of science, locations, visibility of international partners, and the sources of funding. These results contribute towards a better understanding of IRC as a complex, heterogeneous phenomenon, which encompasses a variety of arrangements for knowledge creation across borders. A more nuanced understanding of IRC is needed for smarter university strategy, metric development, and policymaking.

Evaluating information quality online is increasingly important for healthy decision-making. People assess information quality using visual interfaces (e.g., computers, smartphones) with visual cues like aesthetics. Yet, voice interfaces lack critical visual cues for evaluating information because there is often no visual display. Without ways to assess voice-based information quality, people may overly trust or misinterpret information which can be challenging in high-risk or sensitive contexts. This paper investigates voice information uncertainty in one high-risk context—health information seeking. We recruited 30 adults (ages 18–84) in the United States to participate in scenario-based interviews about health topics. Our findings provide evidence of information uncertainty expectations with voice assistants, voice search preferences, and the audio cues they use to assess information quality. We contribute a nuanced discussion of how to inform more critical information ecosystems with voice technologies and propose ways to design audio cues to help people more quickly assess content quality.

Creativity is one of the critical skills for people in a variety of academic, work, and everyday life contexts. Searching for information is essential to the creative process. Despite the recent increased attention in research on information searching for creative tasks, there is still little understanding of how people search for information to generate novel and useful ideas. This study aims to address three key research questions: (1) What search processes do people engage in while completing creative tasks, (2) what creative thinking strategies are employed when searching to generate ideas, and (3) what challenges do people encounter while searching for creative tasks. The data were collected at a university in the United States using multiple methods, combining pre-task interviews, search sessions that involved the generation of new ideas, and post-task interviews. Drawing from the data analysis from 31 interviews and search sessions, we present a conceptual framework for information searching for creative tasks across academic and everyday search contexts. Our findings highlight exploration as a critical search activity when searching to generate ideas. The results of this study enhance our understanding of the relationship between search activities and creative thinking strategies.

This study presents and explains the phenomenon of indexjacking, which involves the systematic infiltration of hijacked journals into international indexing databases, with Scopus being one of the most infiltrated among these databases. Through an analysis of known lists of hijacked journals, the study identified at least 67 hijacked journals that have penetrated Scopus since 2013. Of these, 33 journals indexed unauthorized content in Scopus and 23 compromised the homepage link in the journal's profile, while 11 did both. As of September 2023, 41 hijacked journals are still compromising the data of legitimate journals in Scopus. The presence of hijacked journals in Scopus is a challenge for scientific integrity due to the legitimization of unreliable papers that have not undergone peer review and compromises the quality of the Scopus database. The presence of hijacked journals in Scopus has far-reaching effects. Papers published in these journals may be cited, and unauthorized content from these journals in Scopus is thus imported into other databases, including ORCID and the WHO COVID-19 Research Database. This poses a particular challenge for research evaluation in those countries, where cloned versions of approved journals may be used to acquire publications and verifying their authenticity can be difficult.