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Interactive information retrieval (IR) involves many human cognitive shifts at different information behaviour levels. Cognitive science defines a cognitive shift or shift in cognitive focus as triggered by the brain's response and change due to some external force. This paper aims to provide an explication of the concept of “cognitive shift” and then report results from a study replicating Spink's study of cognitive shifts during interactive IR. This work aims to generate promising insights into aspects of cognitive shifts during interactive IR and a new IR evaluation measure – information problem shift.

The study participants (n=9) conducted an online search on an in‐depth personal medical information problem. Data analysed included the pre‐ and post‐search questionnaires completed by each study participant. Implications for web services and further research are discussed.

Key findings replicated the results in Spink's study, including: all study participants reported some level of cognitive shift in their information problem, information seeking and personal knowledge due to their search interaction; and different study participants reported different levels of cognitive shift. Some study participants reported major cognitive shifts in various user‐based variables such as information problem or information‐seeking stage. Unlike Spink's study, no participant experienced a negative shift in their information problem stage or level of information problem understanding.

This study builds on the previous study by Spink using a different dataset. The paper provides valuable insights for further research into cognitive shifts during interactive IR.

This paper is an exploratory study of one approach to incorporating situational information into information retrieval systems, drawing on principles and methods of discourse linguistics. A tenet of discourse linguistics is that texts of a specific type possess a structure above the syntactic level, which follows conventions known to the people using such texts to communicate. In some cases, such as literature describing work done, the structure is closely related to situations, and may therefore be a useful representational vehicle for the present purpose. Abstracts of empirical research papers exhibit a well‐defined discourse‐level structure, which is revealed by lexical clues. Two methods of detecting the structure automatically are presented: (i) a Bayesian probabilistic analysis; and (ii) a neural network model. Both methods show promise in preliminary implementations. A study of users' oral problem statements indicates that they are not amenable to the same kind of processing. However, from in‐depth interviews with users and search intermediaries, the following conclusions are drawn: (i) the notion of a generic research script is meaningful to both users and intermediaries as a high‐level description of situation; (ii) a researcher's position in the script is a predictor of the relevance of documents; and (iii) currently, intermediaries can make very little use of situational information. The implications of these findings for system design are discussed, and a system structure presented to serve as a framework for future experimental work on the factors identified in this paper. The design calls for a dialogue with the user on his or her position in a research script and incorporates features permitting discourse‐level components of abstracts to be specified in search strategies.

Information dissemination has become a means of transparency for governments to enable the visions of e-government and smart government, and eventually gain, among others, the trust of various stakeholders such as citizens and enterprises. Information dissemination, on the other hand, may increase the chance of privacy breaches, which can undermine those stakeholders’ trust and thus the objectives of transparency. Moreover, fear of potential privacy breaches compels information disseminators to share minimum or no information. The purpose of this study is to address these contending issues of information disseminations, i.e. privacy versus transparency, when disseminating judicial information to gain (public) trust. Specifically, the main research questions are: What is the nature of the aforementioned “privacy–transparency” problem and how can we approach and address this class of problems?

To address these questions, the authors have carried out an explorative case study by reconsidering and analyzing a number of information dissemination cases within their research center for the past 10 years, reflecting upon the whole design research process, consulting peers through publishing a preliminary version of this contribution and embedding the work in an in-depth literature study on research methodologies, wicked problems and e-government topics.

The authors show that preserving privacy while disseminating information for transparency purposes is a typical wicked problem, propose an innovative designerly model called transitional action design research (TADR) to address the class of such wicked problems and describe three artifacts which are designed, intervened and evaluated according to the TADR model in a judicial research organization.

Classifying the privacy transparency problem in the judicial settings as wicked is new, the proposed designerly model is innovative and the realized artifacts are deployed and still operational in a real setting.

Problems arose in the “market for information” (MFI) during the “dot.com” boom, the Enron case, Northern Rock failure and during the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009. This paper aims to extend the understanding of the MFI through field research and theoretical sources. It also aims to understand the MFI during relatively stable periods and during periods of rapid change, crisis and failure. It seeks to use these insights to propose changes to reduce the possibilities for negative change and problems in the MFI.

Field studies are used to develop an “empirical narrative” for ongoing MFI structures, processes and outcomes during relatively stable periods. The paper develops a “theoretical narrative” to extend the understanding of the MFI empirical insights.

The paper reveals that the MFI structure that includes knowledge and social context is central to ongoing MFI economic processes for MFI agents. Outcomes include changes in markets, firms and others. Changes and problems are means to understand interactions between the MFI social structure, knowledge, actions and outcomes as they rendered visible the previously invisible issues.

The paper shows that a coherent combination of new empirical narrative and theoretical narrative is essential to develop a critical stance, new policy prescriptions and new regulations to deal with problems and changes in the MFI. This provides the frame to propose changes in the “world of knowledge” and in (concentrated and elite) social and economic structures in the MFI. It proposes: making explicit shared knowledge in the MFI, monitoring change processes and promoting active formal learning.

The purpose of this paper is to survey and analyse the literature emanating from less developed countries (LDCs) and international agencies and dealing with their perception of the needs of LDCs for scientific and technical information (STI) in relation to social and economic development.

Users' relevance judgements are central to both the systems and user‐oriented approaches to information retrieval (IR). A basic assumption of IR and online searching research has been that users always require the most ‘highly’ relevant items when using an IR system. This paper reports the results from research that sought to examine users conducting their initial online search on a particular information problem. Findings from three separate studies of relevance judgements by 44 initial search users were examined, including two studies of 13 end‐users and a study of 18 users engaged in mediated online searches. Results show that the number of items judged ‘partially’ relevant (on the scale: relevant; partially relevant; not relevant) was found to correlate positively with changes in users': (1) criteria for making relevance judgements; (2) information problem definition; and (3) personal knowledge due to the search interaction; and also (4) search intermediaries' perceptions that a user's question and information problem has changed during the mediated search interaction. Items judged ‘highly’ relevant were not correlated with these factors. Results of the three studies suggest that: (1) a relationship exists between partially relevant items retrieved and changes in the users' information problem or question during an information seeking process; (2) partial relevance judgements play an important role for users in the early stages of seeking information on a particidar information problem; and (3) ‘highly’ relevant items may or may not be the only items useful at the early stages of users' information seeking processes. Implications for the development of IR systems, relevance research and searching practice are also examined.

This study focuses on specifically women refugees' experiences of accessing information and how sociocultural barriers impact these experiences aiming to broaden the LIS literature of women refugees' information problems from sociocultural aspects. The socioculturally formed roles of a woman can impact the information practices of women refugees or cause certain information problems during the integration process. Hence, the research questions that drive this study are: What kind of information problems might women refugees face in a new host country? What kind of sociocultural barriers influence their information problems? How do they react toward these information problems?

The study is designed based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with eighteen refugee women living in Sweden. The study is a part of a larger study in which authors intend to explore the information practices and integration challenges of almost 20 or more refugee women living in Sweden.

Women refugees face information overload, difficulties in understanding new communication culture and lack of appropriate sources and networks in a new country. These information problems are influenced by sociocultural barriers such as the role of women, national culture of “collectivism”, small-world and lack of information literacy. Women react in certain ways such as, stressing, panicking, quitting the tasks, wasting time and making wrong decisions which negatively impact the integration process.

The research has its limitations as it is conducted with a small group of women refugees, belong to specific Middle Eastern culture and cannot be generalized. Another limitation is that the interviews are conducted in English language (with sufficient language skill). However, conducting interviews in their mother language would have been an advantage.

Practically, the study provides awareness for official and private organizations, volunteers and policymakers dealing with refugees. The stakeholders involved in the societal integration process of refugees, must consider that women refugees are more prone to information problems due to certain sociocultural influences (i.e. “being a woman” and national culture) and need a separate plan than the male refugees. For instance, by increasing and offering intercultural opportunities at workplaces or schools can encourage the wider social networking for women refugees. The programs aiming to reduce the sociocultural differences among women refugees and the Swedes are needed to be included in the integration policy.

The study intends to help the refugees society and the Swedish society overall by improving the integration plan.

The findings related to the information experiences of women refugees have potential implications for research where the value of information in the integration process is explored. The study meets the gap in previous literature by presenting the gender specific views on information problems from sociocultural aspects. The study also provides future directions to understand how women refugees deal with potential sociocultural barriers to information in a new country.

The article reveals a need for greater understanding and use of corporate intellectual capital (IC) information within two connected capital market areas. Firstly with regard to the conceptualisation and valuation process these capital market agents (analysts and fund managers) conduct. Secondly, within the capital market agents' own value creation chain. The concept of the value creation chain is combined with an analysis of the barriers faced by capital market agents represented by fund managers and analysts. These barriers are proposed to comprise knowledge, uncertainty, ownership and management problems. In addition, cultural pressures within analyst and fund manager communities are viewed as contributors to information barriers. Such problems are exacerbated by additional market induced problems of severe time constraints and conflicts of interest.

Information seeking does not occur in a vacuum but invariably is motivated by some wider task. It is well accepted that to understand information seeking we must understand the task context within which it takes place. Writing is amongst the most common tasks within which information seeking is embedded. This paper considers how writing can be understood in order to account for embedded information seeking. Following Sharples, the paper treats writing as a design activity and explore parallels between the psychology of design and information seeking. Significant parallels can be found and ideas from the psychology of design offer explanations for a number of information seeking phenomena. Next, a design‐oriented representation of writing tasks as a means of providing an account of phenomena such as information seeking uncertainty and focus refinement is developed. The paper illustrates the representation with scenarios describing the work of newspaper journalists.