پژوهشنامه پردازش و مدیریت اطلاعات
سال سی و هفتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 108، زمستان 1400)

Conducting research in humanities sciences in Iran is faces with different barriers, including the small number of researchers, financial resources shortage, weak research infrastructure, etc.  Adressing these barriers is required for advancement in humanities sciences and exploring these barriers is the first step to address them, properly. The purpose of this study is to identify the key challenges of and barriers to research in the field of humanities in Iran. Several studies have been shed light on challenges of conducting research in humanities in Iran, which contain relevant data. In this research, through a "systematic review", 32 relevant studies (such as theses and dissertations, journal articles, and conference papers) were sampled for fulltext reading and analysis. Collected data were analyzed by coding method and dimensions of barriers were identified. Nearly 200 barriers to research in the humanities have been highlighted in academic literature, which can be summarized into 93 indicators and seven broad dimensions, namley poor social context, weak infrastructure, inefficient organization and management, inappropriate policy-making, incompetent researchers, incompatible rules and regulations, and distinct nature of humanities sciences. Perhaps policy-makers have been played a significant role in emergence of barriers. This study is the first attempt to take a comprehensive view on the barriers and challenges of conducting research in the humanities in Iran. The research policy-makers and decision-makers must be aware of the barriers and challenges that are impactful on research in order to design and implement appropriate and efficient policies and plans. The findings of this study can provide a better understanding of the barriers to reaserch in humanities sciences in Iran.

The dominance of pragmatic paradigm in science and technology policy has changed the approach to the management of scientific institutes. In pragmatic paradigm, scientific institutes should be able to respond stakeholders’ needs and requirements. This study aims to mapping brand associations network of IranDoc from the stakeholders' viewpoint. In order to mapping IranDoc brand associations network, brand concept map method was used. Brand concept map as a qualitative method has three stages of elicitation, mapping and aggregation. The statistical population of the research is the stakeholders of IranDoc Research Institute. The sampling method in elicitation and mapping stages are purposeful and sample size in both stages includes seventy people. IranDoc brand associations network has eighteen core associations. The core positive associations include prevention of plagiarism, search for scientific document, scientific sources, thesis, access to information, Ganj, electronic resources, scientific communication, research ethics, scientific accuracy, systems, science promotion, universities, information management, science policy, and the core negative associations include bureaucracy, multiple systems, and poorly designed sites. IranDoc brand associations network has two layers of associations. The analysis of IranDoc brand associations network shows low mental involvement of stakeholders with IranDoc brand and dispersion of stakeholder mentality about IranDoc brand. Thesis and plagiarism prevention have the strongest connection with IranDoc brand.

The aim of this study is to understand the concept of information avoidance in terms of origin, effective factors, behaviors, areas of the previous studies, and research gaps. This research was conducted by systematic review method using Kitchenham and Charters (2007) framework. By reviewing internal and external databases and studying the abstracts of retrieved articles with related keywords, 65 related articles were identified and after refinement, 49 related articles were reviewed without time limitation. After studying the articles related to information avoidance, and using the content analysis approach, the contents were categorized into several thematic categories and the questions were answered according to the aims of the research. The findings suggest that the origins of information avoidance could be traced back to theories such as cognitive dissonance theory of Festinger (1957), uncertainty reduction theory of Gudykunst (1985), and models such as Johnson’s (1997) and Wilson’s (1999). The most important factors influencing information avoidance could be classified into two categories of Hedonic and Strategic factors. The factors of hedonic category are preferences for resolution of compound lotteries, risk, loss, and disappointment aversion, anxiety, attention, regret aversion, optimism maintenance, dissonance avoidance, and belief investments. Strategic factors also fall into two categories: intrapersonal strategic avoidance (avoiding dynamic inconsistency, resisting temptation, motivation maintenance, avoiding projection biases, abdicating responsibility and saving it for later) and interpersonal strategic avoidance (avoiding spoiling information about themselves or receiving information about others, which causes a change in their attitudes toward them). Information avoidance behaviors are then introduced which include physical avoidance, inattention, biased interpretation of information, forgetting, and self-handicapping. Also, the contexts in which information avoidance has been discussed so far include health, risk information, social and news media, emotional relationships, and smoking, using common information avoidance assessment tools such as questionnaires, interviews, modeling, laboratory observation, and task defining are investigated. Finally, two of the important research gaps in this field are the lack of a comprehensive model for information avoidance that is responsive to any society and any problem, and the need to pay more attention to information avoidance in the field of knowledge and information science.

Plagiarism happens in a structure, and “other individuals” are very important in its occurance, so it can’t be a mere psychological phenomenon and must be concieved as social one, because structures have undebatable effect on act’s shape. Thus, plagiarism should be analyzed with societal variables. But we can design several models for explanation of its occurrence and order of involved variables. In this research the aim is to demonstrate and explain how the involved societal variables of plagiarism are organized to play their role in this phenomenon. For this reason, the Structural Equation Modeling method was used. Three valid models (structural, paradigmatic, systemic) and seven documented variables were adopted for examination. Needed data were gathered by means of a validated questionnaire from 540 master and PhD students in 36 largest universities in Iran selected randomly by multi-stage clustering method and then systematic choosing in each cluster. The gathered data was analyzed by Partial Least Square algorithm in PLS soft (version 3.3.3.). Three hypotheses were examined: 1. Structural model can better explain the order of occurance of variables in this phenomenon than other ones. 2. Economically observed variables are more effective than other ones. 3. Research formalism is more important mediator than other ones. Findings showed that systemic model has better fit indices than others and first hypothesis was rejected. Considering this model, the order of occurance of involved variables could be such that governmental capitalism (rental economics, erosion of specialization, commodification of knowledge) and cultural depositories (traditional discourses and ideological science) as inputs lead to process such as research formalism (mechanical research and dominance of rhethoric in research), scholastic habitus (scientific oligarchy and isolated researchers) and uncritical education (educational view to research). This process eventually lead to outputs such as indifference (immoral trade-off) and bureaucratic university (static evaluation and weakness of control). Second hypothesis was approved, and findings showed that economic observed variables are more effective than others in plagiarism phenomenon. Third hypothesis also was rejected, and findings showed that “scholastic habitus” (scientific oligarchy and isolated researchers) are more important mediators than research formalism and uncritical education.

Personal data is of great economic importance, which is called the currency of the future, but the environment in which people live and work with it constantly, collect and process personal data and use it in a variety of ways. Therefore, there is a need for laws that protect this valuable thing. The most important legal framework for the protection of personal data is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This regulation was approved in 2016 and came into force in 2018, and is currently the most comprehensive framework for the protection of personal data. However, in previous years the EU has enacted legislation on the protection of personal data (Personal Data Protection Directive 1995), but this regulation is the most complete legal framework for data protection due to its innovative features and protections. Due to the importance of this regulation in the protection of personal data, it is necessary to introduce this legal framework and express the basic concepts, scope of application and strengths of this regulation in order to better understand the protections contained in the GDPR. The present article, by searching this regulation and related sources, states this and takes steps to clarify this regulation to help formulate an appropriate legal framework regarding the protection of personal data in the Iranian legal system.

Nowadays, with the expansion of semantic web services, the need of search engines for conceptual networks and domain ontology to infer semantically from user queries and to retrieve optimal (accurate and relevant) information has also increasedThe present study is an applied research aiming to analyze the conceptual network of “Information security”, which its domain structure was discovered using a mixed method of co-word and social networks analysis. The statistical society included 10227 scientific documents (books and international journal and conference papers) which was searched on Scopus and Web of Science citation databases from 2013 to 2017. After preprocessing keywords and tags by Zotero, an extension of the Firefox web-browser, Excel was used to match 8 prominent information security glossaries. Gephi and VOSviewer were used to visualize and analyze the conceptual network. By analyzing 19648 keywords and tags, a total of 207 keywords were extracted from the last edition of the information security glossary. The results showed that this network includes 14 clusters, of which 5 are mature, 7 are half-mature, and 2 are immature, and it was sufficiently coherent and dense. The most important concepts of this network with the highest betweenness centrality are “Security”, “Information Security”, “Information Systems”, “Privacy”, “Information” “Telecommunication, “Encryption” and “Cryptography”, “Authentication”, “Cyber security”, “Network”, “Cloud Computing”, “Security Attacks”, “Access Control”, “Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)”, “Security Protocols”, “Risk”, “Risk Management and its Frameworks”, and “Service Level Agreement (SLA)”. These concepts are directly inter-related and connected.

The doctrine of representationalism is rooted in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences, but it can also be traced in the philosophy of language. The purpose of this paper is to apply representationalist approaches in language and meaning to knowledge and information science research. Therefore, in the first part, the application and achievements of representationalism for information retrieval action are analyzed. Studies are categorized according to their level of concern to language and meaning in organization and information retrieval. Then, in the second part, the representational approaches to Language in Information Retrieval Action (LIRA) are analyzed and criticized in the related research. In this analysis, philosophical approaches have been considered because the roots of representationalism can be traced in semantics and semiotics in linguistic approach. Representationalism with emphasis on the linguistic dimension in the organization and information retrieval research is a theory that is advocated due to the constant relationship between words and the world they represent. In this study representationalism in semantic tools (such as thesauri, subject headings, and classifications) consists of all processes (from indexing to user information searching and retrieval) called Information Retrieval Action (IRA), and can be criticized in various ways. Some studies focus on the nature of knowledge representation and find it in the philosophy of language. Some theoretical studies criticize representationalism by addressing cognitive sciences and related areas in the information representation and retrieval or by focusing on fundamental issues in the philosophy of language and its relation to information retrieval. Others go beyond linguistic level and analyze IRA in terms of semiotics and in connection to meaning. Some studies account for the representation (in knowledge organization and especially in classifications) not as a linguistic but paradigmatic issue at the level of modernist domination in the modern era against which postmodernism stands. Finally, this inquiry illustrates that information retrieval has been rooted in the paradigm of empiricism and positivism in these areas. Representationalism places the mind at the center of cognition and ignores other aspects such as context, culture and use of them. The changes that have taken place over time to overcome the problems in the field of retrieval, such as those of headings and thesauruses and the achievement of ontologies and folksonomies, illustrate the shortcomings of these paradigms arising from representational approaches to language and needs to be changed in favor of a pragmatic view point.

Clustering as a process to understand the nature and structure of data plays an important role in organizing data in many areas of science and technology. One of the most widely used and simple algorithms for clustering is K-means. The present study was conducted to systematically reviewing research on improving K-means algorithm on data clustering. This research examines the researches conducted in this field and its role in organizing data in the range of 2010 to 2020 with a new strategy based on the shortcomings of the K-means algorithm. For this purpose, the amount of attention of researchers to eliminate any of the shortcomings of this algorithm in order to improve it in recent years has been compiled in the form of research questions. In this study, with the use of a search strategy for refining and extracting articles, 47 related sources were identified and examined. Findings showed that most researches have been done by overcoming the sensitive shortcomings to initial cluster centers to improve the K-means algorithm. Also, out of a total of 47 studies, the improved K-means algorithm has been applied in 35 studies on non-textual data and in 12 studies on textual data. Finally, the results of a review of six studies showed that the amount of data is directly related to the performance of improved K-means algorithm. In other words, this algorithm must be modified in such a way as to perform efficient and accurate clustering by applying it to different amounts of data.

This research was aimed at identifying the antecedents and consequences of digital content marketing using grounded theory model (case study: Instagram bloggers). The statistical population in the qualitative section consisted of experts and knowledgeable people in the field of digital content marketing, especially Instagram bloggers. The sample size in the qualitative section with theoretical saturation (20 people) was estimated using purposeful sampling. The data collection tool in the qualitative part was a semi-structured interview. For validity and reliability of the work the Goba and Lincoln criteria were used, which consist of four more detailed concepts of validity, transferability, verifiability and reliability. MAXQDA software was used for coding. To analyze the data, Strauss and Corbin systematic method was performed with open coding, axial coding and selective coding. After data analysis, the paradigm model or optimal model of digital content marketing was extracted. The results identified 62 core codes, 216 indicators (open coding) and 6 selective coding of which 7 precedents (effective component) including motivation, business intelligence, audience experience, preferences, research and development, creativity, and influencers and 11 consequences (effective component) include competitiveness, communication, audience trust, value creation for the audience, promoting e-learning culture, loyalty and persuasion to buy, brand awareness, brand health, e-marketing effectiveness, word of mouth and engagement embraced. In addition, strategies, contextual factors and barriers to digital content marketing were presented. Therefore, according to the research results, attention to digital content marketing for branding and audience attraction, as well as loyalty to the target audience should be considered by bloggers and people who have online businesses.

The purpose of this research is to develop and evaluate a scientific information exchange model at digital library on Internet of things. In order to attain the objective, the model’s components are extracted first. This study is a developmental study using mixed method consisting of documentary, focus group, data modeling, and quantitative evaluation methods. The study population in the documentary section includes the study of information resources retrieved in related subjects. The study population in the focus group section consists of 9 experts in “Internet of things” and “digital library”. Data gathering procedure was done by applying a checklist, and Edraw Max, Protégé, evaluation tab of Protégé software is applied for the analysis. Based on the findings of the documentary method (examining 10 core models and ontologies in the field of Internet of Things, physical and virtual objects), 44 key concepts, 108 sub-concepts, and 62 attributes constitute the primary core elements of scientific information exchange model at digital library in the context of internet of things. The findings showed that the 9 main classes, namely “end-user”, “librarian”, “microcomputer”, “digital library server”, “automated information services”, “physical resources”, “virtual resources”, “information resources on the digital library server”, and “security” in general model of scientific information exchange are very contributive. In general, 27 sub-classes and 38 attributes are identified for the main classes for this purpose. In this model, the way the classes communicate and interact with one another is illustrated to justify this theme. The evaluation of the model showed that the hierarchical structure of the concepts is not dense and some types of property and property restriction have not been considered. To make use of Internet of Things in libraries, the modeling of all the essential elements and properties of the internet of things in libraries must be incorporated into a model that constitutes the logical structure of the digital library scientific information exchange database system. This model can serve as a database map for database professionals and designers.

Due to the increasing volume of information in today's world and the need to use images in various fields, we can no longer afford to ignore the importance of visual literacy as much information is included and conveyed through images. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of digital image guide method on visual literacy. A quasi-experimental research method with pre-test post-test control group design was used to answer the research questions. The research began by assessing the visual literacy of the experimental and the control groups via a visual literacy questionnaire (the pre-test). The experimental group then received 9 sessions of 30-minute training through description of digital images, known as the Digital Image Guide, while the control received no special treatment. The images used in this study were selected from Getty Images and Flickr sites. Afterwards, the two groups took the same visual literacy questionnaire (the post-test). The obtained data were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). The results showed that the mean of visual literacy components in the post-test of the experimental group had a significant increase compared to that of the control group (p<0.05). Therefore, it can be said that the Digital Image Guide (i.e. the method of describing digital images) had a positive and significant effect on students' visual literacy and its components. People need to be able to understand and visualize the messages in the images and educational systems, which are usually based on traditional methods, need to take that point into account and teach visual literacy to students so that they can understand concepts as it would enhance their learning.

Life in today's world is not possible without access to information. Information and related technologies cover all walks of life in the present age. The purpose of this study is to assess digital literacy and consumption of digital content and to investigate the relationship between them among graduate students of Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman in the academic year of 2019-2020. According to the number of people in the statistical community (nearly 6000 people), according to the Cochran table, only 360 people in the community were selected as a sample by simple random sampling and based on the availability and interest in participating in the study. Two questionnaires were used to collect data. The first is the translation of the standard questionnaire of Dundee University, which was prepared for conducting research on digital literacy, and the second questionnaire was developed by a researcher and developed with the cooperation of experienced and expert professors in this field. The reliability of the questionnaires was calculated using Cronbach's alpha method and the result indicates that the questionnaires have a high reliability. The research findings indicate that all components of digital literacy, i.e. cooperation and sharing of digital content, information retrieval, quality evaluation of information (online interaction and online tools), information management and information and understanding and participation in digital activities among Graduate students of Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman are average. Also, the four components of digital content consumption, including infrastructure, level of access and retrieval, the rate of consumption of digital content and templates are in the middle level and the component of consumption management is below average. The results show that there is an increasing (direct) and significant relationship between the components of understanding and participating in digital activities, information retrieval, collaboration and sharing of digital content, information management and information with the consumption of digital content. But there is no significant relationship between the component of quality evaluation of information (online interaction and online tools) and the consumption of digital content.