Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication

Publisher:: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Publication date:: 2021-02-01

ISBN:: 2514-9342

Issue Number

Latest documents

Open access publishing in India: trends and policy perspectives
Purpose: This study aims to analyze Open Access (OA) publishing trends and policy perspectives in India. Different aspects, such as the growth of OA journals digital repositories, the proportion of OA availability to research literature and the status of OA mandates and policies are studied. Design/methodology/approach: Data for analyzing OA trends were gathered from multiple data sources, including Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OpenDOAR, SCImago and Web of Science (WoS) databases. DOAJ and OpenDOAR were used for extracting OA journals and digital repository data. SCImago Journal and Country ranking portal and WoS database were used to obtain Indian publication data for assessing the proportion of OA to research literature. ROARMAP was used to study OA mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders in India. OA mandates and policies of major regulatory bodies and funding agencies were also reviewed using secondary sources of information and related websites. Findings: India ranks number 15 and 17 globally for OA journals and OA repositories, with 317 journals and 98 repositories. Although India’s proportion to OA publications is 23% (7% below the world average of 30%), the annual growth rate of OA publications is around 18%. Although the governing bodies and institutions have made efforts to mandate researchers to adopt OA publishing and self-archiving, its implementation is quite low among Indian researchers, as only three institutions (out of 18 listed in the ROARMAP) are defined the embargo period. Funding agencies in India do not provide financial assistance to authors for the payment of Article Processing Charges despite mandates that research is deposited in OA repositories. India lacks a national OA policy but plans to implement a “one nation one subscription” formula to provide OA to scientific literature to all its citizens. Research limitations/implications: The study has certain limitations. Because much of India’s research output is published in local journals that are not indexed in WoS, the study recommends conducting further analyses of publications using Scopus and other databases to understand the country’s OA publishing proportion better. A further study based on feedback from different stakeholders through a survey may be conducted for formulating a national OA policy. Originality/value: The study is the first that used multiple data sources for investigating different facets of OA publishing in India, including OA journals, digital repositories, OA research output and OA mandates and policies for publicly funded research. The findings will be helpful for researchers and policymakers interested in promoting OA adoption among researchers worldwide.
Library anxiety among undergraduates in Nigeria
Purpose: Library anxiety is a phenomenon that is different from other academic anxiety, which has implication on physical use of libraries. This study aims to investigate the phenomenon of library anxiety among undergraduates in federal universities in North-central, Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach: Descriptive survey of the correlational type was adopted for the study. Purposive sampling technique was used in selecting five conventional federal universities, three homogenous faculties and six departments through multistage sampling technique. Five percent of the undergraduates (797) were selected from a total sample of 15,933. The instrument used was measuring scale on library anxiety (MSLA) developed by Bostick (1992). Descriptive statistics such as percentage mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the research questions. Findings: The findings revealed that majority of the undergraduates (85.0%) experienced moderate level of library anxiety across the universities at varying degree. The most prevalent aspect of the library anxiety experienced by the undergraduates was inadequate knowledge of the library (x. = 2.14). Research limitations/implications: The study selected five conventional universities out of the seven federal universities in North-central, Nigeria. Originality/value: Based on the findings, the study recommends library orientation programme for the undergraduates to increase their knowledge of the library. Likewise, the library staff should be more approachable and friendly so as to alleviate the library anxiety experienced by the undergraduates.
Analysis of Bitcoin’s price spike in context of Elon Musk’s Twitter activity
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of Elon Musk’s Twitter bio change on January 29, 2021 on the discourse around Bitcoin (BTC) on Twitter and to understand how these changes relate to the changes in Bitcoin price around that time. Design/methodology/approach: This study implements sentiment analysis and text mining on Twitter data to explore changes in public sentiments toward Bitcoin after Elon Musk’s Twitter bio change. Furthermore, it uses Bitcoin price data obtained from the Binance exchange to understand its relation with Twitter discussion. Findings: Elon Musk’s bio change on Twitter on January 29 increased the tweet volume mentioning Bitcoin. This increase in tweets had a strong positive correlation with Bitcoin price and preceded the rise in Bitcoin price. Although the bio change had an apparent effect on the tweet volume, there was no considerable effect on the tweet sentiments, indicating that tweet sentiment is a poor predictor of Bitcoin price. Originality/value: This paper proposes an understanding of how social media influencers, like Elon Musk, affect the discourse around Bitcoin and can, in turn, have an impact on Bitcoin price.
Altmetrics analysis of selected articles in the field of social sciences
Purpose: This study aims to measure the impact of the selected papers in the field of social sciences indexed in Scopus using altmetrics tools. Design/methodology/approach: The research community consists of the articles of the Iranian researchers in the field of social sciences indexed in the Scopus database in 2014–2018. Some of the most important altmetric service providers have been used to assess the presence of the research outputs in the social media and their impact assessment. Also, the relationship between variables such as scientific collaboration of researchers, open access journals and the quality of research journals with altmetric activity have been investigated through appropriate correlation tests. Findings: The findings indicated that the most important social media publishing Iranian articles are Mendeley, Twitter and Facebook. The results of the correlation test showed a statistically significant positive and weak relationship between the scientific collaboration of researchers and their altmetric activity. Also, there is a significant and weak statistical relation between journal openness and the altmetric scores. In this study, the findings suggest that the published articles in the journals with higher quality indicators have higher altmetric scores and are more likely to be present in social media. Research implications: In this study, the social network indicators have been introduced as a solution to examine the effectiveness of research activities on social media. These indicators can be used to evaluate the impact and usefulness of the articles and other scientific outputs with the aim of completing and eliminating the shortcomings of traditional scientometrics indicators. What distinguishes altmetric criteria from other criteria related to the scientometric studies is the speed, ease and transparency of these scales. This allows the publications to be evaluated regardless of their formal form and in the shortest possible time, and in addition to the scientific impact, the social impact of the works is also measured. Originality/value: The results of these studies show that using altmetric service providers not only reflects the social impact of publications on authors in different subject areas but also helps libraries, universities, research organizations and politicians in planning, budgeting and allocating resources.
Comparing health consumer search behavior and scientific research productivity related to COVID-19 vaccines in the USA: an infodemiology study
Purpose: While vaccines are an effective preventative measure to defend against the spread and harmful symptoms of COVID-19, information about COVID vaccines can be difficult to find and conflicting in its coverage of vaccines’ benefits and risks. This study aims to examine the extent to which Americans are searching for information about the three major vaccine producers (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen) in relation to the amount of reliable scholarly information that has been produced about each one. Design/methodology/approach: Data were retrieved from Google Trends for the US Web users alongside scientific research output of the US scientists toward three Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-authorized COVID-19 vaccines in Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed. The authors searched for descriptive statistical analyses to detect coronavirus-seeking behavior versus coronavirus releases in the USA from May 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021. Findings: Of the three COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer has attracted more attention from the US population. However, the greatest number of articles about COVID-19 vaccines published by the US scholars belonged to Moderna (M = 8.17), with Pfizer (M = 7.75) having slightly less, and Janssen (M = 0.83) well behind. A positive association was found between COVID-19 vaccine information-seeking behavior (ISB) on Google and the amount of research produced about that vaccine (P <0.001). Research limitations/implications: As the researchers use the single search engine, Google, to retrieve data from the USA, thus, selection bias will be existing as Google only gathers the data of people who chose to get the information by using this search engine. Practical implications: If the policymakers in the US Department of Health and Human Services or the US CDC desire to improve the country’s health ISB and the scientific publication behavior (SPB) of the US researchers regarding COVID-19 vaccines studies, they should reference the results of such a study. Originality/value: From an infodemiological viewpoint, these findings may support the health policymakers, as well as researchers who work on COVID-19 vaccines in the USA.
Information-seeking behaviour of Tanzanians in the time of COVID-19
Purpose: This study aims to investigate on access and communication of COVID-19 information among Tanzanians. Design/methodology/approach: Quantitative methods were applied to identify a total of 636 respondents. Findings: Results show that the majority (86.9%) of respondents seek information on COVID-19. Gender, age, education and marital status did not influence individual’s information-seeking behaviour. Respondents largely used social media, particularly WhatsApp, to communicate. Respondents prefer blending professional and traditional information to combat COVID-19. The majority (51%) of respondents indicated that COVID-19 information was not communicated ethically. Employed people are more likely to ethically communicate information on the pandemic in social media. Practical implications: Findings imply that novelty of the pandemic has enhanced active information-seeking behaviour. Respondents rely on multiple information sources to seek and collaboratively communicate COVID information. Employment status is associated with respondents’ information-seeking behaviour. Audio-visual sources are mostly preferred and relied in communicating information on the pandemic. Social media usage has enhanced timely and appropriate decision-making measures to tackle the COVID menace. Level of education has an influence on the use of credible sources and ethical communication of information on the pandemic. Utilization of COVID-19 preventive information was not statistically associated with socio-demographic variables. Availability of information infrastructures, particularly the internet, influences access, use and clear informed decision on prevention and treatment of COVID-19 disease. Originality/value: The study contributes to knowledge and literature on response and preventive measures on COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries.
“I need some space!” deciphering space tourism discussions on social media
Purpose: Space tourism is fairly neglected in academic research and requires further exploration. Public reaction on social media offers great insights to understand the patterns of behaviour but is often ignored as a potential data source. Thus, this study aims to fill the gap by add to the literature on space tourism, social media analytics and behaviour. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a qualitative approach and uses Twitter data for drawing conclusions. An exploratory design is used by analysing 10,000 tweets through unsupervised machine learning and two sets of analysis were conducted. First, sentiment analysis is performed using NRC Emotion Lexicon, which classifies the data as per eight basic emotions and polarity as positive and negative. The findings are complemented with a comparison cloud. Second, LDA Topic modelling using Gibbs Method is used to find ten broad topics that are used for discussions in space tourism tweets. Data visualisation technique is used to depict results using R language on RStudio. Findings: A total of 21,784 emotions have tapped using the NRC Emotion Lexicon. Results indicate the dominance of positive sentiments (25%) with it surpassing the negative sentiments by many folds. The top emotions include trust and anticipation. The LDA-based Topic modelling identified seven correlated topic models that have been grouped by the author as space tourism in media, aspirations, ethical issues, criticism, descriptive, symbolism and miscellaneous. Originality/value: To the best of the author’s knowledge, no study has attempted to study the response of space tourism on social media by tapping discussions in the form of Tweets. Thus, this study adds extensively and acts as a preliminary investigation on the public sentiments of space tourism on social media.
Four typologies for understanding local information
Purpose: This study aims to propose the four different typologies for understanding local information. Design/methodology/approach: This study applied a conceptual approach to analyze and clarify how the concept local information can be understood in wildly different ways. Furthermore, this study employed conceptual analysis of 36 studies. For the conceptual analysis, coding was applied to formulate and abstract four typologies for understanding local information with specific focus on the Thai cultural heritage setting. Findings: The four different typologies include local information as an array of different interpretations as diverse meanings of local, local information as cultural heritage, local information as subject of information management and situated local information. Research limitations/implications: This study mainly focuses relevant typologies for understanding local information in the Thai context. Originality/value: This study contributes and extends the literature in the local information field and the cultural heritage context. In addition, an eclectic strategy of using several alternative typologies for dealing with essentially contested concepts is suggested. This can be useful not only for supporting librarians working with local information but also in other practices dealing with broadly defined concepts.
Altmetrics and their relationship with citation counts: a case of journal articles in physics
Purpose: The first purpose of the present study is to investigate the coverage of journal articles in Physics in various sources of altmetrics. Secondly, the study investigates the relationship between altmetrics and citations. Finally, the study also investigates whether the relationship between citations and altmetrics was stronger or weaker for those articles that had been mentioned at least once in the sources of altmetrics. Design/methodology/approach: The journal articles in Physics having at least one author from an Indian Institution and published during 2014–2018 in sources of altmetrics have been investigated. Altmetric.com was used for collecting altmetrics data. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (ρ) has been used as the data found to be skewed. Findings: The highest coverage was found on Twitter (22.68%), followed by Facebook (3.62%) and blogs (2.18%). The coverage in the rest of the sources was less than 1%. The average Twitter mentions for journal articles tweeted at least once was found to be 4 (3.99) and for Facebook mentions, it was found to be 1.48. Correlations between Twitter mentions–citations and Facebook mentions–citation were found to be statistically significant but low to weak positive. Research limitations/implications: The study concludes that due to the low coverage of journal articles, altmetrics should be used cautiously for research evaluation keeping in mind the disciplinary differences. The study also suggests that altmetrics can function as complementary to citation-based metrics. Originality/value: The study is one of the first large scale altmetrics studies dealing with research in Physics. Also, Indian research has not been attended to in the altmetrics literature and the present study shall fill that void.
Influence of aesthetics attributes of brand Web pages on customer brand engagement
Purpose: This paper aims to empirically explore the influence of website aesthetic attributes (classical and expressive) on customer brand engagement (CBE) intention. Design/methodology/approach: This research develops a framework and a few research hypothesis based on available literature on the concept of aesthetics, aesthetic attribute of websites and CBE, as well as other reliable resources, relevant theories, wherever required and tested it on the data collected from 400 respondents of the Y generation (Gen Y) of India by means of structural equations modelling using SPSS AMOS 21. Findings: The findings indicate that expressive aesthetics of the brand Web pages of the beauty products is positively associated with drawing attention. Expressive aesthetics and classical aesthetics together explained 16% of the variance in attention. This indicates that aesthetic attributes indeed play a role in drawing the attention of the customer. However, mere attention is not sufficient to form the behavioural intention in the customer to engage with that particular brand unless the customer does get fully absorbed with aesthetic attributes of the brand Web pages. Research limitations/implications: The outcome of this research is based on the view of only 400 Gen Y individuals from the city of Indore in India. This limits its generalizability across India and other country context. This study makes important contribution to brand website aesthetic and CBE literature by empirically investigating the concept of brand website aesthetics as important in interactive marketing approach to initiate CBE intention formation. It further argues that cognitive engagement is the first and foremost engagement dimension and underscores aesthetic attributes as important in forming the customer first perception based on which subsequent CBE behavioural intention develops. Originality/value: This research adds novel insight in the relationship of the brand website aesthetic attributes and CBE by studying the impact of the aesthetic attribute of brand Web pages on the two cognitive elements, namely, attention and absorption and further its effect on brand behavioural intention taking as sample of Gen Y of India.