Comprehensive quantitative analysis of TOP-100s of ARWU, QS and THE World University Rankings for 2014–2018

The article examines the global university reputation race, launched in 2003. Between 2003 and 2010, there appeared a cluster of publications on the qualitative comparative analysis of their methodologies, and since 2010, a cluster of publications on the quantitative comparative analysis of university rankings has started to form. The review made it possible to identify a number of unsolved problems concerning the stability of university rankings, aggregation of the number of universities and their Overall Scores (Total Scores) by country in various rankings. Our study aimed at solving these tasks was carried out for TOP-100s of ARWU, QS, and THE rankings. When calculating the fluctuation range of the university rankings, the top twenty of the most stable and most unstable university rankings were identified in the rankings under study. The best values of the aggregated indicators by the number of universities and the Overall Scores were identified for the USA and the UK.

Information and communications technologies in library facilities in disadvantaged rural schools in South Africa: Lessons from Limpopo province

Universally, information and communications technologies (ICTs) have revolutionised multiple ways of executing tasks in many sectors. In the education sector, ICTs provide a scaffold to enhance technology-driven teaching and learning information needs of the teachers and learners in a school environment. The aim of the study was to investigate the availability and use of ICTs in library facilities in primary schools in disadvantaged rural communities in Limpopo province, South Africa. The study targeted all 18 primary schools in Lebopo Circuit of Mankweng Cluster. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from teacher-librarians who attended a school library workshop at a local high school. Purposive sampling was employed in the selection of the teacher-librarians and all 18 schools were represented by one teacher-librarian. The findings indicate that there are few ICTs used by the teachers to enhance teaching and learning in different library facilities in disadvantaged rural schools. The study recommends that additional ICTs should be procured by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) for distribution to all schools to mitigate technology-driven information needs of teachers and learners. Furthermore, as vandalism was cited as a challenge in all schools, security needs upgrading to protect the few available ICTs.

Hierarchical Bayesian classification methods to identify topics by journal quartile with an application in biological sciences

This manuscript builds on a novel, automatic, freely-available Bayesian approach to extract information in abstracts and titles to classify research topics by quartile. This approach is demonstrated for all N= 149,129 ISI-indexed publications in biological sciences journals during 2017. A Bayesian multinomial inverse regression approach is used to extract rankings of topics without the need of a pre-defined dictionary. Bigrams are used for extraction of research topics across manuscripts, and rankings of research topics are constructed by quartile. Worldwide and local results (e.g., comparison between two peer/aspirational research institutions in Colombia) are provided, and differences are explored both at the global and local levels. Some topics persist across quartiles, while the relevance of others is quartile-specific. Challenges in sustainable development appear as more prevalent in top quartile journals across institutions, while the two Colombian institutions favour plant and microorganism research. This approach can reduce information inequities, by allowing young/incipient researchers in biological sciences, especially within lower income countries or universities with limited resources, to freely assess the state of the literature and the relative likelihood of publication in higher impact journals by research topic. This can also serve institutions of higher education to identify missing research topics and areas of competitive advantage.

Studying adolescent information behavior in the context of making everyday life decisions: Methodological approach, main concerns and lessons learned

This paper presents the main methodological issues met with during the research on adolescent everyday life information behavior in the context of making informed decisions, which was carried out in Croatia from 2018 to 2020. It does not focus on the research results, but rather on the methodological issues and concerns that had occurred stemming from the specific life period of the population being investigated, and on the ways the researchers delt with them. They are offered as potentially useful for consideration to those who will investigate adolescent information behavior in other contexts. Six main methodological dilemmas arose while planning the design of research methodology coming out from six questions: what would be the appropriate research approach and design to investigate adolescent information behavior in the context of making informed everyday life decisions, what would be the developmentally appropriate way to investigate the phenomena, how to gain access to the potential adolescent research participants, how to negotiate an adult researcher’s position when interacting with adolescents, how to get adolescent participants’ trust needed to collect rich data and what ethical issues need to be considered. We offer an overview of the dilemmas and concerns, as well as the ways they were dealt with, acknowledging the contribution of those scholars who had responded to similar challenges in the past.

Crowdsourcing transcription of historical manuscripts: Citizen science as a force of revealing historical evidence from Croatian Glagolitic manuscript

This paper is a report on the project Civil Science in the Field of Glagolitics: from crowdsourcing to knowledge and it describes its first phase. The project is being conducted by the scientific Centre for Research in Glagolitism of the University of Zadar, Croatia, from 2021 to 2022. The researchers come from the Centre, as well as from the Department of Information Sciences of the University of Zadar and State Archive in Zadar, Croatia. The main objective of the project is to examine the possibilities and benefits of citizen participation in the scholarly projects in humanities, particularly the projects whose object of research are manuscripts written in historical script that present a valuable source for local history. The term historical script refers to a script that is not used nowadays as an official script in any country or community but was in use a particular period of history on a certain territory. The corpus for the pilot study conducted within this project consists of manuscripts and their fragments written in cursive form of the Croatian Glagolitic script. Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic script, introduced in the 9th century and being used in Croatia up until the 19th century, simultaneously with Latin and Cyrillic scripts. The citizen participation is researched on the example of crowdsourcing transcription of manuscripts written in cursive form of the Croatian Glagolitic script. In the first phase of the project, the pilot study was conducted. The aim of the pilot study presented in this paper is to create a solid basis for involving the public in scientific projects within the disciplines of humanities whose object of research are documents written in historical scripts, namely within the field of the Croatian Glagolitics.

Becoming an information architect: The evolving librarian’s skillset, mindset, and professional identity

Learning the essential concepts and skills of information architecture (IA) has the potential to not only significantly extend the abilities of practicing library and information science (LIS) professionals, but also to evolve their professional identities and envisioned career opportunities. An online course on IA was designed around: the principles of threshold concepts, practical knowledge for the workplace, and professional ‘soft’ skills, such as collaboration and basic project management. The primary objective for the course was creating experiences for students in which they could discover and engage with critical concepts in IA and to collaborate with their peers to design content-rich and user-centred websites. The learning experiences of two sections of the course (n= 32) were studied, through questionnaires and reflective writings, and analysed thematically. The outcome was that, in learning information architecture concepts, and acquiring and applying the concepts and tools to do information architecture work, the students did more than acquire new professional skillsets; they also evolved in their professional identities.

The supervisory relationship in the doctoral process: How do Croatian LIS students see it?

The study presented in this paper investigates LIS doctoral students’ perceptions and experiences about the supervision during their doctoral experience, with special emphasis on the qualities of good supervisors and doctoral students. Data were collected through an online survey and follow-up semi-structured interviews with doctoral students from Croatia’s three state universities offering a doctorate in LIS. A total of 60 respondents participated in a quantitative study, and 13 respondents were interviewed. The survey results show that doctoral students tend to prefer formally regulated supervisory relationships whereas supervisors and students have unambiguous and clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. The findings also reveal that doctoral students seek support in the following areas: research, methodology, emotional support and administrative procedures. Interview participants suggest that a successful supervisory relationship could be facilitated by adequate training, both for supervisors and students. Large majority of survey respondents think that four main characteristics of good supervisors are the following: having time for the student, providing students with timely and constructive feedback, setting research goals and timeline together and helping students become independent in scientific work. Respondents agree that doctoral students, in order to be successful in their study, must be internally motivated and well informed about the chosen study program, they must attend to their responsibilities in a timely manner, meet physically with the supervisor and work toward achieving scholarly independence. The findings of this study can contribute toward better understanding of supervisory relationship at doctoral level, in particular in Croatian LIS academic community, and development of guidelines for successful supervision based on the first hand experience of doctoral students.