[Asis-l] New issue of Information Research

[Tom Wilson]

Volume 12 No. 2 of Information Research is now available -
http://InformationR.net/ir/

Introduction

Managing an electronic journal is a non-trivial task and, although I have
Associate Editors who help greatly in the process of evaluating submissions,
the main work of getting the issues out is down to me. With the loss of my
volunteer proof-reader, Rae-Ann Hughes, the checking is an additional load.
It is something of a relief, therefore, to know that Lund University
Libraries (our host institution for the server) is implementing the journal
management package, Open Journal Systems. Together with the Associate
Editors, I am in the process of testing the system and hope, shortly, that
all submissions will be handled through OJS.

This said, there is still room for more volunteers to help with the
production of the journal: ideally, a proof-reader who knows British English
and an XHTML code editor would be very useful. So, if you have a little time
on your hands (a vain hope in these days of overwork!), or if you are
recently retired and interested in helping the open access movement, do
contact me.

And, speaking of volunteers, thanks to Elena Maceviciute for her link
checking this issue - a bigger task than usual, and to Pedro Dias and Jose
Vicente Rodriguez for the Spanish abstracts; again, a much bigger task than
previously.
In this issue

The main work of this issue has been in preparing the final batch of papers
from the Information Seeking in Context Conference, which was held in Sydney
last year. As usual, the range is very wide, from the information needs of
Iranian engineers, to the information behaviour of Taiwanese
aborigines—evidence that the information behaviour field is dynamic and
growing. Very few of the authors, however, explore the implications of their
work for information practice, and I hope that the 2008 conference (to be
held in Vilnius, Lithuania) will address this issue.

We also have five other peer-reviewed papers and another open access case
study. The five papers cover very different topics: professional education
in Brazil, Internet services in the countries of the European Union,
students' use of the Internet for their Finnish Masters' theses, the impact
of the Terrorist bombings in Madrid on the 11th March, 2004, on newspaper
documentation centres (in Spanish) and a workflow model for scholarly
communication. This last one is very long for a paper and the author has
provided a link to a .pdf file so that you may print it out more easily. The
case study deals with *Medical Education Online*, which was established
(like *Information Researh*) by an individual, enthused by the idea of open
access publishing.

Partly because of the ISIC papers, we have a good geographic spread of
papers in this issue: USA - 4, Finland - 3, Japan - 2, Spain - 2, Brazil -
1, Canada - 1, Iran - 1, Singapore - 1, Taiwan - 1, UK - 1.
Google Analytics

As I noted in the previous issue, I now use Google Analytics to monitor the
use of the journal and (at the time of writing) I now have four months of
data. The data show that the top page of the journal has had 35,323 'unique
views' and 66,145 'page views' in this time - which I assume means that each
visitor comes back to the top page ('home' on the navigation bar) at least
once after the initial click. Extrapolating that for 2006 as a whole
suggests that the top page has had 105,969 unique views and 198,435 page
views. I've also been using OneStat.com since last April and it shows 32,517
page views for the top page in eight months - extrapolating gives us 48,775
for the year, which is significantly fewer than suggested by Google
Analytics, so I'm not quite sure what's going on there :-). However, in 2005
we had 47,117 hits, so usage continues to increase. One thing is certain:
the papers in *Information Research* are getting a lot of exposure!
The Editorial Board

I am making changes to the Editorial Board, with a view to stabilizing
membership by the beginning of the next volume. Membership is for a period
of three years, renewable, and some members are now due to retire, so with
this issue, we welcome three new members of the Editorial Board: Jim
Jansen<http://ist.psu.edu/faculty_pages/jjansen/>,
Victor Kaptelinin <http://www.informatik.umu.se/%7Evklinin/> and Bonnie
Nardi <http://www.darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/>. Jim strengthens our
representation of the Web research community, while Bonnie and Victor, apart
from helping review papers for the activity theory issue due in April,
strengthen the information systems area. Welcome folks!

The journal's publication schedule will also be changing, partly to bring
the volume year into line with the calendar year and partly to avoid holiday
periods as far as possible. So, this year, the final two issues of Volume 12
will be published in April and October and Volume 13 will have its four
issues in March, June, September and December of 2008, with subsequent
volumes having the same publication pattern. This way, I might actually have
some holiday time at Christmas!

Given how far the month is advanced, it may seem a little late, but... a
very Happy New Year!


-- 

Professor Tom Wilson, PhD, Hon.Ph.D.,
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Information Research: an international electronic journal
Website: http://InformationR.net/
E-mail: wilsontd at gmail.com
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