FW: [CHMINF-L] STS RESEARCH FORUM at ALA Conference

[Eugene Garfield]

STS RESEARCH FORUM
Sunday, June 26th from 4:00-6:00
Palmer House Hilton, Salon IV

Two papers were selected by the Research committee based on the criteria
of
timeliness, evidence of scholarship, research methodology and relevance
to
the field of science and technology librarianship.  The papers selected
for
presentation are:

"Electronic Usage Statistics and Citation Analysis" by John McDonald,
Acquisitions Librarian, California Institute of Technology

A recent research project analyzed the statistical relationship between
three measures of use of STM journals and local citations rates at the
California Institute of Technology.  The author used Poisson and
negative
binomial regression analysis to examine the relationship between locally

recorded use measures (print usage and web server transaction log
analysis)
and publisher-provided use statistics to citation rates by institutional

authors.  Two subsequent analyses examined the citation rate changes
before
and after two local service enhancements were released: provision of
local
online journal versions and deployment of an OpenURL link resolver.  The

study showed each enhancement resulted in a statistically significant
increase in citations for the full dataset, with some subject
differences
present. A full description of the statistical methods used will be
presented along with results of the statistical analysis on a full
dataset
of STM journals.  The study was designed to answer a few basic questions

about usage statistics:  What is the relationship between usage measures

and citation measures?  Are there journal types, publisher, or subject
differences in these relationships?  What are local changes that may
affect
usage and citation of journals?  The study's importance lies in its
ability
to draw together current methodologies (electronic journal usage
statistics) and past methodologies (citation analysis).  In addition,
examining multiple measures of electronic journal usage allows
librarians
to estimate missing data, predict future data, and validate data not
collected locally.  This study also showed the significant effect of
online
journals and OpenURL resolvers on citation rates.

~ and ~

"Proteomics: Measuring the Emergence of a New Scientific Discipline by
Bibliographic Means" by Frederick W. Stoss, Science and Engineering
Library, Arts and Sciences Libraries, and Rosemarie Maldonado,
Department
of Library and Information Studies (graduate student),School of
Informatics, University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Advances in molecular biology and structural genetics have spawned new
disciplines in biology and chemistry. Bioinformatics, genomics, and
proteomics are the core of this "New Biology." Sequencing of the human
and
other species' genomes increases the pool of genetic sequences and their

associated coding proteins for which new agricultural, clinical, and
therapeutic applications are being actively investigated and developed.
Proteomics first appears in the literature in 1995 and includes research

for detecting, isolating and sequencing all of the proteins in an
organism
encoded by its genome. It is rapidly emerging as a distinct
sub-discipline,
which is often used to investigate the biological mechanisms associated
with protein function and structure at the molecular level. This paper
provides a quantitative means to measure the growth of this
sub-discipline
through research represented in the scientific, technical, and medical
(STM) literature. The output of several bibliographic databases
(Chemical
Abstracts via SciFinder Scholar, MEDLINE, BIOSIS Previews, and the
Science
Citation Index via the Web of Science) plotted the growth of the
proteomics
literature base over a period of more than ten years, and examined its
emergence from a larger body of literature for protein chemistry and
biology. The results indicate the establishment of a concentration of
research in an evolving core of journal literature (Bradford Law of
Scattering), the exponential growth of proteomics literature in STM
journals, and demonstrate the means to plot the emergence and evolution
of
a new field of scientific inquiry.


Julie Hurd, Science Librarian and Coordinator of Digital Library
Planning
at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Editor of Science and
Technology Libraries, will serve as the Guest Responder, providing
expert
feedback to the authors on their research and presentations helping the
authors to further their research and hopefully develop their
presentations
for future publication.