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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between preferred choice of school subject and student information behaviour (IB).

Mixed methods were employed. In all, 152 students, teachers and librarians participated in interviews or focus groups. In total, 1,375 students, key stage 3 (11-14 years) to postgraduate, responded to a questionnaire. The research population was drawn from eight schools, two further education colleges and three universities. Insights from the literature review and the qualitative research phase led to a hypothesis which was investigated using the questionnaire: that students studying hard subjects are less likely to engage in deep IB than students studying soft subjects.

Results support the hypothesis that preferences for subjects at school affect choice of university degree. The hypothesis that a preference for hard or soft subjects affects IB is supported by results of an analysis in which like or dislike of maths/ICT is correlated with responses to the survey. Interviewees’ comments led to the proposal that academic subjects can be classified according to whether a subject helps students to acquire a “tool of the Mind” or to apply such a tool. A model suggesting how IB may differ depending on whether intellectual tools are being acquired or applied is proposed.

The “inner logic” of certain subjects and their pedagogies appears closely linked to IB. This should be considered when developing teaching programmes.

The findings offer a new perspective on subject classification and its association with IB, and a new model of the association between IB and tool acquisition or application is proposed, incorporating the perspectives of both teacher and student.

Academic contention occurs when research evidence is amenable to more than one interpretation. China has a long tradition of Shang Que (商榷), in which authors argue for their preferred interpretation. The modern form of this tradition is the Shang Que article, which often takes the form of research papers in Chinese-language journals and which tends to be question-oriented. Shang Que articles usually take the views of a particular author or article as the focus of independent and complete criticism by another, independent, academic. This paper explains the role of Shang Que articles in Chinese scholarship and their influence on international academia.

A bibliometric analysis was used to explore the characteristics and evolution of Chinese Shang Que articles using 30,577 articles published between 1979 and 2018. Microsoft Excel and Gephi were used for data analysis and visualization.

Findings suggest a decline in the number of Shang Que articles and an increase in the number of co-authors. Shang Que articles remained particularly prominent in Philosophy and Humanities and Social Sciences, where they focused on local issues such as classical Chinese, the Sinicization of Marxism and Chinese literature. This suggests that the number of Shang Que articles is related to the degree of internationalization of a research field.

Shang Que articles, which have been influenced by academic paradigms in English, are a fusion of China's Shang Que tradition and of the modern academic system. Through considering Shang Que articles, this paper explores the benefits of local academic traditions in non-English-speaking cultures.

Internet technology allows millions of people to find high quality medical resources online, with the result that personal healthcare and medical services have become one of the fastest growing markets in China. Data relating to healthcare search behavior may provide insights that could lead to better provision of healthcare services. However, discrepancies often arise between terminologies derived from professional medical domain knowledge and the more colloquial terms that users adopt when searching for information about ailments. This can make it difficult to match healthcare queries with doctors’ keywords in online medical searches. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To help address this problem, the authors propose a transfer learning using latent factor graph (TLLFG), which can learn the descriptions of ailments used in internet searches and match them to the most appropriate formal medical keywords.

Experiments show that the TLLFG outperforms competing algorithms in incorporating both medical domain knowledge and patient-doctor Q&A data from online services into a unified latent layer capable of bridging the gap between lay enquiries and professionally expressed information sources, and make more accurate analysis of online users’ symptom descriptions. The authors conclude with a brief discussion of some of the ways in which the model may support online applications and connect offline medical services.

The authors used an online medical searching application to verify the proposed model. The model can bridge users’ long-tailed description with doctors’ formal medical keywords. Online experiments show that TLLFG can significantly improve the searching experience of both users and medical service providers compared with traditional machine learning methods. The research provides a helpful example of the use of domain knowledge to optimize searching or recommendation experiences.

The authors use transfer learning to map online users’ long-tail queries onto medical domain knowledge, significantly improving the relevance of queries and keywords in a search system reliant on sponsored links.

This paper seeks to review the methodologies employed by researchers working in the field of information seeking on the web. It aims to present an overall picture of the research methods used in the area, in a way that will be of value to anyone seeking to design research‐based studies of web searching.

A review of the past 11 years of research on information seeking on the web was carried out. The paper focuses mainly on the methodological approaches adopted by researchers, but, where relevant, studies of different aspects of user interaction with web‐based search tools are considered.

The area is growing fast and the number of studies has been increasing steadily. A variety of research methods was employed in the studies reviewed here. However, the emphasis to date has been on quantitative rather than qualitative methods. The paper argues that a better balance is needed between these two approaches.

Web search research comprises a wide range of related studies, making it difficult for the authors to carry out a comprehensive review. Nevertheless, limiting its focus to methodological aspects of the existing research, this paper provides a useful overview.

The paper provides a useful starting‐point to any researcher new to web search research, enabling them quickly to achieve an overview of the methodological approaches adopted to date.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between information and boundaries. Life depends on boundaries; but in order to survive an organism needs to make decisions based on an interpretation of the environment beyond its boundaries: it therefore needs information.

The paper explores the evolution of physical, social and cultural boundaries and considers how they have shaped ways in which information is gathered and used.

Several evolutionary developments are reviewed. The paper argues that each one has generated an additional boundary and that each new boundary has affected the information needs within it. The paper argues that all living things use information to help address three fundamental concerns: “Where can the energy needed to stay alive be found?”, “How can it be stored?”, and “How can use of energy be reduced?” Because these questions are fundamental at a biological level they are also fundamental at a societal level. One way to increase energy efficiency was for organisms to grow larger. This brought risks which were alleviated by the evolution of better information gathering and processing tools. Amongst these tools were the means to communicate, which afforded the evolution of social boundaries.

This is a new perspective on a topic of growing interest in information science and demonstrates further the significance of information as a factor in the shaping of life.

A common criticism of research into information seeking on the internet is that information seekers are restricted by the demands of the researcher. Another criticism is that the search topics, are often imposed by the researcher, and; particularly when working with children, domain knowledge could be as important as information‐seeking skills. The research reported here attempts to address both these problems.

A total of 15 children, aged 11 to 16, were each set three “think aloud” internet searches. In the first, they were asked to recall the last time they had sought information on the internet, and to repeat the search. For the second, they were given a word, asked to interpret it, then asked to search for their interpretation. For the third, they were asked to recall the last time they had been unsuccessful in a search, and to repeat the search. While performing each task, the children were encouraged to explain their actions.

The paper finds that the factors that determined a child's ability to search successfully appeared to be: the amount of experience the child had of using the internet; the amount of guidance, both from adults and from peers; and the child's ability to explore the virtual environment, and to use the tools available for so doing.

Many of the searches performed by participants in this paper were not related to schoolwork, and so some of the search approaches differed from those taught by teachers. Instead, they evolved through exploration and exchange of ideas. Further studies of this sort could provide insights of value to designers of web environments.

The purpose of this paper is to report selective findings from a wider study of web‐based information‐seeking behaviour amongst biologists. It aims to describe: aspects of the participants' interactions with web‐based search tools; their feelings associated with these interactions, and the different types of searches that they carry out on the web.

Data were collected by semi‐structured interviews, and were analysed using a grounded theory approach. A qualitative approach was adopted in order to allow deep exploration of the information‐seeking processes adopted by the target group.

Participants in this study typically categorized their web searches as either work‐related or everyday life searches. They felt more confident carrying out work‐related searches and their search strategies in this category of search were more effective: generally, their work‐related searches were well‐defined and specific. Their everyday life searches covered a wider range of topics, and were occasionally very challenging. Participants carrying out everyday life searches cited as common problems, the selection of apposite search terms, and uncertainty in selecting the most suitable database.

The findings are based on a small sample of academic web users, and it will be useful to carry out follow‐up research using larger samples from biology or other areas of science. Despite this limitation, the findings clearly show the value of allowing users to customise web search facilities. They will also be of value to information literacy instructors developing information skills courses.

Biologists' information‐seeking behaviour on the web has not been investigated before and the paper contributes to the current body of knowledge about information‐seeking behaviour by providing empirical findings relating to the behaviour of this particular group of web users.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of a number of human individual differences on the web searching of a sample of the general public.

In total, 91 members of the general public performed 195 controlled searches. Search activity and ratings of search difficulty and success were recorded and statistically analysed. The study was exploratory, and sought to establish whether there is a prima facie case for further systematic investigation of the selection and combination of variables studied here.

Results revealed a number of interactions between individual differences, the use of different search strategies, and levels of perceived search difficulty and success. The findings also suggest that the open and closed nature of searches may affect these interactions. A conceptual model of these relationships is presented.

Better understanding of factors affecting searching may help one to develop more effective search support, whether in the form of personalised search interfaces and mechanisms, adaptive systems, training or help systems. However, the findings reveal a complexity and variability suggesting that there is little immediate prospect of developing any simple model capable of driving such systems.

There are several areas of this research that make it unique: the study's focus on a sample of the general public; its use of search logs linked to personal data; its development of a novel search strategy classifier; its temporal modelling of how searches are transformed over time; and its illumination of four different types of experienced searcher, linked to different search behaviours and outcomes.

The purpose of this research is to study the information‐seeking habits of children at an English secondary school. Data from two different research exercises were collated in order to provide an insight into how students perceived and used a range of information resources.

In the first research exercise, groups of children from each academic year were asked to discuss a set of information resources and to rank them according to perceived usefulness. In the second, students were asked to report, throughout the school year, on the resources they used to complete homework assignments.

The findings from these two exercises are best interpreted by using them to provide the answers to three questions: Which information resources did students consider to be the most useful? Which information resources did students use the most? When an information resource was referred to, how likely was it that students found it to be useful? The rankings differed considerably, depending on which question was being asked.

The results gave an insight into how different information resources were used for different subjects. They also provide evidence of the fact that students' reliance on other people as an information source begins to decline as they get older, and there is a corresponding increase in their use of books and electronic information sources.

This paper aims to encapsulate the main procedure and key findings of a qualitative research on end‐users' interactions with web‐based search tools in order to demonstrate how the concept of “information visibility” emerged and how an integrative model of information visibility and information seeking on the web was constructed.

The study was formed of three parts. The first looked at conceptions of the Invisible Web; the second explored conceptualisations of the causes of search success/failure; the third organised the findings of parts 1 and 2 into a series of theoretical frameworks. Data collection was carried out in three phases based on interviews with a sample of biologists.

The first part led to the development of a model of information visibility which suggests a complementary definition for the Invisible Web. The results also showed the participants were aware of the possibility that they had missed some relevant information in their searches. However, perceptions of the importance and the volume of missed information varied, so users reacted differently to the possibility that they were missing information. The third part indicated the “Locus of Control” and “Attribution Theory” that can help us to better understand web‐based information seeking patterns. Moreover, “Bounded Rationality” and “Satisficing Theory” supported the inductive findings and showed that users' estimates of the likely volume and importance of missed information affect their decision to persist in searching.

The study creates new understanding of web users' information seeking behaviour which contributes to the theoretical basis of web search research. It also raises various questions within the context of library and information science practice to know whether, and if so how, we can assist end‐users to develop more efficient search strategies and satisfactory approaches.

The research adopted a combination of inductive‐deductive methods with a qualitative approach in the area of information seeking on the web which is mainly dominated by quantitative studies.