Information School News

How can we more systematically assess whether an information retrieval system (e.g., a search engine), delivers an engaging user experience?  This is the question that has initiated a research project among PhD student, Mengdie Zhuang and her supervisors, Professor Elaine Toms , and Dr.  Gianluca Demartini . To date, search systems are evaluated using a range of isolated measures and metrics, mostly drawn from computer logfiles that contain keystrokes and mouse clicks. Some systems are assessed at the end of using the system with a questionnaire or interview.  When the system delivers a negative user experience, the system has no time to rectify its actions when the evaluation occurs at the end of using the system. This research team is looking at how one might examine the patterns of those actions so as to predict whether the user is likely to express a positive or negative assessment, combining both types of evaluations used to date.  Th...

Wasim Ahmed , second year PhD student in the Health Informatics Research group, presented a paper co-authored with Professor Peter Bath and Dr Gianluca Demartin i on the Ethical Issues of Researching Twitter at the Social Media and Research Ethics conference on 22 March 2016.   Organised by the Research Ethics Group of the Academy of Social Sciences and the NSMNSS network, the one-day conference aimed to further develop and explore the ethics of social science research using social media. The slides for the presentation can be found here .

The 2018 iConference will be hosted by the University of Sheffield Information School and the University of Northumbria Department of Mathematics and Information Science. The conference will be hosted in Sheffield from 25-28 March, 2018. Further information on the conference can be found on the iSchools website here .

A blog post from the Information School's Professor Stephen Pinfield has been published on the LSE Impact Blog . Stephen's post entitled ' Enabling authors to pay for open access – The Gold Open Access market and the role of an institutional central fund' discusses examines how institutional central funds have enabled authors to pay open access OA) article-processing charges (APCs). The post considers how institutional funds may have facilitated adoption of OA from 2006 to 2014 and the full post can be viewed on the LSE blog here.   Further information on the research can be found in the research article published by Professor Stephen Pinfield and Chris Middleton (2016). Researchers’ adoption of an institutional central fund for open-access article-processing charges: A case study using Innovation Diffusion Theory. SAGE Open. doi: 10.1177/2158244015625447

Hatoon Qadiee, a fomer PhD student at the Information School and Saudi YouTube comedian has been interviwed by the BBC News. The interview talks about what makes Saudis laugh and the limits of what they can joke about.   Hatoon graduated in 2015 and her research on academics in a women-only HEI in Saudi Arabia, explored the (perceived) changes in teaching styles, strategies, relationships with students and active involvement with virtual learning environments that have come about as a result of technological changes. The interview can be seen in full on BBC Trending here.