Enhancing E-Journal Access In A Digital Work Environment

Enhancing e-journal access in a digital work environment Foo, S. (2006). Singapore Journal of Library & Information Management, 34, 31-40. Enhancing E-Journal Access In A Digital Work Environment Schubert Foo Division of Information Studies, School of Communication and Information Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637718 assfoo@ntu.edu.sg Abstract. Digital Work Environment (DWE) is a task-based digital library that interfaces various types of academic users with a comprehensive set of internal and external information resources for completing specific users tasks. This study advances the initial DWE system to examine the provision of additional value-adding in the form of identifying new information attributes associated with the e-journal resource to serve as additional information for users to better identify and select the most appropriate e-journal to complete their task. These e- journal attributes can be distinguished at the journal, issue and article level of the user interface. This paper details the identification of these attributes, incorporation of them in a DWE mock-up, and the ensuing user evaluation study on 26 participants to assess the usefulness of these attributes. These included the incorporation of the subject coverage information at the journal level, article abstract and keywords at the issue level, and the capability to retrieve other articles having same keywords. The findings showed that these new features were welcomed by more than 75% of the respondents. They provided useful information for decision making and facilitated faster and more efficient access to journal articles and saved users time to locate information resources. Keyword linking which allows other related articles to be retrieved was also found useful. Other findings suggest the use of information organisation tools such as subject headings and thesauri to support hierarchical browsing, allowing more user control to display a fixed number of lines of abstract or to use pagination to overcome the potential information overload problem. 1 Introduction The Digital Work Environment (DWE), developed in the Division of Information Studies (DIS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), is designed with the main objective of providing a one stop access point to local and remote digital library collections, traditional in-house libraries, and most importantly, the vast array of information resources 1

that exists in the academic community s intranet (Meyyappan, Chowdhury & Foo, 2001a, 2001b). DWE uses the task-based model to provide an efficient means of organising and facilitating access to these resources by recognising different academic users (e.g. staff, student, administrator) perform different tasks, that in turn, uses different information resources. By carrying an information needs study and defining appropriate information resources for each task, sub-task, or sub-sub-task, it becomes possible to present users only with the necessary information resources to complete these tasks (Meyyappan, Al-Hawamdeh & Foo, 2001, 2002). Figure 1 shows DWE s interface that is basically divided into a task hierarchy frame on the left and a list of filtered resources on the right. The task-hierarchy changes according to user categories to support different users of the system. Different information resources are displayed at different tasks and sub-tasks accordingly. Upon selecting an information resource, the content of the resource will be displayed. In Figure 1, the leaf of a sub-task Literature Review is selected, thereby activating a list of pre-defined e-journals that can be selected directly by the user. Figure 1. DWE Interface In addition to the task-based approach to organise and filter information resources, DWE also supports other forms of information organisation techniques to organise its range of information resources. These include providing an alphabetical listing of all resources, organising information resources via subject headings, as well as using a hybrid approach combining these different techniques and leaving it to the discretion of the users to select and use. Additionally, DWE also supports basic and advanced searching. An evaluation study completed previously gave a clear indication that the task-based approach was by far the most effective and efficient technique to organise information resources among all these techniques (Meyyappan & Foo, 2002). 2

This study advances DWE by examining the feasibility of providing additional valueadding features to the environment as part of a further enhancement to the system. Specifically, the study is scoped and limited to studying value-adding features in relation to the Electronic Journals group of information resources. It aims to identify and evaluate new attributes that are not already present in the original DWE to assess its suitability to engage the users to improve the selection and access of e-journals. 2 Methodology As part of this study, major features of three e-journals from different publishers (Library Hi-Tech (LHT), ACM Transaction of Information System (ACM TOIS) and Library & Information Science Research (LISR)) were first studied to identify common and distinct information attributes. Examples of common attributes include article title, author, abstract, keyword, and publication year, etc. The less common attributes include language, content quality indicators, peer review(s) of articles, and figure captions (see subsequent Findings section). Using this information as an aid, a questionnaire User Feedback Accessing Electronic Journals via Digital Work Environment (DWE) was designed to elicit information about e-journals that users consider important in helping them to perform effective search and retrieval. One specific question (Q17) sought to determine the information attributes of e-journals that are deemed important in searching e-journal sites (Hew, 2002). The provision of such information would help reduce search time and aid the user to select documents that are relevant to meet their needs. The five most highly cited information attributes identified from this questionnaire were used as the basis for mock-up development. These included the article title, abstract, subject coverage, author and keywords (see subsequent Findings section). There were effectively the value-added features that were examined to determine the ways in which they could add value to e-journal access. We relied on the reviewed e-journal sites for ideas on how these could be incorporated into DWE as well as feedback gleaned from the respondents in completing the questionnaire. Eventually, the additional features incorporated into the mock up included the incorporation the subject coverage at the journal level, article abstract and keywords at the issue level, and the capability to retrieve other articles having same keywords (Hew, 2002). The mock-up emulated steps typically taken by users in selecting e-journals for literature review. Upon selecting the Electronic Journals group of information resources, users are shown a list of e-journals with the title, publisher, ISSN and subject coverage, along with the issues that are available for access. Upon selecting a specific issue, users are provided with a list of all the articles in an issue together with the article abstracts and keywords (Figure 2). The hyperlinked keywords, if available and clicked by user, will generate a list of all articles in the various available issues of the journal that contains the same keywords (not shown). This is intended to facilitate easy identification of related articles (Hew, 2002). 3

Figure 2. Articles in each issue with abstract and keywords shown Clicking on the title hyperlink of an article will generate a new page containing the full information about the article. Attributes displayed include the article full citation (author, title, journal, issue, volume, page numbers), keywords, ISSN, and an article abstract (Figure 3). Figure 3. Selected journal article detail A total of 24 articles from ACM TOIS were used as the mock-up data. These were stored in a database and ASP scripts were used to extract data to be displayed on the mock-up system. 4

A second questionnaire was developed and used in this study - User Feedback Evaluation of Mock-up Digital Work Environment (DWE) System to evaluate the mock-up. In addition to demographic information, computer experience, use of e-journals, the questionnaire sought to obtain qualitative feedback on the mock up system, and additional features incorporated, and quantitative feedback on the usefulness of various information attributes at different journal levels in aiding information retrieval (Hew, 2002). FINDINGS Table 1 summarises the major features of the LHT, ACM TOIS and LISR e-journal sites, including the common and less common attributes that are present at the different levels, and the different search features supported. The first questionnaire that was administered to 14 participants elicited information about the respondents background, computer and e-journals usage, e-journal searching patterns, and information about e-journals that they consider important in helping them to perform effective searching, thereby enabling them to make a decision of the relevance of the journals to meet their information needs. These participants were all graduating students of the Master of Science (Information Studies) programme at NTU. Of particular interest to this study is the latter where it was found that respondents employed several techniques to retrieve specific articles from a journal. A total of 13 (92.9%) respondents preferred to search for articles using keywords and 10 (71.4%), by browsing. Respondents did not particularly favoured the methods of searching by classification or table of contents (TOC) as popular, with low percentages of 50% (7 respondents) and 21.4% (3 respondents) being obtained respectively. Respondents rated information (attributes) that will assist them in effective retrieval of articles, using a 5 point scale (1=very low, 3=neutral, 5=very high). Their averages scores across various attributes are shown in Table 2. 5

Table 1. Summary of e-journal features, attributes and site functionality LISR LHT ACM TOIS Publisher Elsevier Science Emerald ACM Information Journal level Volume, issue Page numbers Season Issue level Article tile Article start & end pages Article author(s) Links to article summary, article (HTML), journal (PDF + size) Article level SummaryPlus Full article (HTML) Full article (PDF + size) Simple search capability Advanced search capability No search function provided No search function provided Volume, year Access type (subscription, free sample issue, etc) Article title Article author(s) Article start & end pages Keyword(s) Article type Content indicators Link to delivery options Author & affiliation Acknowledgement Abstract Article type Keyword(s) Content indicators Text body References Field search (journal, title, author, keyword, abstract, full text, all header fields) Phrase search Truncation Subscribed titles Simple search Selected journal Content indicator search Article type search Publication year search Sort by relevance newest or oldest ISSN Current issue (volume, issue, month, year) Archive issues (volume, issue, month, year) Article title Article author(s) Article start & end pages Link to full text Article tile Article author(s) & affiliation Publisher Article start & end pages Publication year ISSN Link to full text article Abstract References Index term Peer to peer Keyword search Phrase search Boolean Proximity search Attribute searching Simple search Publication search (publisher, place, date, type, e.g. proceeding, journal, etc) Author/editor search Conference proceeding search (sponsor, location, date) Classification search (primary classification in CCS) Require full-text, abstract, review 6

Table 2. Average score for importance of e-journal information attributes (N=17) Journal Attribute Average Score Journal Attribute Average Score Article title 4.5 Author affiliation 3.1 Article abstract 4.3 Peer review(s) of article 3.1 Subject coverage 4.1 Volumes & issues 2.9 Author(s) of article 3.9 References 2.9 Keyword(s) in article 3.9 Article classification 2.8 Publication year 3.8 Table captions 2.6 Article type 3.7 Figure captions 2.5 Language 3.7 Start & end pages 2.4 Content quality indicator(s) 3.6 ISSN 2.0 The five top attributes of the data set of Table 2 (shown bold) formed the basis for the development of the mock-up. Several ways can be employed to enhance the process to access to e-journals using these attributes. As mentioned previously, existing processes from the 3 previous e-journal sites were studied, evaluated, designed and implemented in the mock-up. A larger pool of 26 participants (from an invitation to 33 participants) evaluated the DWE mock-up and completed this stage of the study. Likewise, these participants were from the same graduating pool of Master students. Male students made up 34.6% (9 respondents) and the female students 65.4% (17 respondents) of the respondents. Of this, 11 (42.3%) of them participated in the first part of the study. The respondents were asked to cite reasons for accessing e-journals and the method they normally use to find articles. All 26 (100%) of them used e-journals for their dissertations, and 23 (88.5%) used them to source for materials for assignments. Only 8 (30.8%) respondents would access e-journals for the sole purpose of learning more about a topic and 1 (3.8%) respondent access e-journals for evaluation purposes. In terms of methods to retrieve articles, the most frequently used method is searching by keywords (24 respondents or 92.3%), followed by browsing (18 respondents or 69.2%), search by subject classification (46.2%) and search by Table of Contents (26.9%). Hence, most respondents relied on searching as the main means to search and retrieve e-journal articles rather than browsing, which was viewed as a laborious time-consuming task. In browsing, they would have to go through more steps to ensure that the articles retrieved would satisfy their information needs. A pertinent finding from the mock up evaluation showed a majority of 20 respondents (76.9%) agreed that when an abstract was made available for viewing at a higher level (i.e. at issue level) as compared to the more common article level, it facilitated faster access to articles. This feature basically allows a quick scan on the abstract to be carried out by the user. Essentially, more relevant and useful information is provided in this manner to aid decision-making. However, 6 respondents (23.1%) indicated that the incorporation of the article abstract along with other fundamental article information, such as title, author(s), article start and end pages, and sometimes PDF file size, would result in extremely lengthy pages, 7

thereby resulting in information overload. Pages have to be scrolled up and down more frequently, thereby retarding the effectiveness of browsing and selection. Another positive feature which was acknowledged by all respondents is attributed to the means of retrieving related articles by simply by clicking on the hyperlinked keywords. This eliminates the possibility of entering inaccurate (i.e non-existent) keywords as compared to defined keywords, or simply not knowing the terms to be used for keywords. At the same time, it conveniently retrieves related-articles almost effortlessly. The respondents were also asked to rate the importance of a number of information attributes at different levels of the interface as a means to provide faster access to articles using the scale of 1 (very useful) to 5 (not useful at all). Table 3 shows the average rating for these attributes with the items in bold being the value-added features incorporated into the mock up system. Table 3. Average rating for e-journal information attributes (N=26) E-journal information attributes Journal level Average rating E-journal information attributes Article level Average rating Journal title 1.5 Article title 1.2 Subject coverage of journal 1.7 Keyword(s) 1.3 Volume/ issue/ year of publication 2.3 Abstract 1.5 Publisher 2.5 Article author(s) 1.6 ISSN 4.0 References 2.2 Headings 2.3 Table captions 2.6 Figure captions 2.6 Issue level Article title 1.2 Article author(s) 1.5 Article keyword(s) 1.5 Article abstract 1.7 PDF size 2.7 Page start & end of article 3.5 Table 3 shows that the newly added information attributes had garnered relatively high ratings in between very useful and useful. The subject coverage information provided at journal level was perceived to provide users with a clearer idea of the scope of coverage of the journal and the suitability of it as an information source. The article abstract and keywords when brought up to the issue level allowed users a faster means to determine the article s suitability through browsing without having the need to display the full individual articles or abstracts. Respondents were indifferent about a number of attributes that were usually present in e-journals, particularly the ISSN of the journal (4.0), and the start and end page number of articles (3.5). 8

When asked to list down information attributes that were considered helpful and the level in which they should be displayed, many respondents recommendations centred on the provision of on subject coverage (headings) at all levels in addition to subject coverage at the journal level. Other information attributes included popularity of article (ie. number of times article is retrieved at issue level), the number of articles by the same author (issue and article levels), organisation or institute of research (issue and article levels) and the number of pages of an issue (issue level). Respondents also provided inputs for further improvement. Some salient responses include: articles to be sorted alphabetically in a title list; provision of subject headings to organise articles with the ability to browse articles under broader and narrower subject headings; subject coverage to be displayed at the issue level if such issues are not generic but focussed on special topics (e.g. special journal issues); ratings or comments by experts; and popping up a new window to display the keyword link results in order to maintain context in the original window. 3 Discussion and Conclusion E-journals are increasingly endowed with additional features to improve its accessibility and use. From the perspective of academic digital libraries, they are very important information resources, frequently used, and play high scholarly and research roles. DWE served as a platform to many heterogeneous information resources for specific tasks, including e-journals. As a means to further enhance the usability of DWE, this study examined means in which information access can be improved at the DWE interface by providing additional appropriate information attributes that could be crucial to decisionmaking at an earlier stage of the information seeking process. For example, the scope of subject coverage of a journal is normally found on a separate About the Journal or similar sections of a typical e-journal web site, and could sometimes be missed altogether in a haste of time. By providing a subset of this information at the journal level display together with other information, users are quickly informed of the journal coverage, thereby eliminating the time needed to obtain the information at the e- journal web site. Likewise, the addition of the journal s subject coverage, the abstract and keywords of an article displayed at the issue level afforded user faster access to information. Users could scan through these abstracts and keywords to have a good idea of an article s focus without needing to drill down as per conventional practice. Although this approach can have a potential negative impact of being overwhelmed with too much information, especially when long abstracts are prevalent, we cannot ignore the enhanced quality of information and time saved to get access to the relevant information resource. Suggestions to eradicate this problem include the provision of a snapshot of the abstract (e.g. apply abstracting and display a concise abstract, or display a fixed number of characters or lines as defined by the user) to serve as a preview to the full abstract, thereby reducing the number of lines on the output display; or to use pagination to limit the number of retrieved articles per page to minimise page scrolling. The capability of retrieving related articles having the same keywords was also found to be a very useful feature. The keywords provide information on the key focus of the 9

articles and the keyword links provide a seamless means to retrieve other related articles without any need for separate searches. However, this existing form of retrieval implies one common keyword among articles. An extension is to adopt the Find Related Information approach found in Internet search engines to use information on all the keywords and apply keyword (or even document) similarity measures to retrieve related articles, which in effect is moving towards a non-boolean model for information retrieval. It is acknowledged that this a small study utilising a small sample size so that the results are at best indicative at this stage. Nonetheless, these findings have given us important insights into ways and means to improve information resource access to e-journals, and to digital libraries in general. The next logical stage of work is to explore other means of value-adding, designing a more comprehensive usability study and utilising a larger and more representative sample of academic users in the evaluation. REFERENCES Hew, S.C. (2002). Digital Work Environment Enhancement to information access. Master of Science (Information Studies) dissertation, School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Meyyappan, N., Al-Hawamdeh, S., & Foo, S. (2001). Digital Work Environment (DWE): Using tasks to organize digital resources. Proceedings 5 th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL2001) (Darmstadt, Germany, September 2001), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 2163, 239-250 Meyyappan, N., Al-Hawamdeh, S., & Foo, S. (2002). Task based design of a digital work environment (DWE) for an academic community. Information Research, 7(2). Retrieved April 24, 2006, from http://informationr.net/ir/7-2/paper125.html Meyyappan, N., Chowdhury, G.G., & Foo, S. (2001a). Use of a digital work environment prototype to create a user-centred university digital library. Journal of Information Science, 27(4), 249-264. Meyyappan, N., Chowdhury, G.G., & Foo, S. (2001b). An architecture of a user-centred digital library for the academic community. Proceedings 12 th International Conference on New Information Technology (Beijing, China, May 2001), 175-182. Meyyappan, N., & Foo, S. (2002). Evaluation of a task-oriented digital work environment. Proceedings 5 th International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL2002) (Singapore, December 2002), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 2555, 465-466. 10