REVISED - Conclusion Added Kim HJ "Motivations for hyperlinking in scholarly electronic articles: A qualitative study" JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE 51 (10):887-899 August 2000

[Eugene Garfield]

CONCLUSION FROM PAPER ADDED AT THE END:


Hak Joon Kim : E-mail: hakjoonk at yahoo.com

TITLE Motivations for hyperlinking in scholarly electronic articles: A
        qualitative study
AUTHOR Kim HJ
JOURNAL JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE 51 (10):
        887-899 AUG 2000

Document type: Article
Language: English
Cited References: 50
Times Cited: 3


Abstract:
The primary purpose of the study was to identify motivations for
hyperlinking in scholarly electronic articles. Fifteen Indiana University
faculty and graduate students who had published at least one scholarly
electronic article containing at least one external hyperlink were surveyed.
Through a series of qualitative interviews, 19 different hyperlinking
motivations, classified into the three motivational groups-scholarly,
social, and technological-along the dimensional ranges of their properties,
were identified. The vast majority of the hyperlinks were attributed to more
than one motivation by the authors. The empirical findings of the study
demonstrated that scholars use hyperlinks for a variety of purposes, and
that their hyperlinking behavior frequently results from a complex interplay
of motivations.

KeyWords Plus:
WORLD-WIDE-WEB, CITER MOTIVATIONS, CITATION, CLASSIFICATION, REFERENCES,
ACCURACY, BEHAVIOR, JOURNALS, SCIENCE

Addresses:
Kim HJ, Sejong Univ, Dept Commun Art, 98 Kunja Dong, Seoul 143747, South
Korea
Sejong Univ, Dept Commun Art, Seoul 143747, South Korea

Publisher:
JOHN WILEY & SONS INC, NEW YORK

IDS Number:
334DY

ISSN:
0002-8231

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 *AM PSYCH ASS         PUBL MAN AM PSYCH AS                            1994
 ALMIND TC             J DOC                         53       404      1997
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EXCERPT FROM PAPER :

Conclusions


Altogether, 19 different hyperlinking motivations, classified into the three
motivational groups - scholarly, social, and technological - along the
dimensional ranges of their properties, were identified in this study. The
study also found that the great majority (72.8%) of the hyperlinks surveyed
were the result of an interplay of multiple motivations. These findings
demonstrate that in scholarly electronic environments scholars use
hyperlinks for a variety of scholarly and nonscholarly purposes, and that
hyperlinking is multidimensional behavior involving different levels of
motivations. In addition, all the hyperlinks contained in one of the
scholarly e-articles sampled turned out to be created entirely not by the
author of the e-article but by someone else, without regard to the quality
or utility of the hyperlinked source documents and the contexts of the
hyperlinks within the hyperlinking e-article.

>From these observations, we can see that a hyperlink usually offers only a
partial reflection of the scholarly impact or influence of the hyperlinked
source. The problem in using hyperlink counts for evaluative purposes is
that we cannot determine how much of the difference in hyperlink rates is
due to the scholarly quality or impact of the hyperlinked source and how
much is due to nonscholarly factors, such as social and technological
factors. Hence, it is clear that using hyperlink counts as a method for
evaluating the quality, influence, or impact of individual scholars and
their works would lead to intolerable error. In other words, using hyperlink
analysis to unidimensionally describe a complex, multidimensional behavior
presents obvious validity problems. Therefore, it may be concluded that
hyperlink counts cannot be used as a simple measure of the relative quality,
influence, or impact of source documents hyperlinked in scholarly electronic
environments.

The results of the study also revealed that there were several similarities
between hyperlinking and citing motivations. Almost all of the scholarly and
social motivations identified in the study were also found in previous
citation studies exploring scholars' citation behaviors. In addition, the
majority of the hyperlinks and citations surveyed in this study and previous
citation studies respectively were the result of an interplay of multiple
motivations. These findings demonstrate convincingly that most scholars'
hyperlinking practices in scholarly electronic environments are largely
grounded in their conventional citation practices.

However, the convenience factor of hyperlinking brings about a fundamental
difference between hyperlinking and citing behaviors. Unlike citations in
print articles, which require the readers to go through multiple
inconvenient procedures (e.g., turn to the reference, search an on-line
catalog, note the reference and its call number, go to the library, and so
on) to access the full text of the cited documents, hyperlinks in e-articles
allow the readers to directly access the full text of the hyperlinked source
documents by simply clicking on the hyperlinks. To take full advantage of
the hyperlinking capabilities in their e-articles, therefore, many of the
scholarly authors actively looked for electronic sources to be hyperlinked
in their e-articles whenever possible, as well as preferred hyperlinking
electronic sources to citing print sources if the source documents were
available both in print and on-line. This implies that the technological
motivational variable associated with hyperlinking may be more related to
the availability of electronic source documents to be hyperlinked than the
utility of the hyperlinked source documents for the hyperlinking article.
Thus, despite the fact that there exist some similarities between
hyperlinking and citing motivations, the findings that scholars'
hyperlinking behaviors are also greatly influenced by the convenience factor
of hyperlinking would be considered to be evidence showing that hyperlinking
in scholarly electronic environments are not a simple extension of citing.

To obtain insight into the phenomenon of hyperlinking in scholarly
electronic environments, this study, which was exploratory in nature,
examined scholars' motivations for hyperlinking. This study takes only a
first step in exploring the unstudied phenomenon. Further research is needed
to fully understand scholars' hyperlinking behaviors: It would be useful to
investigate important variables that influence scholars' hyperlinking
behaviors for a better understanding of the phenomenon.