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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to relate the problems identified about scholarly journal publishing in Malaysia to establish motivation for the system development; to describe the design of MyCite, a Malaysian citation indexing system and to highlight the added value to journals and articles indexed through the generation of bibliometrics performance reports. Design/methodology/approach: The system uses a rapid prototyping method, modeling the functions identified in the Web of Science databases and Scopus, as the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia requires the system to be ready within a year, mainly to help improve the quality, accessibility and performance of Malaysian scholarly journals. Findings: The paper shows the relational tables and module functions in MyCite; highlights the value added to bibliographic data through performance reports of authors, journals, institutions, country and bibliographical control of Malaysian journals; and provides performance tables of top authors, rank list of 75 journals by yearly impact factor, and other bibliometric indices. Research limitations/implications: The paper highlight the problems in gaining access to full contents of journals, authors' adoption of variant names, and the vast variations in referencing style adopted by publishers, which may result in inaccurate counting and lost citations. Originality/value: The strength of MyCite is in its reference editor module, which is a programme that segments article references into manageable chunks that helps speed up the data preparation for citation counting. MyCite improves the availability and visibility of Malaysian journals, enriches national research content, and provides better knowledge of national research outputs funded by universities and research institutions. (Contains 10 tables and 6 figures.)

This paper presents findings from a case study investigating secondary school teachers' understanding of the term digital libraries and their relationship with learning. The study addresses two research questions: (1) How do teachers conceptualize digital libraries, their relevance and issues relating to their integration into the curriculum? and (2) What are the teachers' perceptions of the initiative to develop a collaborative digital library for school projects? A series of interviews were carried out on six History subject teachers which provide a detailed and succinct information on their understanding of digital libraries, their knowledge and use of the Internet and digital resources, their perception of the possible impact of digital resources on teaching and learning, the benefits teachers seen in digital resources and the problems they have in using them. It also offers important insights on History subject teachers' perceptions of the initiative to develop a collaborative digital library for History projects, perception of its potential use, pointing out the conditions that facilitate its use in the classrooms. The paper also points out the relevance of digital libraries to the History curriculum which will make readers understand that using the technology is relevant to the teaching of all subjects. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

Abstract: There are several ways for the international scientific community to recognize the quality of a scholarly journal. Although controversial, the most widely used and reliable methodology to identify the importance of a journal is through the citation it receives. This paper identifies the performance of scholarly journals published by Malaysian publishers in the Web of Science and reports the number of citations to Malaysian journals in terms of the cited and the citing journals. A search using the Thomson-Reuters citation database (Web of Science) was performed to identify highly cited Malaysian journals from 2006 to 2010. We identified 212 cited journals that received 9675 cited-papers, and a total of 9427 articles contributing to the 3184 journals citing Malaysian journals. More than fifty percent of all the articles that cited Malaysian journals were published in journals ranked in the first or second quartile by the Journal Citation Report. Further analysis was done on the top 50 cited and citing journal titles. A steady growth of citations with a total increase of 56.9% was evident between the five year period examined. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The problem with the identification of Malaysian scholarly journals lies in the lack of a current and complete listing of journals published in Malaysia. As a result, librarians are deprived of a tool that can be used for journal selection and identification of gaps in their serials collection. This study describes the audit carried out on scholarly journals, with the objectives (a) to trace and characterized scholarly journal titles published in Malaysia, and (b) to determine their visibility in international and national indexing databases. A total of 464 titles were traced and their yearly trends, publisher and publishing characteristics, bibliometrics and indexation in national, international and subject-based indexes were described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the use of an assessment instrument based on a model named library information systems security assessment model (LISSAM) to assess the ISS status in special and public libraries in Malaysia. The study aims to determine the implementation status of technological and organizational components of the LISSAM model. An implementation index as well as a scoring tool is presented to assess the IS safeguarding measures in a library. Data used was based on questionnaires distributed to a total of 50 individuals who are responsible for the information systems (IS) or IT in the special and public libraries in Malaysia. Findings revealed that over 95% of libraries have high level of technological implementation but 54% were fair poorly on organizational measures, especially on lack of security procedures, administrative tools and awareness creation activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the growth of Open Access (OA) repositories and journals as reported by monitoring initiatives such as ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories), Open DOAR (Open Directory of Open Access Repositories), DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Directory of Web Ranking of World Repositories by the Cybermetrics Laboratory in Spain and published literature. The performance of Malaysian OA repositories and journals is highlighted. The strength of OA channels in increasing visibility and citations are evidenced by research findings. It is proposed that libraries champion OA initiatives by making university or institutional governance aware; encouraging institutional journal publishers to adopt OA platform; collaborating with research groups to jumpstart OA institutional initiatives and to embed OA awareness into user and researcher education programmes. By actively involved, libraries will be free of permission, licensing and archiving barriers usually imposed in traditional publishing situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to determine the influence and impact of journals which are not covered by the ISI databases and Journal Citation Report. However, with the availability of databases such as MyAIS (Malaysian Abstracting and Indexing System), which offers sufficient information to support bibliometric analysis as well as being indexed by Google Scholar which provides citation information, it has become possible to obtain productivity, citation and impact information for non-ISI indexed journals. The bibliometric tool Harzing's Publish and Perish was used to collate citation information from Google scholar. The study examines article productivity, the citations obtained by articles and calculates the impact factor of Medical Journal of Malaysia (MJM) published between 2004 and 2008. MJM is the oldest medical journal in Malaysia and the unit of analysis is 580 articles. The results indicate that once a journal is covered by MyAIS it becomes visible and accessible on the Web because Google Scholarindexes MyAIS. The results show that contributors to MJM were mainly Malaysian (91%) and the number of Malaysian-Foreign collaborated papers were very small (28 articles, 4.8%). However, citation information from Google scholar indicates that out of the 580 articles, 76.8% (446) have been cited over the 5-year period. The citations were received from both mainstrean foreign as well as Malaysian journals and the top three citors were from China, Malaysia and the United States. In general more citations were received from East Asian countries, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The 2-yearly impact factor calculated for MJM is 0.378 in 2009, 0.367 in 2008, 0.616 in 2007 and 0.456 in 2006. The 5-year impact factor is calculated as 0.577. The results show that although MJM is a Malaysian journal and not ISI indexed its contents have some international significance based on the citations and impact score it receives, indicating the importance of being visible especially in Google scholar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes an exploratory needs analysis for a digital library of Malay manuscripts. The manuscripts are facing several problems, including (a) the lack of trained manuscript librarians; (b) budgetary constraints in manual and digital preservation initiatives; (c) the problems in storage and maintenance of the collection; (d) restricted access for users, (e) the need to preserve the fragile manuscripts, (e) the difficulty of undertaking collaborative transliteration work because of the access problems; (f) the dispersal of titles at several repositories which exacerbates the access issue; and (g) a lack of detail in the description in the manuscript library catalogues. The objectives of this study are: (a) to find out the current state of manuscript collection management and practices in selected libraries; (b) to identify the problems faced by manuscript repositories; (c) to study the meta data schema used by repositories to describe their manuscript collections, and (d) to identify a suitable open source digital library software to support a digital library of manuscripts. The study gathers qualitative data from an open-ended questionnaire distributed to five manuscript librarians in Malaysia. Cataloguing practices in manuscript repositories were observed and the open-source digital library software Green stone was studied for its suitability. The information gathered and observed which helped determine the requirements of a digital library that empowers repositories in building, storing, preserving and disseminating information about manuscript collections is presented. The design and modules of the digital library are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study uses research-based resources listed in two published bibliographies on "Women in development in Malaysia" produced between the pre 1970 years and 2004 to describe the growth and pattern of women's studies in Malaysia. A total 4037 resources formed the basis of the study. Bibliometric measure are used to indicate the annual growth of literature over the periods, the preferred publication channels used by the authors, the subject areas of research interests, the active authors and the inference of collaboration based on co-authored works. The results indicate a growth in women's studies especially between 1990 and 2004 totaling 3346 publications, averaging about 258 titles per year compared to the average of 36 titles for the pre 1970 and 1989 years. There were heavier activities in economic studies, social-cultural studies, women's health and welfare and women in literature. The main types of publication produced are undergraduate academic research reports, master dissertations and doctoral theses. Conference presentations and journal articles are equally popular. Most authors in this field are one time contributors and only 18 authors produced 10 or more publications each. The majority of authors work alone indicating a low collaboration rate. The study proposes a collaborative e-bibliographic initiative to serve and sustain researchers' information needs in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internationalization characteristics of two Malaysian journals, Bulletin of the Malaysian Mathematical Sciences Society (indexed by ISI) and the Malaysian Journal of Computer Science (indexed by Inspec and Scopus) is observed. All issues for the years 2000 to 2007 were looked at to obtain the following information, (i) total articles published between 2000 and 2007; (ii) the distribution of foreign and Malaysian authors publishing in the journals; (iii) the distribution of articles by country and (iv) the geographical distribution of authors citing articles published in the journals. Citation to articles is derived from information given by Google scholar. The results indicate that both journals exhibit average internationalization characteristics as they are current in their publications but with between 19% -30% international composition of reviewers or editorials, publish between 36%-79% of foreign articles and receive between 60%-70% of citations from foreign authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempted to provide a "picture" of Malaysian US research and publications. The study aimed to show (a) the total number and spread of publications produced by Malaysian authors; (b) the active authors; (c) the authorship pattern; (d) the affiliation status of the authors; (e) the main channels used to publish; and (f) the subject covered by the published works. The study confined its scope to the publications produced between 1965 and 2005 by Malaysian authors published in Malaysia as well as abroad. Bibliometric techniques and regression analysis were employed as the measuring instrument. The data was collected from seven online databases and seven well established library OPACs, which are expected to hold earlier and current US publications. A bibliometric toolbox was used to feed in text files which provided brief summaries of ranked results, a bibliograph and minimal Bradford zonal analysis. The subject categorization used by Gorman and Corbit's Model of core competencies for US was used to categorized entries by subjects. The results indicated that (a) Malaysian US authors preferred to publish in journals (511, 48.9%) and conference papers (474, 45.4%); (b) the publication distribution fluctuated over the 41 year period but the moving average depicted a steady incremental trend; (c) a total of 506 authors contributed to 1,045 publications and 309 are one-time authors' (d) the active authors in LIS are affiliated to 131 institutions and the productive institutions were the national Library of Malaysia, University of Malaya library and the academics at the MUS Programme, University of Malaya.; (e) publication productivity was related to institutional active involvement in US journal publishing; and (/`) the main subject areas actively researched upon were collection development and management, information centres and services, and ICT applications US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an exploratory attempt to use a modified version of SERVPERF to assess user's satisfaction with the services provided by an ISO9000:2000 certified library at a private university in Malaysia where measuring performance would be an integral part to continuously improve quality of services. The services being measured are grouped as frontline, core and peripheral where staff and facilities interact with users directly and where user's opinions and expectations could be extracted. The clients are undergraduates and postgraduates who use these services and facilities. The results identify services deem important to users of the library as well as the problem areas which need improvements. A total of 274 students comprising 250 undergraduates and 24 postgraduates form the sample. The respondents' ratings range on average between 3.13 and 4.36 on a 5-point scale, implying that the library is performing at an above average level. From 59 service attributes, 2 are perceived as excellent, 20 attributes are considered good, 31 are average and 4 services are rated as poor. A total of 16 services are rated below 50%, which form the priority list of services given priority in the library's proposed action plan. The good and excellent services would continue to be monitored to maintain their performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory study focuses on identifying the usage pattern of e-books especially on how, when, where and why undergraduates at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (FCSIT), University of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur use or do not use the e-books service provided by the University of Malaya library. A total of 206 (82%) useable questionnaires form the basis of analysis. The results indicate even though the students are heavy users of the Internet, rate themselves as skilled in Internet use and have positive attitude towards the e-book service, the level of e-book use is still low (39%). The students become aware of the e-book service mainly while visiting the University of Malaya Library Website, or are referred to it by their lecturers, friends or the librarians. About 70% rate positively on the e-book service. Those who are users of e-books find e-books easy to use and their usages are mainly for writing assignment or project work Most respondents prefer to use e-versions of textbooks and reference sources. Generally, both users and non-users of e-books prefer to use the printed version of textbooks especially if the text is continuously used. There are significant difference between the frequency of e-book use and gender; between past usage of e-book and preference for electronic textbooks and reference books. The possible factors which may be related to e-book use are categorized into 4 groups and presented in a model, which comprises the ICT competencies of the students, their cognitive makeup, the degree of user access to the e-books and the functional or use factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that determined the types of access given to online databases by several private colleges and universities in Malaysia. Background of the study; Research methodology; Results of the provision of online databases, computer facilities and promotion of usage of the online databases; Conclusion of the study.

Focuses on a study that revealed the availability status of quality journals in the field of computer science held in the libraries of selected universities in Malaysia. Determination of the status of availability of ranked journal titles listed in the Journal Citation Report; Assessment of the strength and weaknesses of journal collection in the field of computer science; Analysis of the cost involved in overlapping journal subscription; Suggestions to lessen the impact of rising cost of journal subscriptions.

This study examines 462 papers on Nipah virus research published from 1999 to 2010, identifying the active authors, institutions and citations received. Data was extracted from SCI-Expanded database, (Web of Science) and analyzed using descriptive figures and tables. The results show the growth of publication is incremental up to 2010 even though the average citations received is decreasing. The ratio of authors to articles is 1330: 426. The active contributing countries are USA (41.0%), Australia (19.3%), Malaysia (16.0%), England (6.5%) and France (5.6%). The productive authors are mainly affiliated to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, USA and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia and University of Malaya Medical Centre, Malaysia. A total of 10572 citations were received and the ratio of articles to citation is 1: 24.8. Collaboration with the bigger laboratories in USA and Australia is contributive to the sustained growth of published literature and to access diverse expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed 580 articles (original articles only) published in Medical Journal of Malaysia between 2004 and 2008, the resources referenced by the articles and the citations and impact received. Our aim was to examine article and author productivity, the age of references used and impact of the journal. Publication data was obtained from MyAIS database and Google Scholar provided the citation data. From the 580 articles analyzed, contributors mainly come from the hospitals, universities and clinics. Contributions from foreign authors are low. The useful lives of references cited were between 3 to 11 years. ISI derived Impact factor for MJM ranged between 0.378 to 0.616. Journal self-citation is low. Out of the 580 sampled articles, 76.8% have been cited at least once over the 5 years and the ratio of total publications to citations is 1: 2.6.