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Purpose: Academic contention occurs when research evidence is amenable to more than one interpretation. China has a long tradition of Shang Que (商榷), in which authors argue for their preferred interpretation. The modern form of this tradition is the Shang Que article, which often takes the form of research papers in Chinese-language journals and which tends to be question-oriented. Shang Que articles usually take the views of a particular author or article as the focus of independent and complete criticism by another, independent, academic. This paper explains the role of Shang Que articles in Chinese scholarship and their influence on international academia. Design/methodology/approach: A bibliometric analysis was used to explore the characteristics and evolution of Chinese Shang Que articles using 30,577 articles published between 1979 and 2018. Microsoft Excel and Gephi were used for data analysis and visualization. Findings: Findings suggest a decline in the number of Shang Que articles and an increase in the number of co-authors. Shang Que articles remained particularly prominent in Philosophy and Humanities and Social Sciences, where they focused on local issues such as classical Chinese, the Sinicization of Marxism and Chinese literature. This suggests that the number of Shang Que articles is related to the degree of internationalization of a research field. Originality/value: Shang Que articles, which have been influenced by academic paradigms in English, are a fusion of China's Shang Que tradition and of the modern academic system. Through considering Shang Que articles, this paper explores the benefits of local academic traditions in non-English-speaking cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The prevalence of digital reading and the widespread use of social media among young people demands systematic exploration of the effects of social media addiction on students' reading practice. This paper aims to explore the effects of social media addiction on reading preferences, in-depth reading and sustained attention. Design/methodology/approach: Survey and analysis methods are employed. Findings: For many, social media provides an ideal platform of connection and expression; however, prolonged social media use holds the danger of becoming a behavioral addiction that threatens to undermine one's reading practice. Social media use tends to have a more significant impact on leisure reading than on academic reading. Obsessive engagement with social media hurts reading concentration and in-depth reading. While a majority (70.4%) of those surveyed believed that chronic social media use carries more harm than good on their learning, only half (50.1%) agreed or strongly agreed that today's students are too indulged in social media and need forceful control of it. Originality/value: Implications of the effects of social media on reading practice are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested. It is likely that social media will continue to be seductive, attracting new generations of young people. Future research should explore prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: By introducing the basic concepts and theories of the philosophy of information created by Kun Wu, and making some comparisons of the philosophy of information and related information theories between Wu and other scholars, this paper aims to have Chinese philosophy of information widely known and understood by more people in the world, thus promoting the international exchanges between Chinese and Western scholars on the topic of philosophy of information. Design/methodology/approach: The main research methods used in this paper are the literature review and the comparative study. On the one hand, it reviews some related concepts and theories in Kun Wu's academic works of philosophy of information. On the other hand, it compares the thoughts and viewpoints of Kun Wu with those of other scholars. Findings: First, Kun Wu is the first person who has established a complete and comprehensive theoretical system of philosophy of information in China; second, Kun Wu's philosophy of information is significant in originality and value, which could be thought as the intellectual quintessence of information age, thus worth learning. Third, with more international exchanges, Chinese philosophy of information created by Wu will surely be more and more influential in philosophical circles at home and abroad. Originality/value: It is a very valuable first-hand material for Western scholars to know and understand Chinese philosophy of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: With the continuous change of research contents and methods of intelligence science, its integration with other disciplines is also deepening. The purpose of this paper is to further explore the interdisciplinary research characteristics of intelligence science in theoretical depth and application value. Design/methodology/approach: This paper summarizes and explores in two aspects. The first is a large number of literature review, mainly combined with the historical characteristics of the development of intelligence science researches in China and international comparison. The second is to refine the discipline construction ideas suitable for the development of contemporary intelligence science. Findings: From the perspective of the historical development of discipline relevance, the development characteristics and positioning of intelligence science in China are introduced, with the comparison of many disciplines including information technology, library science, information science, data science, management science and other disciplines. In order to better meet the practical needs of intelligence service in the new era, this paper mainly analyzes the construction method of intelligence science research system and the relocation of intelligence science research content. Originality/value: This paper summarizes the historical characteristics and international comparison of the development of intelligence science in China. It proposes the development characteristics and orientation of intelligence science in China from the perspective of historical development of discipline relevance. It also proposes the discipline construction ideas suitable for the development of contemporary intelligence science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework to illustrate the archival knowledge applied by archivists in their personal archiving (PA) and the mechanism of the application of archival knowledge in their PA. Design/methodology/approach: The grounded theory methodology was adopted. For data collection, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 archivists in China. Data analysis was performed using the open coding, axial coding and selective coding to organise the archival knowledge composition of PA and develops the awareness-knowledge-action (AKA) integration model of archival knowledge application in the field of PA, according to the principles of the grounded theory. Findings: The archival knowledge involved in the field of PA comprises four principal categories: documentation, arrangement, preservation and appraisal. Three interactive factors involved in archivists' archival knowledge application in the field of PA behaviour: awareness, knowledge and action, which form a pattern of awareness leading, knowledge guidance and action innovation, and archivists' PA practice is flexible and innovative. The paper underscored that it is need to improve archival literacy among general public. Originality/value: The study constructs a theoretical framework to identify the specialised archival knowledge and skills of PA which is able to provide solutions for non-specialist PA and develops an AKA model to explain the interaction relationships between awareness, knowledge and action in the field of PA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify key countries and their focal research fields on the information divide. Design/methodology/approach: Literature was retrieved to identify key countries and their primary focus. The literature research method was adopted to identify aspects of the primary focus in each key country. Findings: The key countries with literature on the information divide are the USA, China, the UK and India. The problem of health is prominent in the USA, and solutions include providing information, distinguishing users' profiles and improving eHealth literacy. Economic and political factors led to the urban–rural information divide in China, and policy is the most powerful solution. Under the influence of humanism, research on the information divide in the UK focuses on all age groups, and solutions differ according to age. Deep-rooted patriarchal concepts and traditional marriage customs make the gender information divide prominent in India, and increasing women's information consciousness is a feasible way to reduce this divide. Originality/value: This paper is an extensive review study on the information divide, which clarifies the key countries and their focal fields in research on this topic. More important, the paper innovatively analyzes and summarizes existing literature from a country perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of information culture in Mainland China and apply the information culture framework to an organizational setting. Design/methodology/approach: The foundation for the research is provided by a review of Chinese and English language literature and a case study of a university library was conducted, involving semi-structured interviews. Findings: The information culture framework facilitated identification of factors not recognized in previous information culture research, including uniquely Chinese factors of egocentrism, guanxi (relationships), mianzi (face), hexie (harmony) and renqing (mutual benefit). A further finding highlighted the profound differences between archives and library institutions in China. Originality/value: The paper provides the first step toward further exploring features of Chinese organizational culture which will not only influence information management practices but also highlight the issues relating to collaboration between libraries and archives in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The provision of high-quality e-Government services requires efficient and collaborative sharing of data across varied types of government agencies. However, interagency government data sharing (IDS) is not always spontaneous, active and unconditional. Adopting a stickiness theory, this paper reports on a research study, which explores the causes of data stickiness in IDS. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed an inductive case study approach. Twenty-three officials from the government of City M in Hubei Province, Central China, were approached and interviewed using a semi-structured question script. Findings: The analysis of the interview data pointed to 27 causes of data stickiness in five main themes: data sharing willingness; data sharing ability; data articulatability; data residence; and data absorptive capacity. The analysis revealed that interagency tensions and lack of preparedness of individual agencies are the main causes of data stickiness in IDS. Originality/value: The case setting is based on China's Government, but the findings offer useful insights and indications that can be shared across international borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the status quo of digital poverty among adolescents in China, analyze the characteristics and the causes, then propose countermeasures to provide reference for alleviating digital poverty among adolescents. Design/methodology/approach: The study developed an initial scale of digital poverty among adolescents and used survey data to revise the scale, on this basis, formed a questionnaire, which was distributed to nationwide adolescents. The study developed its findings from the 837 valid questionnaire respondents. Findings: The digital poverty among adolescents is mainly shown in the poverty of digital ability, digital psychology and digital environment and presents the following characteristics, that is, insufficient information seeking ability and information selection ability needing to be improved; equipped with basic information awareness but lack of information evaluation ability; lack of patience in obtaining information and inclined to the principle of least effort; imperfect knowledge structure and immature psychological emotions and vulnerable to external interference; having a certain relationship with the information environment, but not significantly affected by regional economic differences. Finally, the study puts forward countermeasures to alleviate digital poverty among adolescents. Practical implications: Understanding of the digital poverty among adolescents will likely demand rethinking into a number of issues ignored by information poverty studies. Originality/value: Few studies focus on digital poverty among adolescents. This study developed an initial scale of digital poverty among adolescents and revised it by survey data, then conducted an empirical study through questionnaire, which could expand the understanding of information poverty in the field of library and information science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how the contextual factors of health crisis information needs are different from a general health context and how these factors work together to shape human information needs. Design/methodology/approach: This study collected the COVID-19-related questions posted on a Chinese social Q&A website for a period of 90 days since the pandemic outbreak in China. A qualitative thematic approach was applied to analyze the 1,681 valid questions using an open coding process. Findings: A taxonomy of information need topics for a health crisis context that identifies 8 main categories and 33 subcategories was developed, from which four overarching themes were extracted. These include understanding, clarification and preparation; affection expression of worries and confidence; coping with a challenging situation and resuming normal life; and social roles in the pandemic. The authors discussed the differences between a health crisis and a normal health context shaping information needs. Finally, a conceptual framework was developed to illustrate the typology, nature and triggers of health crisis information needs. Research limitations/implications: First, only the Baidu Zhidao platform was investigated, and caution is advised before assuming the generalizability of the results, as the questioners of Baidu Zhidao are not representative of the whole population. Furthermore, since at the time of writing the COVID-19 is still in an emerging and evolving situation (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020), the collected data included only a relatively small sample size compared to the post-pandemic period, and this might have impact on the interpretation of the study's findings. Practical implications: The study's taxonomy of information needs provides a reference for indexing and organizing related information during a disaster. Social implications: The study helps authoritative organizations track and send information in social media and to inform about policies related to the pandemic (e.g., quarantine and traffic control policies in our study) to the right people in the right regions and settings when the next disaster emerges. Originality/value: The taxonomy of information need topics for a health crisis context can be used to index and organize related information during a disaster and support many information agents to enhance their information service practices. It also deepens the understanding of the formation mechanism of information needs during a global health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how Chinese library and information science (LIS) journal articles cite works from outside the discipline (WOD) to identify the impact of knowledge import from outside the discipline on LIS development.Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the Chinese LIS’ preferences in citing WOD by employing bibliometrics and machine learning techniques.Findings Chinese LIS citations to WOD account for 29.69 percent of all citations, and they rise over time. Computer science, education and communication are the most frequently cited disciplines. Under the categorization of Biglan model, Chinese LIS prefers to cite WOD from soft science, applied science or nonlife science. In terms of community affiliation, the cited authors are mostly from the academic community, but rarely from the practice community. Mass media has always been a citation source that is hard to ignore. There is a strong interest of Chinese LIS in citing emerging topics.Practical implications This paper can be implemented in the reformulation of Chinese LIS knowledge system, the promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration, the development of LIS library collection and faculty advancement. It may also be used as a reference to develop strategies for the global LIS.Originality/value This paper fills the research gap in analyzing citations to WOD from Chinese LIS articles and their impacts on LIS, and recommends that Chinese LIS should emphasize on knowledge both on technology and people as well as knowledge from the practice community, cooperate with partners from other fields, thus to produce knowledge meeting the demands from library and information practice as well as users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to provide a theoretical guide for preserving ancient books in China. Design/methodology/approach - The paper reviews the history of the damage and preservation of ancient books in China, and analyzes the value attributes of ancient books: archaeological value, historical value and artistic value. Findings - The paper proposes a preservation framework for Chinese ancient books. This framework is composed of three layers. The foundation layer is to preserve the physical entity of ancient books so that the archaeological values are preserved. The middle layer is to preserve the intellectual content of ancient books so that the values for historical research are preserved. The top layer is mainly about preserving the productions process of the artistic format of ancient books, so that not only the static artistic formats are preserved, the techniques and procedures to produce the artistic format are preserved as well. Originality/value - The paper presents a framework that connects the value attributes of ancient books and the strategies to preserve those values, systematizes them and presents them as a whole. The framework can be used to justify government policies and help identify pitfalls in the preservation strategies for ancient books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a qualitative study exploring the conditions associated with the creation, preservation and transmission of Shuishu archives in China, and the crises today in their preservation and transmission and the reasons behind them. It also proposes activation mechanisms to shift Shuishu archives from jeopardized collective memory to preservable cultural memory.Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork were conducted over the course of a month in 2015.Findings The creation, preservation and transmission of Shuishu archives in the community of the Shui rely upon the community’s closed system. But this system has been broken as a result of modernization and wide use of new media in China. To preserve and transmit Shuishu archives to future generations, there needs to be mutual trust and equitable cooperation between government archives and the Shuishushi. The “cultural consciousness” of the Shui needs to be stimulated, and more members of the Shui and the whole of society need to participate in the preservation and transmission of this distinctive memory.Practical implications The study can provide a provocative example for education in preservation and LIS about community culture and archiving, and the preservation of social memory, identity and culture. The activation mechanisms seek to aid in the preservation and transmission of Shuishu archives and other similar community memory.Originality/value The study uses semi-structured interviews and ethnographic methodology to develop a rich understanding of the history and the status quo of the preservation and transmission of Shuishu archives. It redefines Shuishu archives and sheds light on the roles government archives should play in the preservation and transmission of Shuishu archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to further explore the co-citation and bibliographic-coupling relationship among the core authors in the field of Chinese information science (IS), to expose research activity and author impact, and to make induction analyses about Chinese IS research patterns and theme evolution. Design/methodology/approach – The research data include 8,567 papers and 70,947 cited articles in the IS field indexed by Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index from 2000 to 2009. Author co-citation analysis, author bibliographic-coupling analysis, social network analysis, and factor analysis were combined to explore co-citation and bibliographic-coupling relationships and to identify research groups and subjects. Findings – Scholars with greatest impact are different from the most active scholars of Chinese IS; there is no uniform impact pattern forming since authors’ impact subjects are scattered and not steady; while authors’ research activities present higher independence and concentration, there is still no steady research pattern due to no deep research existing. Furthermore, Chinese IS studies can be delineated by: foundation or extension. The research subjects of these two parts, as well as their corresponding/contributing authors, are different under different views. The general research status of core authors is concentrated, while their impact is broad. Originality/value – The combined use of some related methods could enrich the development and methodology research of the discipline, and the results establish a reference point on the development of IS research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which researchers display citation information and examine whether there are researcher differences in citation personal display at the level of university, country, and academic rank.Design/methodology/approach Physicists from 11 well-known universities in USA, Britain, and China were chosen as the subjects of the study. It was manually identified if physicists had mentioned citation counts, citation-based indices, or a link to Google Scholar Citations on the personal websites. A χ2 test is constructed to test researcher differences in citation personal display.Findings Results showed that the overall proportion of citation personal display is not high (14.8 percent), with 129 of 870 physicists displaying citation. Moreover, physicists from different well-known universities indeed had a significant difference in citation personal display. Moreover, at the national level, it was noticed that physicists in well-known Chinese universities had the highest level of citation personal display, followed by Britain and the USA. Furthermore, this study also found that researchers who had the academic rank of professor had the highest citation personal display. In addition, the differences in h-index personal display by university, country, or academic rank were analyzed, and the results showed that they were not statistically significant.Originality/value This is the first study to investigate how widely researchers provide citation-based information on personal websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between different mechanisms for integrating national archival resources, leading to the development of a knowledge management-based framework for facilitating the optimal utilization of national archives resources in China.Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a mixed-methods approach consisting of a review of existing mechanisms for integrating national archival resources and site visits and interviews for investigating the effectiveness of these mechanisms in real world practices for managing and utilizing national archives resources in China.Findings The knowledge management-based framework is shown to be useful for building interdependence, interconnections and interactions between diversified integration mechanisms to meet national, societal and public needs in China. The framework is significant for rearranging the role of knowledge management in collaboration to protect the value of national archives resources as the knowledge asset of a state. It can reengineer the knowledge management activities in communication to share the value of national archives resources as the knowledge asset of a society. Furthermore, the framework can reconfigure knowledge management artifacts in connectivity to increase the value of national archives resources as the knowledge asset of the public.Research limitations/implications The review of the related literature is selective rather than comprehensive, and the interviews are based on a self-selected convenience sample, which is rather skewed demographically.Practical implications The proposed framework can be used to guide the development of a national strategy for the effective integration of national archives resources to promote a better delivery of public-centric knowledge services in a specific society.Originality/value This study provides a knowledge management framework for the effective integration of national archives resources toward their optimal utilization. It contributes to the examination of the role of different integration mechanisms in interactive knowledge management processes and the advancement of academic debate on the effectiveness of these mechanisms for the integration of national archives resources to facilitate their optimal utilization in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the multifaceted information disadvantages facing the so-called information poor in today's society. It has two specific objectives: to identify, from the empirical evidence of individuals' daily and regular information practices, meaningful constructs for defining information inequality; and to investigate how the "information poor" characterise on these constructs in comparison with others. Design/methodology/approach - The study developed its findings in relation to the above objectives inductively from the interview transcripts of 73 people of different social statuses and occupations regarding their daily and regular information practices. Findings - Three concepts emerged as meaningful constructs to define information inequality, hence to describe the information poor: individuals' information resource bases, information practices, and information assets. The information poor are found to be disadvantaged in all these aspects. They are first disadvantaged by limited freedom and/or opportunities in claiming society's vast and rapidly increasing information resources into their own information resource bases; then by the constraint of their information practices in developing their information resource bases and obtaining information utilities from these resources; and further more by impoverished information assets to empower themselves in normal and problematic situations. Practical implications - Understanding of the information poor as sketched above will likely demand further research into a number of issues/areas hitherto ignored by information inequality studies. Originality/value - This paper is one of the first to address empirically one of the most fundamental questions in information inequality studies; it extends library and information science understanding of the information poor hitherto dominated by the information deficiency thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the epistemological underpinning of SERVQUAL and its limitations; and second, to propose ways to enhance the utility of SERVQUAL as a library assessment tool. Design/methodology/approach - The study first conceptualises quality judgment as a knowing process and locates the epistemological stance of SERVQUAL within the general framework of epistemology demarcation; it then examines related SERVQUAL assumptions and their implications for library assessment in general and for service quality assessment in particular based on two empirical investigations: a questionnaire survey and an interview survey. The questionnaire survey applies the SERVQUAL instrument to three Chinese university libraries, with a view to examining the SERVQUAL score in light of epistemological considerations; the interview survey interviews 50 faculty users in one of the three universities with a view to illuminating the naturalistic process through which users develop their judgement of the library's service quality and through which the SERVQUAL score is formed. Findings - The study shows that the actual SERVQUAL score is distributed in a very scattered manner in all three libraries, and that it is formed through a very complex process rooted primarily in the user's personal experiences with the library, which are in turn shaped by factors from both the library world and the user's life-world. Based on these findings, this research questions a number of SERVQUAL assumptions and proposes three concepts which may help to contextualise the SERVQUAL score and enhance its utility in actual library assessment: library planning based variance of user perception, perception-dependent user expectation and library-sophistication based user differentiation. Originality/value - The research presented in the paper questions a number of SERVQUAL assumptions and proposes three concepts that may help to contextualise the SERVQUAL score and enhance its utility in actual library assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to compare several machine learning techniques on the task of Asian language text classification, such as Chinese and Japanese where no word boundary information is available in written text. The paper advocates a simple language modeling based approach for this task. Design/methodology/approach - Naïve Bayes, maximum entropy model, support vector machines, and language modeling approaches were implemented and were applied to Chinese and Japanese text classification. To investigate the influence of word segmentation, different word segmentation approaches were investigated and applied to Chinese text. A segmentation-based approach was compared with the non-segmentation-based approach. Findings - There were two findings: the experiments show that statistical language modeling can significantly outperform standard techniques, given the same set of features; and it was found that classification with word level features normally yields improved classification performance, but that classification performance is not monotonically related to segmentation accuracy. In particular, classification performance may initially improve with increased segmentation accuracy, but eventually classification performance stops improving, and can in fact even decrease, after a certain level of segmentation accuracy. Practical implications - Apply the findings to real web text classification is ongoing work. Originality/value - The paper is very relevant to Chinese and Japanese information processing, e.g. webpage classification, web search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]