Papers of Interest to SIG-Metrics Readers

[Eugene Garfield]

TITLE:          Performance Metrics as Formal Structures and through the
                Lens of Social Mechanisms: When Do They Work and How Do They Influence?
                (Article, English)
AUTHOR:         Colyvas, JA
SOURCE:         AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 118 (2). FEB 2012.
                p.167-197 UNIV CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO

SEARCH TERM(S):  MERTON RK  rauth

KEYWORDS+:       ORGANIZATIONAL-CHANGE; LIFE SCIENCES; US-NEWS; COLLEGE
                RANKINGS; HIGHER-EDUCATION; UNIVERSITIES;
                INSTITUTIONALIZATION; REPUTATION; KNOWLEDGE; FIELDS

ABSTRACT:       Our current educational environment is subject to
persistent calls for accountability, evidence-based practice, and data use for improvement, which largely take the form of performance metrics (PMs). This rapid proliferation of PMs has profoundly influenced the ways in which scholars and practitioners think about their own practices and the larger missions in which they are embedded. This article draws on research in organizational sociology and higher education to propose a framework and research agenda for analyzing the relationship between PMs and practice. I argue that PMs need to be understood as a distinctive form of data whose consequences in use relate to their role as formalized systems of abstractions and the social mechanisms through which they exert change in practice.

AUTHOR ADDRESS: JA Colyvas, Northwestern Univ, Sch Educ & Social Policy,
                Evanston, IL 60208 USA

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TITLE:          Diffusionism and open access (Article, English)
AUTHOR:         Xia, JF
SOURCE:         JOURNAL OF DOCUMENTATION 68 (1). 2012. p.72-99 EMERALD
                GROUP PUBLISHING LIMITED, BINGLEY

SEARCH TERM(S):  ARUNACHALAM S  rauth; GARFIELD E  rauth

KEYWORDS:       Open access expansion; Tempo-spatial distribution;
                Technology innovation; Cultural adaptation; Open access;
                Innovation; Culture (Sociology)
KEYWORDS+:       IMPACT; INFORMATION; COMMUNICATION; AVAILABILITY;
                INNOVATIONS; SPILLOVERS; COUNTRIES; ARTICLES; LANGUAGE

ABSTRACT:       Purpose - This article aims to explore the geographic
distribution of open access practices in the world from a diffusionist perspective.

Design/methodology/approach - The article applies a tempo-spatial analysis to examine the diffusion movement of open access practices from the West to the entire world during the past several decades. Both maps and tables are used to support the analysis. The diffusionist theory is reviewed and applied to the understanding of open access.

Findings - The paper discovers that technology is not the only factor determining the diffusion pattern of information systems as discussed in the literature. Cultural dissimilarities across countries have played a significant role in open access development. Open access can only be effectively established after it meets local standards.

Practical implications - The findings help understanding of why open access has a disproportionate growth among developing countries, and even among developed countries, where the ICT infrastructure has been in place.

Originality/value - Few studies have taken a transnational view to analyze open access geography at the global level, and few have been able to synthesize models to interpret diverse discoveries. Furthermore, a chronological evaluation tracing the history of open access spatial expansion is absent in the literature.

AUTHOR ADDRESS: JF Xia, Indiana Univ, Sch Lib & Informat Sci, Indianapolis,
                IN 46204 USA

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TITLE:          The folksonomies between the concepts and the access
                points: the roles of descriptors, citations and tags in the information
                retrieval systems (Article, Portuguese)
AUTHOR:         Strehl, L
SOURCE:         PERSPECTIVAS EM CIENCIA DA INFORMACAO 16 (2). APR-JUN
                2011. p.101-114 ESCOLA CIENCIA INFORM UFMG, BELO
                HORIZONTE MG

SEARCH TERM(S):  MACROBERTS MH  rauth;
                 CITATION*  item_title;
                 GARFIELD E         SCIENCE               122:108   1955

KEYWORDS:       Folksonomies; Indexing languages; Citations

ABSTRACT:       The paper discusses the potentialities of folksonomies
through the proposition and analysis of concept representation schemas that constitute the different resources of subject indexing. The development of specialized information sources is approached, and, the technical basis for natural and documental languages are reviewed. It deals with retrieval systems that make use of collaboration networks inherent to the information production and use; this is done to illustrate the functioning of this kind of resources when citation indexes and social bookmarking tools are analyzed. Finally, it makes a necessary distinction between the role of the folksonomies as instruments of conceptual representation and access points.

AUTHOR ADDRESS: L Strehl, Univ Fed Rio Grande do Sul, Programa Posgrad
                Comunicacao & Informacao, BR-90046900 Porto Alegre, RS,
                Brazil

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TITLE:          Why my disease is important: metrics of disease
                occurrence used in the introductory sections of papers in three leading
                general medical journals in 1993 and 2003 (Article, English)
AUTHOR:         Gouda, HN; Powles, JW
SOURCE:         POPULATION HEALTH METRICS 9. MAY 23 2011. p.NIL_1-NIL_5
                BIOMED CENTRAL LTD, LONDON

SEARCH TERM(S):  JOURNALS  item_title

KEYWORDS+:       INSTITUTES-OF-HEALTH; BURDEN

ABSTRACT:       Background: We assessed the metrics used in claims about
disease importance made in the introductory sections of scientific papers published in 1993 and 2003. We were interested in the choice of metric in circumstances where establishing the relative social importance of a disease was, presumptively, a primary objective.

Methods: This study consisted of a textual examination of the introductory statements from papers retrieved from MEDLINE. Papers were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association during the first halves of
1993 and 2003, and were selected on the basis of keywords found in a pilot study to be associated with claims about disease importance.

Results: We found 143 papers in 1993 and 264 papers in 2003 included claims about disease importance in their introductory sections, and characteristics of these claims were abstracted. Of the quotes identified in the papers and articles examined, most used counts, prevalence, or incidence measurements. Some also used risk estimates and economic quantities to convey the importance of the disease. There was no change in the types of metrics used between 1993 and 2003. Very few articles, even in 2003, used metrics that weighted disease onsets by the expected consequent loss of healthy time - such as years of life lost, quality- adjusted life years, and/or disability-adjusted life years.

Conclusions: Claims about the relative importance of diseases continued to be overwhelmingly expressed in terms of counts (of deaths and disease
onsets) and comparisons of counts, rates, and risks. Where the aim is to convey the burden that a given disease imposes on a society, "event- based" metrics might be less fit for the purpose than "time-based"
metrics. More attention is needed to how the choice of metric should relate to the purpose at hand.

AUTHOR ADDRESS: HN Gouda, Univ Cambridge, Inst Publ Hlth, Forvie Site CB2
                0SP, England