This page consists of some of the information provided at the Instructions for Authors page of the journal - go there for information on citations and references.
0. Preparing a paper.
A number of sources can give you guidance on preparing a paper for publication: if you are new to scholarly publishing, these sources can be very useful in guiding your writing. For example, 'How do I submit a paper to scientific journal?' emphasises the importance of writing drafts and submitting them to more knowledgeable colleagues (or PhD supervisors) to get feedback before submitting to a journal. This is valuable advice, since the probability of rejection is lower if the paper has been through one or two drafts, guided by a mentor. The opening words on that page are particularly crucial:
Before submitting a paper to a scientific journal, two factors should be kept in mind. The first is the need to ensure that you have a clear, logical message. The second is to present your paper in the correct format for the journal to which you intend to submit the paper.
At the same source, you will find, 'How do I write a scientific paper?', which gives excellent advice on writing, beginning with the title. Remember that the title is the key retrieval element for your paper: esoteric references, obscure language, attempts at humour are all likely to detract from the message you wish to convey.
For Information Research, clarity of expression is second only to the quality of the research: you may be the most able researcher in your field in the world, but unless you are able to express yourself clearly, with a minimum of specialised terminology or jargon, your paper is unlikely to be read. The Editors will devote time to ensuring that the text is readable, but if this requires too great an effort, to the point at which even they have difficulty in determining what you are trying to say, the paper is likely to be rejected - whether approved by the referees or not.
Beginning academic writers often assume that their texts have to be esoteric and difficult, couched in the arcane language of some methodological community: this is not the case for Information Research—a paper should read as though it was the simplest thing in the world to write and caused no problems for the author. If that is the case, we can be sure that, in fact, a considerable amount of effort has been put into the paper.
This is also the message of Roald Hoffman, Nobel prize-winner in his exemplary essay, The metaphor, unchained
Other sources for writing papers include:
Papers are accepted on the understanding that the Editor's decisions on style, grammar, punctuation, layout, etc., are final.
1. Form of submission.
Papers should be submitted to the journal management system at http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/infores/ An author should visit the site, login as an 'Author' and then follow the instructions for uploading a submission and associated documents such as .jpg and .gif files. The paper should be prepared in Microsoft Word initially, for ease of reviewing, but the final version should be prepared as an XHTML document, suitable for browsing with one or other of the latest browser versions: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc.
A useful guides for prepraring the final XHTML version is:
Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy, HTML and XHTML: the definitive guide, (5th ed.) O'Reilly, 2002)
For general writing style, The Oxford guide to style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, should be followed. However, the Economist Style Guide is also useful because a partial Web version of this guide is available.
An Information Research Style Manual is gradually being assembled.
An Evaluation Form is used to collect responses from referees. A copy is available here as a guide to the way your paper will be assessed.
1.1 Warning!
DO NOT USE MicroSoft's Word program or its html editor Front Page to convert your word-processed document to HTML - these programs add a great deal of unnecessary coding, inflating the file by up to 200% and making the page unreadable in the intended way by older browsers. If you use this kind of conversion program, your paper will be returned for editing and this may delay publication.
I have provided a template for papers, which can be downloaded, and the easiest way to prepare your paper is to cut and paste the title, abstract, paragraphs, etc., into the template.
If possible, use an HTML editor, such as Homesite, or the excellent, free editor Coffee Cup Free HTML Editor.
1.2 Plagiarism - another warning!
Plagiarism is defined as presenting the work of others as if it was one's own. This covers anything from the use of someone else's document in its entirety to using a quotation without citation. There are many excellent sources on the Web on plagiarism and how to avoid it. A good place to start is with the Wikipedia article on the subject, which also covers the concept of 'self-plagiarism'. In addition, a number of universities have pages that are intended to guide students on avoiding plagiarism, for example, Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It and Avoiding plagiarism. There is also a useful page of links at http://www.web-miner.com/plagiarism.
If plagiarism is detected in a paper submitted to Information Research is will not be accepted for publication.
2. Layout.
Note that Information Research uses a style sheet, which fixes the style of paragraphs and headings; therefore, do not use any style features (such as font size or colour) in your own HTML code
The title, authors names and affiliations, etc., at the head of the paper should appear as follows:
Task dimensions of user evaluations of information retrieval systems
F.C.Johnson, J.R. Griffiths and R.J. Hartley
Department of Information and Communications
Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester, UK
2.1 The abstract
It is important to provide a full, informative abstract. Author abstracts are used by the abstracting journals and by ISI's citation indexes and they can be an important means of ensuring that your paper is found by searchers. A full abstract is also a useful means of encouraging searchers to follow-up and view your paper.
Consequently, an abstract of 150 to 200 words should be provided and Information Research uses structured abstracts, with effect from the January 2005 issue. The rationale for this change is derived from Hartley, J. (2003). Improving the clarity of journal abstracts in psychology: the case for structure. Science Communication, 24(3), 366-379. The common structure employed in many medical journals. is, Introduction, Methods, Analysis, Results and Conclusions. These separate sections should be named as in the abstract below:
Introduction. We report an investigation designed to identify the role of uncertainty in the information search process. Uncertainty has been proposed as key factor in driving the search for information and this study sought to operationalise the concept and relate it to the problem solving process of academic researchers.
Method. Pre-search, post-search and follow-up interviews were conducted with researchers at the Universities of Sheffield and North Texas. The actual search process, involving an intermediary, was also tape recorded. Transcripts of the interviews and of the search process formed the data for analysis.
Analysis. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out on the data, which related to 111 individual researchers. Quantitative analysis employed the statistical package SPSS, while the qualitative analysis was carried out with the Atlas.ti program.
Results It proved possible to operationalise the uncertainty concept and to demonstrate that uncertainty declined through the problem solving process. Results are also presented an the relations between uncertainty and the models of information seeking proposed by Ellis, Kuhlthau and Wilson.
ConclusionUncertainty appears to have two dimensions: the 'objective', cognitive uncertainty resulting from a perceived lack of knowledge in a field the 'affective' uncertainty - the feeling of unease or anxiety caused by the cognitive lack.
This structure should serve the majority of papers that are submitted, but may require modification for, for example, more speculative, theoretical papers or for reviews of research.
I have placed on the site two papers dealing with structured abstracts by Professor Hartley.
2.2 In-text headings
Headings in the text should use the following HTML tags: Heading 2 for first level headings, Heading 3 for second level, and Heading 4 for third level. The heading, "References" at the end of the paper should be Heading 2. The style-sheet used by Information Research will ensure that the headings are produced as below and no additional coding is neededto specify, for example, font colour.
This is heading 2
This is heading 3
This is heading 4
Please note that other aspects of style, such as the font colour, etc., are set by the style sheet and should not be specified separately.
Please do not use numbered sections in your paper: the hierarchical structure of headings and subheadings is shown by the colour coding of the different levels and, consequently, numbered headings are not required.
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