Rick Kopak

A taxonomy of functional units for information use of scholarly journal articles

Todays readers of scholarly literature want to read more in less time. With this in mind, this study applies the idea of the functional unit to the use of digital documents. A functional unit is the smallest information unit with a distinct function within the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion components of scholarly journal articles. Through a review and analysis of the literature and validation through user surveys, this study identifies a set of common functional units and examines how they are related to different tasks requiring use of information in journal articles and how they are related to each other for a particular information use task. The findings, presented in the form of a taxonomy, suggest a close relationship between functional units and information use tasks, and furthermore among a set of functional units for a particular information use task. This taxonomy can be used in the design of an electronic journal reading system to support effective and efficient information use.

Do Highlights Affect Comprehension?: Lessons from a User Study

A largely unquestioned assumption in social reading is that publicly shared annotations improve reading outcomes. In this study, we explore the specific assumption that relevant and irrelevant passive highlighting affects comprehension. Participants were divided by cognitive style based on their degree of Field Dependence-Independence [20]. We found that irrelevant highlights had significant negative effects on reading comprehension for Field Independents (FIs), but not Field Dependents (FDs). This is a surprising result because FDs typically rely on external cues to structure and help process information, whereas FIs use internal cues. This suggests that highlighting cues information but does not structure it.

The role of context in search: Examining the effect of subject domain on the search interface

Using a 48-person group in a within-subjects design, we investigated how people search differently within diverse domains: consumer health, shopping, travel and general research. Our goal was to identify the distinctive characteristics of search behavior within each domain that impact the design of the search interface.