John W. Lamp

Journal ranking and the dreams of academics

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to review and comment on the Australian Governments entry into the journal ranking domain.Design/methodology/approach – A review and reflection on the approach and potential impact of the direction taken.Findings – This project is arguably the largest of its type and the effects on academic publishing and the survival of journals could be far reaching.Originality/value – The article draws together current material on the Australian Governments activities and provides details of the scope of the journal ranking project.

Integrating professional skills into the curriculum

The need for the teaching of professional skills to undergraduates in areas such as communications, team work, conflict resolution, and ethics has for some time been articulated by the information systems profession. These skills are particularly required by information systems graduates. Changes to the traditional systems development life cycle towards use of package software, prototyping, distributed computing, JAD etc have all placed a further demand on interpersonal skills as opposed to technical skills. While this need has been recognised by some universities, there have been a number of approaches to the incorporation of these skills into the teaching programme. This paper describes how professional skills teaching has been introduced within the University of Tasmanias undergraduate programme.

A client-focused, team-of-teams approach to software development projects

This paper describes an innovative and very successful final year project course that has been provided in the Department of Computer Science over the past four years. Students are formed into relatively large teams of 16 and tackle a challenging, realistic project during a single semester. Unlike many computer science project courses that emphasise the technical issues, to the detriment of the end-user, this course is focused on the people involved in the project and the client. The project team is highly structured and team members take on all of the roles that one is likely to encounter in projects in the workplace.

The Incremental Modelling of the Z39.50 Protocol with Object Petri Nets

This paper examines how object-oriented extensions to the Petri Net formalism provide flexible structuring primitives which can aid the modelling of network protocols. A key benefit is the support for incremental modelling. As a result, a protocol can be modelled as a collection of services, each of which can be expressed as the enhancement of a basic service, in which case, both the structure of the basic service and the nature of the enhancement can be clearly identified. More importantly, the evolution of a protocol through a sequence of standards can be expressed by progressive refinements. The object-oriented extensions are captured in the formalism of Object Petri Nets, with a textual language form referred to as LOOPN++, both of which are introduced in this paper. The incremental modelling capabilities and their benefits are demonstrated for the Z39.50 Protocol for Information Retrieval.

The book: production and participation

Purpose – The focus of this paper is on the benefits that may eventuate through new mechanisms of production and distribution. As we enter the twenty-first century, the nature of the book and the structure of the industry which produces it are undergoing radical transformation, as developments in information technology offer new mechanisms for production and distribution. Most of the discussion of these changes is conducted from the perspective of what has been lost through these changes. Design/methodology/approach – This paper reviews the history of the book from the perspective of the disruptive effects of the changes in production technology and impact on the roles involved in production, distribution and reading of books. Darnton’s Communication Circuit is updated to predict future limiting factors and opportunities for participation. Findings – The evolution of the book has seen successive categories of workers involved in book production supplanted by the adoption of new technology. The updated Darnton’s model suggests that the roles involved in the production and distribution of the book will, however, be supplanted in favour of authors and readers of the book in the future. Social implications – The predicted changes will alter the roles of authors and book users. Originality/value – This paper suggests a novel approach to the discussion of the future of book publication and suggests future developments.

The social life of categories: An empirical study of term categorization

Most classification schemes in common use are actually categorization schemes which fall somewhere on a continuum between unstructured, uncontrolled lists of terms and formal classifications. Over time, terms change meaning and acquire new definitions. This paper presents the results of an approach that used the librarianship principle of consensus to form categories of terms and to relate those categories using a domain reference group. Boisots Social Learning Cycle SLC was then used as a model with which to explain category variations. The single study undertaken in this investigation demonstrated the value of the SLC for explaining the variations between reference group members, and showed the potential for explaining category changes over time. This identifies areas in which consensus is breaking down or emerging, allowing for focused maintenance of categorical schemes.