Feicheng Ma

Internet development in China

This article describes the status of Internet development and application in China. It introduces the Chinese search engines as well as four main domestic networks connected to the Internet and analyses Internet applications in five major fields in China: e-government, e-commerce, distance education, distance medical treatment, and digital library. It also discusses China’s Internet management and related issues and problems and provides an overview of Internet development in China.

Collective dynamics in knowledge networks: Emerging trends analysis

This paper addresses emerging trends in the collective dynamics found in knowledge networks, those networks composed of the relationships among knowledge sources, such as citation networks and keyword networks. In studying the formation and detection of new trends in the process of knowledge evolution, we use the collective dynamics approach to construct a network of knowledge clusters based on citation clustering. This approach explores the processes and rules of new trends emerging in knowledge clusters by examining the continuous changes in keyword vectors found in the interaction and coordination between evolving knowledge clusters. In direct citation networks, the collective dynamics approach is found to be superior to the baseline method, especially in predicting small knowledge fields with less data and more uncertainties.

Why and how can “sleeping beauties” be awakened?

Purpose – “Sleeping beauties” are very common in science, so this paper aims to uncover the reasons and formulation mechanism of information awakening on a more general level. Based on this, the paper will further propose useful strategies to awaken those “sleeping beauties” earlier.Design/methodology/approach – Explanation‐building of case study is used to develop some models of information awakening and also to uncover different types of reasons for triggering academic information to be awakened.Findings – Based on the three basic elements of information utilisation, namely, information value, access channel and user needs, the paper summarises several reasons for information awakening: the information value is re‐mined because of the relevance among various information; different uses of information are discovered; information availability and visibility are improved; information is placed into the appropriate place; and, with time passing by, demands for the information rise.Practical implications – T...

Blog-supported scientific communication: An exploratory analysis based on social hyperlinks in a Chinese blog community

As a new-style computer-mediated communication system, the blog has been gaining popularity among various Web users. Blog communities come into being in the process of self-organized communication between bloggers and the community structures are reflected by the embedded social networks. This study research the communication patterns of scientist bloggers with the data from the largest Chinese-language scientific blog community specializing in computer and information sciences and technologies, i.e. the Csdn blog. The social network analysis of its blogroll link data suggests that the Csdn blog community is a small-world network. Many sub-communities exist in the blog community. The communication between the central and ordinary bloggers within the same sub-community is usually one-way and dense. The structure of the Csdn blog community indicates that distributed central actors are still important in the diffusion and communication of scientific knowledge.As a new-style computer-mediated communication system, the blog has been gaining popularity among various Web users. Blog communities come into being in the process of self-organized communication between bloggers and the community structures are reflected by the embedded social networks. This study research the communication patterns of scientist bloggers with the data from the largest Chinese-language scientific blog community specializing in computer and information sciences and technologies, i.e. the Csdn blog. The social network analysis of its blogroll link data suggests that the Csdn blog community is a small-world network. Many sub-communities exist in the blog community. The communication between the central and ordinary bloggers within the same sub-community is usually one-way and dense. The structure of the Csdn blog community indicates that distributed central actors are still important in the diffusion and communication of scientific knowledge.

Study of the collaboration in the field of the Chinese humanities and social sciences

This paper probes into the current status of collaboration regarding the field of the Chinese humanities and social sciences in respects of the degree of collaboration and the status of the relationships. It researches the status quo in humanities, the growth of social development science and cross-disciplinary social science, and the maturity of applied social science. In addition, it further highlights the important roles of economics, management, and library and information science in the collaboration network of humanities and social science with their extensive intra-disciplinary cooperation and crucial roles in the whole collaboration network.

Assessment of university student web searching competency by a task‐based online test: A case study at Wuhan University, China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess student web searching competency. The paper aims to determine varying levels of university student competency in web searches and to investigate and compare their competency levels of searching academic and daily‐life tasks.Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted a quantitative research method of giving study participants a controllable experiment, a task‐based online test (TBOT), to evaluate web searching competency based on student searching performance. Participants included 141 undergraduate and graduate students from Wuhan University, China. Their searching competency level was assessed by testing their searching effectiveness and searching efficiency.Findings – Student average web searching competency level was found to be comparatively low overall, within preliminary stages of development. A lot of students are unable to search the web with efficiency. Competency levels for searching academic tasks were higher than those of daily‐life tasks, ...

A study on the structure of the Chinese information policy domain framework

Information policies, the guidelines and standards for the macro information management of a nation, play an important role in the course of informationization in China. Owing to the absence of an authoritative framework of Chinese information policies, this research generated a comprehensive, three-level classification of information policy domains, based on policy data collected from Chinalawinfo.com, owned by the Legal Information Centre of Peking University. We constructed the first level with general domains derived from the theory of information’s life cycle. The second- and third-level domains were then determined according to the results of our clustering analysis, and their keywords were enriched and standardized using the Chinese Classification and Subject Headings System. The significance of this research is not only that it has identified blind spots existing in information policy making and research, but also that the new Chinese information policy domain framework will help regulate informationization in China.

Global informetric perspective studies on translational medical research.

BackgroundTranslational medical research literature has increased rapidly in the last few decades and played a more and more important role during the development of medicine science. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the global performance of translational medical research during the past few decades.MethodsBibliometric, social network analysis, and visualization technologies were used for analyzing translational medical research performance from the aspects of subject categories, journals, countries, institutes, keywords, and MeSH terms. Meanwhile, the co-author, co-words and cluster analysis methods were also used to trace popular topics in translational medical research related work.ResultsResearch output suggested a solid development in translational medical research, in terms of increasing scientific production and research collaboration. We identified the core journals, mainstream subject categories, leading countries, and institutions in translational medical research. There was an uneven distribution of publications at authorial, institutional, and national levels. The most commonly used keywords that appeared in the articles were “translational research”, “translational medicine”, “biomarkers”, “stroke”, “inflammation”, “cancer”, and “breast cancer”.ConclusionsThe subject categories of “Research & Experimental Medicine”, “Medical Laboratory Technology”, and “General & Internal Medicine” play a key role in translational medical research both in production and in its networks. Translational medical research and CTS, etc. are core journals of translational research. G7 countries are the leading nations for translational medical research. Some developing countries, such as P.R China, also play an important role in the communication of translational research. The USA and its institutions play a dominant role in the production, collaboration, citations and high quality articles. The research trends in translational medical research involve drug design and development, pathogenesis and treatment of disease, disease model research, evidence-based research, and stem and progenitor cells.

Understanding the topic evolution in a scientific domain: An exploratory study for the field of information retrieval

Understanding topic evolution in a scientific domain is essential for capturing key domain developments and facilitating knowledge transfer within and across domains. Using a data set on information retrieval (IR) publications, this paper examines how research topics evolve by analyzing the topic trends, evolving dynamics, and semantic word shifts in the IR domain. Knowledge transfer between topics and the developing status of the major topics have been recognized, which are represented by the merging and splitting of local topics in different time periods. Results show that the evolution of a major topic usually follows a pattern from adjusting status to mature status, and sometimes with re-adjusting status in between the evolving process. Knowledge transfer happens both within a topic and among topics. Word migration via topic channels has been defined, and three migration types (non-migration, dual-migration, and multi-migration) are distinguished to facilitate better understanding of the topic evolution.

Study on global science and social science entropy research trend

In this paper the methods of bibliometric analysis were used to investigate the global entropy research trend based on the SCI and SSCI database, which can be employed to study the global research trend. The paper number, subjects, journals, countries, institutes, authors, citations and funding agencies were analyzed respectively on each published papers. As a concept emerged firstly from science, entropy was then extended rapidly to social science as a typical example of such concept extensions. The bibliometric analysis results make out that great academic successes were made on global entropy research and a great success were obtained from science to social science research. Entropy related researches were funded by many funding agencies and countries so that some high quality productivities were published. It is the excellent scientists as well as sufficient foundations that brought the extension on entropy from science to social science in the last two decades.