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The purpose of this paper is to define the scientific production and productivity, and to present the main indicators for the measurement of the scientific activity. The impact of the research is to be measured and analyzed through citation analysis.

This is an exploratory study made at the Transilvania University of Brasov to evaluate the research output of the faculty. The author analyzed the 2008 research performance as documented in its annual evaluation that states the number of papers, books, and research contracts. Using Publish or Perish, the author calculated the H‐index, G‐index, HC‐index and HI norm, of the 60 more‐productive professors. Correlation indicators are presented and the importance of open access tools and repositories for increasing the impact of scientific research is discussed.

The Publish or Perish software is an easy to use instrument for analyzing the impact of research. It calculates the impact of the researchers using the very visible resource, Google Scholar. Google Scholar has better indexing of proceedings and non‐English language material than ISI Web of Science but does not perform so well tracking citations from books and chapters of books.

Authors' impact analysis and citations are not an assessment tool in Romanian universities, but it is commonly accepted that increasing research impact through more citations is one qualitative indicator.

It was suggested to the faculty that all professors have to be analysed with the same indicator. Further, Google Scholar and the H‐index obtained using Publish or Perish offer tools for assessing scientific research in a university and for evaluating professors.

The results showed that an open access institutional repository would significantly add to the visibility of the university's scientific production.

The paper presents the methodology and the results of an exploratory study made at the Transilvania University of Brasov regarding the H‐Index of the academic staff. It analyzes the research performances achieved by Brasov academic community in 2008, as realised in its annual evaluation – number of papers, books, research contracts, etc. – by comparing the four indexes of those 60 professors with the best results.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that e-learning can be a viable alternative teaching method for information literacy according to a comparison of librarian’s time spent on face-to-face teaching with tutoring the e-learning course, average time spent in a week on learning by the students, time flexibility of e-learning, students’ satisfaction with e-learning and students’ ability to gain practical skills and theoretical knowledge through e-learning.

Satisfaction of medical students with e-learning and their average weekly time spent learning were assessed through surveys designed in Google Documents. Weekly time spent by students learning in class and the number of the librarian's teaching hours were set by the university schedule, and time spent on tutoring e-learning was measured. Details of accesses to study materials and submission of tasks as well as exam results were collected from Masaryk University Learning Management System.

In 2011, 50 per cent less time was expended on tutoring e-learning than time spent with the same number of students in the previous three years in the classroom. One-third of the students learned for more hours a week through e-learning than students in class. No significant difference in gained theoretical knowledge between these students was found. On average, 90 per cent of tasks submitted to e-learning were correct the first time. e-learning was appreciated by the students for its time (93 per cent) and space (83 per cent) flexibility, the online materials (62 per cent) and self-managing learning time (55 per cent). Details of access to the study materials confirmed time flexibility.

Due to time saved and considering the lack of any significant difference in the knowledge gained by students, e-learning can be a viable alternative teaching method for information literacy.

The literature reveals there is a limited knowledge regarding the extraction of long natural fibers, in particular those extracted from leaves. This investigation aims to present the extraction process and the characterization of long natural cellulose fibers from doum palm leaves (Hyphaene thebaica L.), with properties suitable for polymeric composite materials and textile applications.

The resulting H. thebaica L. fibers were identified using Attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The physical properties of the extracted fibers were measured to estimate the reliability of extraction conditions. Mechanical properties were evaluated to determine ultimate strength, Young’s modulus and strain-at-failure of the fibers of the doum leaves.

The following properties of the doum palm are listed in this paper: physical properties of doum palm fibers (H. thebaica L.), TGA, XRD of doum palm fibers, tensile properties of doum palm fibers and surface morphology of doum palm fibers.

Like synthetic fibers, the inclusion of short or long natural fibers into the polymer matrix can increase tensile, flexural and compressive strengths of these matrixes. Compared to the short-length natural fibers, longer-length fibers provide better reinforcements and therefore accord higher performances to the composites. Long fibers can also provide exceptional opportunities to develop a new class of advanced lightweight composites and have the potential to rival glass fiber in the manufacture of composite materials, using matrix materials, such as polypropylene, epoxy and phenolic resins.

The following values are presented in this paper: density of doum palm fibers = 1.14-1.40 g/cm², linear density (Tex) = 33.10 ±11.5, equivalent diameter (µm) = 178.72 ± 41.7, diameter (µm) = 137.02-220.42, tensile strength (MPa) = 124.84-448.10, Young’s modulus (GPa) = 8.06-19.59, strain-at-failure (%) = 0.81-2.86.

The main purpose of this article is to describe and to evaluate the results of evaluation of the e‐learning course, Information Literacy, which is taught by the librarians at the Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University. In the article the results are discussed to inform about the librarians' experience with tutoring the course.

The survey covers the medical students who enrolled on the course between autumn 2008 and autumn 2010. The students were requested to fill the questionnaire designed in Google Documents and based on the quantitative method, including a five‐point Likert scale combined with closed and open ended questions.

Results show the medical students are satisfied with the e‐learning course, Information Literacy, because of time and space flexibility, studying at their own pace and online interactive tutorials. More than half the students found the gradual releasing of the study materials and the tasks as the main motivation for continous learning. Most of the students were satisfied with the taught topics like methodology of searching in the databases Web of Science, Scopus and medical databeses, using EndNoteWeb and citation style ISO 690. Most of the tasks like searching in the online databases, working with EndNoteWeb or finding the impact factor of a journal were evaluated as beneficial.

The results have suggested several important revisions to the e‐learning course, Information Literacy. The librarians have decided to create the interactive tutorials explaining the importance of the topics according to the students' needs in the future and writing a scientific paper and remove the parts of tutorials describing the library terminology and catalogues. Besides this decision, two new tasks – verifying online access to the full text of journals and finding signs of plagiarism in a short text – have been added since spring 2011. Finally the librarians will prepare some printed material supporting the course and improve the publicity of their e‐learning course among the teachers who can recommend the course to their students.

The article presents one of the first experiences with the e‐learning course Information Literacy for medical students in the Czech Republic. The results and its discussion can help other librarians who are going to prepare a similar e‐learning course in planning the conception of their course.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the interdisciplinary relations in some high‐priority fields of science and technology based on ISI data.

This is an applied study using scientometric, citation analysis and network analysis methods. The study population consists of scientific articles of Iranian researchers in five fields that have been indexed in “WOS” database. These fields are included nanotechnology, biophysics, nuclear physics, sociology and communication. After identifying and extracting data from “WOS” (included 1,777 records), in order to determine the interdisciplinary relations and the evolution of these relationships, the citations of these records (41,080 citations) have been extracted and analysed.

The results indicate all the studied scientific fields have self‐citation and other‐citation. Depending on the type of field, the rate of intra‐disciplinary and extra‐disciplinary citations is various. There is a positive correlation between co‐authorship and interdisciplinary approach in all the studied fields. There is no significant relation between the number of citations and interdisciplinary approach. Overall, the results showed the use of only a bibliographic method cannot specify all aspects of interdisciplinarity of the scientific field. Simultaneous use of different analysis methods such as citation analysis, co‐authorship analysis and bibliographic coupling is necessary in order to data exchange between fields.

The analysis and mapping of interdisciplinary relations in a scientific field can provide useful information regarding connectivity and interdependence among areas. Through such studies, the status of cooperation between disciplines and the evolutionary trend of it is well defined. The results of these studies would also be useful in developing the interdisciplinary collaboration among professionals and understanding their information needs and plan to meet these needs.

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.

Usually the impact of research and researchers is quantified by using citation data: either by journal‐centered citation data as in the case of the journal impact factor (JIF) or by author‐centered citation data as in the case of the Hirsch‐ or h‐index. This paper aims to discuss a range of impact measures, especially usage‐based metrics, and to report the results of two surveys.

The first part of the article analyzes both citation‐based and usage‐based metrics. The second part is based on the findings of the surveys: one in the form of a brainstorming session with information professionals and scientists at the OAI6 conference in Geneva, the second in the form of expert interviews, mainly with scientists.

The results of the surveys indicate an interest in the social aspects of science, like visualizations of social graphs both for persons and their publications. Furthermore, usage data are considered an appropriate measure to describe quality and coverage of scientific documents; admittedly, the consistence of usage information among repositories has to be kept in mind. The scientists who took part in the survey also asked for community services, assuming these might help to identify relevant scientific information more easily. Some of the other topics of interest were personalization or easy submission procedures.

This paper delineates current discussions about citation‐based and usage‐based metrics. Based on the results of the surveys, it depicts which functionalities could enhance repositories, what features are required by scientists and information professionals, and whether usage‐based services are considered valuable. These results also outline some elements of future repository research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights on the improvement of academic impact and social attention of Chinese collaboration articles from the perspective of altmetrics.

The authors retrieved articles which are from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and indexed by Nature Index as sampled articles. With the methods of distribution analysis, comparative analysis and correlation analysis, authors compare the coverage differences of altmetric sources for CAS Chinese articles and CAS international articles, and analyze the correlation between the collaborative information and the altmetric indicators.

Results show that the coverage of altmetric sources for CAS international articles is greater than that for CAS Chinese articles. Mendeley and Twitter cover a higher percentage of collaborative articles than other sources studied. Collaborative information, such as number of collaborating countries, number of collaborating institutions, and number of collaborating authors, show moderate or low correlation with altmetric indicator counts. Mendeley readership has a moderate correlation with altmetric indicators like tweets, news outlets and blog posts.

International scientific collaboration at different levels improves attention, academic impact and social impact of articles. International collaboration and altmetrics indicators supplement each other. The results of this study can help us better understand the relationship between altmetrics indicators of articles and collaborative information of articles. It is of great significance to evaluate the influence of Chinese articles, as well as help to improve the academic impact and social attention of Chinese collaboration articles.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, few studies focus on the use of altmetrics to assess publications produced through Chinese academic collaboration. This study is one of a few attempts that include the number of collaborating countries, number of collaborating institutions, and number of collaborating authors of scientific collaboration into the discussion of altmetric indicators and figured out the relationship among them.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of selected factors in journal citations. Various factors can affect citations distribution of journals. Among them, skewness of citations distribution, author self-citation, journal self-citation and recitations (RCs) have been studied.

The present study based on 16 systematically selected journals indexed in Scopus under the subject category “Library and Information Science.” The study was confined to original research and review articles that were published in the selected journals in the year 2011. The temporal citation window from 2011 to 2014 was taken for analysis. Tools like, Scopus author ID, ORCID and author profiles from Google Scholar were used to minimize the error due to homonyms, spelling variances and misspelling in authors’ names.

It is found that citations distribution in majority of the journals under the study is highly skewed and more likely to follow log-normal distribution. The nature of authorship in papers was found to have positive effect on citation counts. Self-citing data show that higher ranked journals have rather less direct impact on total citation counts than their lower counterpart. RCs are also found to be more in top-tier journals. Though the influence of self-citations and RCs were relatively less at individual level on total citations of journals but combined, they can play a dominant role and can affect total citation counts of journals at significant level.

The present study is based on Scopus database only. Therefore, citation data can be affected by the inherent limitation of Scopus. Readers are encouraged to further the study by taking into account large sample and tracing citations from an array of citation indexes, such as Web of Science, Google citations, Indian Citation Index, etc.

This paper reinforces that the citations received by journals can be affected by the factors selected in this study. Therefore, the study provides better understanding of the role of these selected factors in journal citations.