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The recent proliferation of preprints could be a way for researchers worldwide to increase the availability and visibility of their research findings. Against the background of rising publication costs caused by the increasing prevalence of article processing fees, the search for other ways to publish research results besides traditional journal publication may increase. This could be especially true for lower-income countries.

Therefore, the authors are interested in the experiences and attitudes towards posting and using preprints in the Global South as opposed to the Global North. To explore whether motivations and concerns about posting preprints differ, the authors adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative survey of researchers with focus group interviews.

The authors found that respondents from the Global South were more likely to agree to adhere to policies and to emphasise that mandates could change publishing behaviour towards open access. They were also more likely to agree posting preprints has a positive impact. Respondents from the Global South and the Global North emphasised the importance of peer-reviewed research for career advancement.

The study has identified a wide range of experiences with and attitudes towards posting preprints among researchers in the Global South and the Global North. To the authors' knowledge, this has hardly been studied before, which is also because preprints only have emerged lately in many disciplines and countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2023-0181

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the new scientific search service Google Scholar (GS). It aims to discuss this search engine, which is intended exclusively for searching scholarly documents, and then empirically test its most important functionality. The focus is on an exploratory study which investigates the coverage of scientific serials in GS.

The study is based on queries against different journal lists: international scientific journals from Thomson Scientific (SCI, SSCI, AH), open access journals from the DOAJ list and journals from the German social sciences literature database SOLIS as well as the analysis of result data from GS. All data gathering took place in August 2006.

The study shows deficiencies in the coverage and up‐to‐dateness of the GS index. Furthermore, the study points out which web servers are the most important data providers for this search service and which information sources are highly represented. The paper can show that there is a relatively large gap in Google Scholar's coverage of German literature as well as weaknesses in the accessibility of Open Access content. Major commercial academic publishers are currently the main data providers.

Five different journal lists were analysed, including approximately 9,500 single titles. The lists are from different fields and of various sizes. This limits comparability. There were also some problems matching the journal titles of the original lists to the journal title data provided by Google Scholar. The study was only able to analyse the top 100 Google Scholar hits per journal.

The paper concludes that Google Scholar has some interesting pros (such as citation analysis and free materials) but the service cannot be seen as a substitute for the use of special abstracting and indexing databases and library catalogues due to various weaknesses (such as transparency, coverage and up‐to‐dateness).

The authors do not know of any other study using such a brute force approach and such a large empirical basis. The study can be considered as using brute force in the sense that it gathered lots of data from Google and then analysed the data in a macroscopic way.

The general science portal “vascoda” merges structured, high‐quality information collections from more than 40 providers on the basis of search engine technology (FAST) and a concept which treats semantic heterogeneity between different controlled vocabularies. First experiences with the portal show some weaknesses of this approach which come out in most metadata‐driven Digital Libraries (DLs) or subject specific portals. The purpose of the paper is to propose models to reduce the semantic complexity in heterogeneous DLs. The aim is to introduce value‐added services (treatment of term vagueness and document re‐ranking) that gain a certain quality in DLs if they are combined with heterogeneity components established in the project “Competence Center Modeling and Treatment of Semantic Heterogeneity”.

Two methods, which are derived from scientometrics and network analysis, will be implemented with the objective to re‐rank result sets by the following structural properties: the ranking of the results by core journals (so‐called Bradfordizing) and ranking by centrality of authors in co‐authorship networks.

The methods, which will be implemented, focus on the query and on the result side of a search and are designed to positively influence each other. Conceptually, they will improve the search quality and guarantee that the most relevant documents in result sets will be ranked higher.

The central impact of the paper focuses on the integration of three structural value‐adding methods, which aim at reducing the semantic complexity represented in distributed DLs at several stages in the information retrieval process: query construction, search and ranking and re‐ranking.

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical review of Bergman's study on the deep web. In addition, this study brings a new concept into the discussion, the academic invisible web (AIW). The paper defines the academic invisible web as consisting of all databases and collections relevant to academia but not searchable by the general‐purpose internet search engines. Indexing this part of the invisible web is central to scientific search engines. This paper provides an overview of approaches followed thus far.

Provides a discussion of measures and calculations, estimation based on informetric laws. Also gives a literature review on approaches for uncovering information from the invisible web.

Bergman's size estimate of the invisible web is highly questionable. This paper demonstrates some major errors in the conceptual design of the Bergman paper. A new (raw) size estimate is given.

The precision of this estimate is limited due to a small sample size and lack of reliable data.

This study can show that no single library alone will be able to index the academic invisible web. The study suggests a collaboration to accomplish this task.

Provides library managers and those interested in developing academic search engines with data on the size and attributes of the academic invisible web.

To demonstrate that newer developments in the semantic web community, particularly those based on ontologies (simple knowledge organization system and others) mitigate common arguments from the digital library (DL) community against participation in the Semantic web.

The approach is a semantic web discussion focusing on the weak structure of the Web and the lack of consideration given to the semantic content during indexing.

The points criticised by the semantic web and ontology approaches are the same as those of the DL “Shell model approach” from the mid‐1990s, with emphasis on the centrality of its heterogeneity components (used, for example, in vascoda). The Shell model argument began with the “invisible web”, necessitating the restructuring of DL approaches. The conclusion is that both approaches fit well together and that the Shell model, with its semantic heterogeneity components, can be reformulated on the semantic web basis.

A reinterpretation of the DL approaches of semantic heterogeneity and adapting to standards and tools supported by the W3C should be the best solution. It is therefore recommended that – although most of the semantic web standards are not technologically refined for commercial applications at present – all individual DL developments should be checked for their adaptability to the W3C standards of the semantic web.

A unique conceptual analysis of the parallel developments emanating from the digital library and semantic web communities.

The purpose of this paper is to offer insights into the usability, acceptance and limitations of e‐readers with regard to the specific requirements of scholarly text work. To fit into the academic workflow, non‐linear reading, bookmarking, commenting, extracting text or the integration of non‐textual elements must be supported.

A group of social science students were questioned about their experiences with electronic publications for study purposes. This same group executed several text‐related tasks with the digitized material presented to them in two different file formats on four different e‐readers. Their performances were subsequently evaluated in detail.

E‐publications have made advances in the academic world; however e‐readers do not yet fit seamlessly into the established chain of scholarly text‐processing focusing on how readers use material during and after reading. The authors' tests revealed major deficiencies in these techniques.

The usability test of e‐readers in a scientific context aligns with both studies on the prevalence of e‐books in the sciences and technical test reports of portable reading devices. Still, it takes a distinctive angle in focusing on the characteristics and procedures of textual work in the social sciences and measures the usability of e‐readers and file‐features against these standards.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the papers in the special issue which explores some of the potential, opportunities and challenges to be found in greater library and information science alignment with semantic web developments.

The article is a general review of the papers in the issue.

For many digital libraries or cultural institutions, the semantic web offers an opportunity to better expose valuable digital resources pertaining to research, culture or history, using common standards and technologies in a collaborative and “joined up” way. The papers in this issue “paint a rainbow”, exploring the issues through elements of case studies, reviews research and conceptual expositions and viewpoints.

The article emphasises how the practical implications of semantic web research or developments for digital libraries and repositories is important for LIS professionals.

Investigating the beginning of project management (app. 30 BC) with a focus on business models similar to the “PDCA” cycle, the purpose of this paper is to find an approach which could be used as a new standard procedure for the eradication of projects in Lean project management.

Based on literature research of models similar to Walter A. Shehwart’s three-step and Edward W. Deming’s four-step (PDC(A)) wheel, the investigated models are interconnected to form a new concept which represents an innovative cycle logic proposed to be applied in Lean project management. This new cycle logic is rolled out on three different levels, which are transferred from the Lean management hoshin kanri model to Lean project management. In addition to literature research, semi-structured interviews were performed to get an indication as to the integration of Lean management (with a focus on PDCA) in project management today.

It was found that the “Check Plan Do” cycle is a Lean variant of the “Plan Do Check Act” model that is already used in consulting projects in practice, partially appears in project management standards, in governance models of ambulance, fire services, human aid and military forces and in quality management models of Six Sigma, design for Six Sigma and an excellence model of the European Foundation for Quality Management. To ensure continuous improvement it was found that the new CPD cycle can be used on different “planning” levels in analogy to the hoshin kanri logic.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, a discussion as to how the PDCA cycle can be adapted to Lean project management, considering the implication of business models similar to the PDCA wheel, has not yet been conducted within the field of project management.

Increasing awareness around the world of the environmental impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from human activities such as air travel warrants consideration of the effects of research and activities within the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE). The authors hypothesize that consideration of CIE research’s environmental impact is seldom, if ever, discussed in the literature. To test this hypothesis, the authors conduct a content analysis of articles published in selected major CIE journals to analyze how researchers account for their environmental impact. In addition to presenting the findings of this analysis, the authors provide a selection of queries for examining one’s own practices as a CIE researcher in relation to environmental sustainability. The authors provide preliminary suggestions for ways to reduce GHG production and the environmental impact of continued CIE research and call for acknowledgement of these impacts in publications. Ultimately, the authors suggest that more needs be done to examine CIE scholars’ ecological impact in conducting research and use this chapter as a starting point for conversations in this vein.