Human Information Interaction

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Background and Aim: The purpose of this study was to investigate factors prompting Iranian chemists’ approach in joining scientific research networks (SSN). The study compares the demographic characteristics, academic status, academic degrees, and scientific productivity of the Iranian members and non-members of the most popular SSNs including Academia, Researcher ID and Research Gate.

Method: Applying a survey method, the communication concentrates on a purposeful sample composed of Iranian first authors of the papers published in prestigious chemistry journals indexed by SCI database. The members are selected from those who shared at least one paper in the SSNs. 

Results: According to the research results, the Iranian chemists are relatively low in their tendency to the SSNs. However, the members are annually growing in number. The members are, also, mostly found to be of high academic degrees, university ranks and scientific productivity level, compared to their non-member peers. 

Conclusion: The Iranian chemists enjoying higher education degrees, academic ranks and scientific productivity are more likely to join the SSNs. To maximize the use of the social web facilities, Science policy makers and planners are, therefore, required to apply effective strategies to encourage academicians to partake in the SSNs and also consider how to evaluate them based on their activities in the networks

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Background and Aim: In effect, every scientific endeavor consisted of scientific communication and scientists’ involvement in particular field of study; and scientific board members as the most outstanding elements play a key role in scientific productions. Therefore, a constructive scientific communication requires obtaining credible and valid information. In so doing, this study tries to investigate the valid indicies in scientific communication (reading and citing) from Kharazmi University faculty members’ points of view.

Methods: The study is a descriptive survery. The population included faculty members of Kharazmi University. Self-selected sampling was used. In other words, the questionnaires were given to all faculty members, some participated and some did not. Totally 130 questionnaires were collected. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire with a confirmed relibility and validity. Data were analyzed using SPSS v.20.

Results: According to the results, the main credibility criteria used by researchers for reading an item were: topical relevance and validity of content and soundness of author's logic and arguments in paper. The main credibility criteria for citing an item include validity of content, topical relevance, and validity of data used in the paper. The main credibility criteria for using open access sources were peer reviewed quality of the content, and the reputation of authors. Quality of content is an important criterion both for reading and citing an item.

Conclusion: With respect to findings, it can be said that faculty memebers evaluate the credibility of information in both study and in citing mostly on the basis of meaning of information. For open access materials, peer-reviewing and content were important. Thus, it is recommended that the all stakeholders and the persons involved in the scientific comunication system, set the quality control in proiority.

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Background and Aim: Science is the result of collective thinking and sharing of findings and the use and critique in collective spaces. Also, Researchers share scientific findings by using communication platforms. Therefore, platforms play an important role in development of science. With the creation of communication and information technologies, scholarly journals have placed considerable position in facilitating the formal scholarly communication between researchers. Despite the widespread use of researchers from electronic journals, their role in the scholarly communication process has not yet been studied.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of electronic journals in improving the process of scientific communication between faculty members.   
Methods: the present study was carried out with a quantitative approach and survey method using survey questionnaire. Of the total of 350 faculty members of the University of Kurdistan, 181 were selected as samples, and individuals were selected for the proportion of the college population and departments and completed the questionnaire. After that, the research questions were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. 
Results: Previous models of scientific communication process were investigated and two steps were added to the four-step process of Harmsze and Thorin. According to The studied sample belief, the environment of electronic journals have a role in improve of all six stages of the scientific communication process. Demographic variables had no effect on decision making. The environment of electronic journals plays an important role in improving the scientific communication process. Therefore, it's better, in design such systems, in addition to the function of creating a substrate presentation of the article, the role of modifying and changing the behavior of researchers should also be predicted.    
Conclusion: The findings of this research will help improvement and completion of the process of scientific communication stages and also helps designers of electronic journal systems to design their system functions aimed at modifying the behavior of researchers. So far, a research that should investigate the faculty members' opinion about the role of electronic journals in improving their scientific communication, has not been implemented. Also, in this research, the four stages of the scientific communication process has expanded into six stages.