Problems and Prospects of Implementing MOOCs Massive Open Online Courses in North East India in LIS Perspective

The paper intends to explore MOOC that has attained considerable attention in attracting the academic intellectuals of different disciplines across the globe. The purpose of the paper is to analyse, evaluate and understand the barriers followed by the scope of implementing MOOC courses especially the LIS perspective in northeast India. The paper also tends to study the significance of MOOCs in the NE region. A comprehensive conceptual model has been put forward by reviewing the existing literature related to the specific field of study. The model shall be beneficial to the team members designing and developing the framework for the MOOC courses (LIS) in North-East India.

Research Support Services in Indonesian Academic Digital Libraries A Proposed Business Model and Prototype Design

Several studies have highlighted the critical role of academic digital libraries in providing research support services and improving research performance. Although several studies have discussed the value of realizing this role, a business model that can serve as a reference in carrying out this role is not yet available. This research aimed to propose a business model and a prototype design for Indonesia’s academic digital library for research support services. A focus group discussion was conducted involving nine experts to identify the key factors. They were then mapped onto a Business Model Canvas. The key activities in the business model guided the requirements gathering for developing a prototype. The requirements were obtained from the literature reviews with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. The requirements were validated by interviewing library managers, research unit managers, and information technology managers. This research resulted in the academic digital library Business Model Canvas and the proposed prototype design, which consisted of a mobile application for member users and a back-office application to manage services by librarians. Further research on prototype implementation testing and the development of a successful implementation model is needed to strengthen this research.

Information Behavior of Faculty Members of NSTU, Public University of Bangladesh

The study’s main purpose was to investigate faculty members’ information searching behaviors while administering any research. This study designed an online questionnaire and printed questionnaires used for data collection. The data were analysed using several descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, percentages, and non-parametric tests, i.e., Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis. The findings showed that faculty members were heavily dependent on search engines to access information, and they have mainly used academic social media sites such as Google Scholar (n=139) and ResearchGate (n=133). Additionally, to keep up-to-date with new publications, they primarily relied on journal alerts (n=126). In the case of applying searching strategies, they used more than one keyword search and sometimes one keyword. Conversely, they do not apply proximity operators, discovery and federated tools and Boolean operators in their search techniques. Furthermore, for modifying search techniques, they used several keywords searching and utilise search engines, databases, and advanced search techniques. Moreover, the Mann-Whitney test result found no significant differences in terms of their gender regarding the types of e-resources used by them, and the Kruskal-Wallis tests found substantial differences in terms of faculty demographic characteristics of using only indexed databases, search engines, academic, social media sites (e.g., ResearchGate, and Zotero Network), current awareness services (i.e., Journal alerts, Web alerts, and discussion lists), and search techniques (i.e., Boolean operators, and Truncation).

Citation Trend of Indian Physics and Astronomy Research during 2005 2020 through the Lens of Some New Indicators

The indicator Citation Swing Factor (CSF) has recently been developed to quantitatively measure the diffusion process from h-core zone to h-core excess zone. This paper calculated CSF for Indian physics and astronomy research output appeared in selective Indian journals since 2005 to 2020. The theoretical values of CSF are also calculated on the basis of its fundamental equation and same was compared it with the respective observed values. The average error over entire time span is found 2.26 per cent indicating close proximity between theoretically expected and practically observed values. Besides, three other scientometric indicators are introduced here, viz. Time-Normalised Total Cited Ratio (TC), Time-Normalised Cited Uncited Ratio (CU) and Time-Normalised Total Uncited Ratio (TU). Of these four indicators, the variation of TC is highest (1.76), followed by TU (0.53), CU (0.37) and CSF(E) (0.09), as evident from the values of respective Coefficients of Variations. The numerical values of these indicators are found out for the same sample and the temporal variations along with their mutual interrelationships are determined by regression analysis. It is observed that the three indicators, TC, CU and TU are mutually interrelated through the following linear regression equations, i.e. TC = -0.76 + 1.88*TU and CU = -0.201 + 0.34*TU.

Promoting the Use of Reference Management Tools An Opportunity for Librarians to Promote Scientific Tradition

The scientific tradition entails that any scientific work needs to be cited if it is responsible for the development of further another research work. This review article discusses the role of library professionals in promoting Reference Management Tools (RMTs) amongst the teachers, students, and researchers to maintain the scientific tradition of citation management. Among the various citation management tools available, four exemplary tools have been discussed briefly. The review of the literature revealed that the users have mixed responses pertaining to the use of RMTs. Especially; the common experience in respect of quality usage is very low. The users seemed to have limited themselves to make use of RMTs for reference management instead of exploring all the options associated with it. An attempt has been made to highlight why and how librarians should promote RMTs in the academic environment. Since librarians are considered experts in the field of reference management, they must grab this opportunity to strengthen the profession. The article urges the library professionals to get expertise in using RMTs so as to promote them successfully for academic writing and research activities.

Research Output of University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka during 2000 2019

Universities play a vital role in the research and development of a country. A scientometric analysis is an essential tool used by the administrators, funding agencies, government, and researchers to know the publication trend on a topic, institution, author, journal, etc. This study analyses pattern of articles published by the University of Jaffna (UoJ) during 2000-2019; identifies publication growth rate, most prolific authors and their citation impact, communication pattern in terms of type of documents, journal publishing country and impact factor of these journals and also the international collaboration. Analysis of the data indicates, there are 293 articles were published in WOS indexed journals. The publication growth rate indicates that there is a consistent growth in the number of publications after 2014. It was found that multi-authorship dominates among UoJ researchers. A high number of publications were on Multidisciplinary Sciences. The UoJ collaborated with different countries; among them 59 articles were published with United Kingdom. Among the highly cited top 10 publications, an article authored by Ravirajan P received a high number of citations of 480. Among the funding agencies National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka funded for 24 publications, while UoJ funded for 16 and among the international funding agencies UK Research Innovation (UKRI) funded for 7 publications during the study period.

A Bibliometric Study of Papers Published in Library and Information Science Research during 1994 2020

The paper analysed 699 papers published in Library & Information Science Research (LISR) during the period of 1994-2020. Google Scholar was used to obtain the number of citations received by these papers until April 30, 2021. The study examined the geographical distribution of published articles and also identified prolific institutions and authors. The study examined the impact of output of countries, institutions and authors using citation per paper (CPP) and i-10 index as indicators of impact. The study also examined the pattern of growth and identified the highly cited papers. Based on the analysis of data it is observed that maximum articles were published during the three years block of 2015-2017. The geographical distribution of output indicates that 51 countries contributed the 699 papers. Highest number of papers was contributed by authors from the USA though it had a low value of CPP in comparison to Norway and Finland. Among the institutions, Florida State University (USA) topped the list. However, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA had the highest value of CPP. During the period of study, 1,389 papers received 74,061 citations, of which only 41 (3 %) articles remained uncited.

Users Awareness and Usage of Open Educational Resources in Central Universities of North India

Technological advancements and open educational resources (OER) together have opened up wider opportunities to access globally created educational resources by anyone across the globe. A paradigm shift has been witnessed in the format of learning resources, their access methods, and the medium of delivery of the knowledge content. The findings of this research reveal that the academic community of central universities (CU) of North India is well aware of open educational resources. E PG Path Shala is the most popular and most widely used, followed by NPTEL and YouTube. The majority of users use OERs as and when they require them. The purpose of using OERs for the majority of respondents is to prepare class notes. Most of the faculty and research scholars use OERs to improve their professional competency. The majority of respondents desired that the institutions should provide free internet/Wi-Fi on campus and should also provide regular updates about OERs.

Academics Perceptions of Electronic Resources at the University of Venda, South Africa

This study examined the perceptions of academic researchers regarding electronic resources (e-resources) provided by the library at the University of Venda (UNIVEN), South Africa. The quantitative research approach and survey research design were adopted to conduct the investigation. Data was collected using a self-administered structured questionnaire randomly distributed to 45 UNIVEN academics. The findings of this study revealed that although academics at UNIVEN find e-resources easy to use, believe the resources improve academic performance, and frequently encouraged postgraduate students to use them, the majority of them had plagiarism concerns and were only moderately satisfied with available e-resources at UNIVEN. This study recommends that the university library should train academics on plagiarism detection. In addition, the library should adopt innovative ways of improving e-resource services, such as providing an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) with advanced and federated search capabilities.

Research Productivity and Citation Impact of Indian institutes of Science Education and Research

The paper’s main objective is to investigate the trends of basic science research in India using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. It examines the publication patterns and impact of research productivity of five basic science institutions, i.e., “Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research” (IISER), namely IISER Kolkata, IISER Pune, IISER Mohali, IISER Bhopal, and IISER Thiruvananthapuram. The research output indexed in the SCOPUS bibliographic database of these five established IISERs was obtained from 2015 to 2019. A total number of 7329 research publications were analysed using various scientometric dimensions. This paper makes a concerted effort to present a comprehensive picture of the assessment of research outcomes at the five older IISERs, which are ostensibly India’s most active and prominent basic science research institutions. The findings reveal that these institutions are accountable for important research outcomes, such as a high number of citations, preferences towards open access (OA) publications, a rise in research publication year over year, a strong author network, a high degree of collaboration, and a high impact in terms of other scientometrics indicators. This paper discusses the findings of the research publications on the position of IISERs in basic sciences research and draws some conclusions about their effects.