Dissertation Information for Shahrokh Afsharpanah NAME: - Shahrokh Afsharpanah
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science
SCHOOL:
- Case Western Reserve University (USA) (1984)
ADVISORS: - Sarah Scott Gibson
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Phyllis A. Richmond - Miranda Pao - Meral Ozsoyoglu
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Interdisciplinary structure of information science
Abstract: This study explores the interdisciplinary structure of information science on the basis of its subJect literature. A basic assumption is that a subject literature reflects the contents of a field, and that its citation patterns can serve as a source of data for identifying the interdisciplinary encounter that occurs between that field and other disciplines. Therefore, information science is operationally defined as a body of recorded and published knowledge that is defined and classified as information science in the secondary bibliographic sources Such as abstracts and indexes.
The data for the study consists of the citations found in a random sample of the articles reviewed in 13 years (1966-1978) of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology.
The study evaluates information science literature as a source of data to identify. the subjects that build up the core interdisciplinary structure of the field, as well as the interdisciplinary demands of individual information science subfields.
A socio-scientific appraoch to the study is to evaluate the impact that authors contributing to the interdisciplinary developments of infromation science have on other authors in the field on the basis of the citations they recieve in the professional literature.
In the methodology of the. study, a synthetic classification system is used to identify the relatedness of the contributory disciplines in the interdisciplinary structure of information science. The theoretical basis of the technique originates from the indirect method of information retrieval that makes it possible to partition contributory, disciplines into equivalence classes based on othe number of attrlbutes each pair of disciplines have in common. In this study, relatedness between the pairs of disciplines is derived from the citations that the, two disciplines have received in articles dealing with the same subfield of information science. The synthetic position that each contributory, disCipline has in the interdisciplinary structure of the field is defined by using the Brillouin information measure. In this respect, information science is viewed as a set of queries, and the contributory discipltnes as a set of partial or complete answers to these queries. Application of the methodology is further extended to citations in the articles of the individual authors in order to identify subject similarities and diversities in the background and research interests of the information science authors.
Results of the experiments show that the methodology is capable of demonstrating. the interdisciplinary structure of information science. Using two different factors of relatedness, i.e., subfields and authors, among the contributory subjecs makes it possible to study the interdisciplinary demands of the field, as well as to explain the research interests of the individual authors.
The cluster of the subjects identified in the core interdisciplinary structure of the field comprises electronic date processing, computer systems, probabilities and applied mathematics, linguistics, and general management. The importance of the subjects in the core interdisciplinary structure is assessed on the basis of two factors: 1) their synthetic position in the interdisciplinary structure, and 2) the frequency with which the literature of each discipline is cited in the sample.
Statistical analysis of the citations made to the authors of information science shows that the authors who contribute to the interdisciplinary developments of the field have a greater impact on the 'field' by being cited more often than the authors who do not cite from the literature, of the contributory disciplines. However, subject, categorization of the literature cited by individual authors shows that each author cites from the literature of one or only a limited number Of the contributory disciplines. Therefore, it may be said that each of the interdisciplinary authors bring information from one or a limited number of the specialized subjects, and their collective efforts build-up the interdisciplinary structure of information science.
It is suggested that implications of the study can be used in the areas of the professional education such as curriculum design and development; and in the field of information management, in terms of decision-making related to the subject parameters of a a collection used in special libraries and information centers.
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MPACT Scores for Shahrokh Afsharpanah A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-04-09 14:12:18
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