Volume 32, Issue 2

Background. Communication and collaboration are important skills for academic librarians offering research support. When everyday meetings are not possible, as during the Covid-19 pandemic, academic librarians are forced to develop new ways of supporting students and faculty. Traditional library expertise in literature searching and bibliometric complemented with newer skills of analytics, visualization and literature mapping of a field can help librarians to get acquainted and communicate with the researchers they provide research support to.
Objectives. This article presents the result of an effort to map out trends and changes in research and publication patterns in a university department over a 10-year time period (2009-2019), which reflect both developments in the department as well as the external environment. Further, the article discusses how this can help liaison librarians to communicate with faculty and provide more relevant and effective research support.
Methods. A document analysis was carried out on the publications of a department faculty to trace how research has developed in a growing department with different subjects and disciplines.
Results. The analysis found a trend of research the department becoming more international, with more publications in open access. Even though research in the department is becoming more interdisciplinary, there is a trend of sociology research moving towards a purer form of `sociology, and away from a previous focus on sociology and social work as a joint research interest. Furthermore, social work research has also developed a stronger focus on child welfare, and the teacher education staff has increased their publications in several focus areas.
Contributions. This article contributes to the field of research support, showing how mapping the research in a university department can help liaison librarians in face-to-face communication with faculty as well as in online interactions.

Background. Power law distributions have been found in many contexts, both natural and social. This study examines one way of applying the power law distribution to characterize the breadth and accessibility of library collections.
Objectives. The collections of three libraries were analyzed for evidence of power law distributions with regard to the number of copies per title.
Methods. Data gathered at the three libraries were analyzed to obtain the coefficient of determination (R2) between the actual distribution of the number of copies for each library, and the number of copies predicted by a power law model. The slope of the best line fit represents the “power” of the distribution, which determines the shape of the particular power law distribution
Results. The results indicate that the number of copies per title in all three collections do in fact fit the power law distribution. But not merely that: although each library collection strongly resembles a power law distribution, the slope, or “power,” of the distribution differs in each case, in a direction that indicates that the underlying theory is sound. The evidence is seen by comparing the results of two of the libraries studied here. As a small academic library with a policy directed at expanding its number of titles at the expense of number of copies, Kenyon College has the “flattest” slope or power; while Oak Park Public Library, a large public collection that must balance breadth with accessibility, has a much “steeper” slope to its distribution of titles to copies.
Contributions. The results and methods presented here not only allow librarians to understand their collections in a new fashion, but may also have implications for anyone seeking to manage collections into the future: for example, baskets of securities in financial markets, and investments in weapon systems by militaries. Additionally, the results provide support for the “preferential attachment” explanation of the power law distribution development, an important theoretical issue with possible relevance to both the natural and social sciences, particularly economics.

Background. In scholarly publishing, time-looping is the practice of assigning papers that were online-published at a specific point in time to post-dated journal volumes/issues.
Objectives. This study investigated to what extent time-looping was practised by journals, and whether this practice was likely to have increased the journal citation metrics. The journals in Financial Times’ list of top 50 business and economics journals (known as the FT50 list) were used as the sample.
Methods. All FT50 journals’ websites were visited on the same date (February 15, 2022) to identify journals that practised time-looping. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and CiteScore values of the journals over the last ten years (2011-2020) were analyzed.
Results. As of mid-February 2022 when the analysis was conducted, the practice of time-looping was identified for four FT50 journals, published by the same publisher. The time-loops ranged from 48 to 111 days (with an average of 79 days). Examining the JIF and the CiteScore values for these four journals over the last ten years, it was observed that the 2020 JIF values for these four journals saw a significant increase. The results of further analysis suggest that time-looping is a likely cause of this increase in JIF values. The paper discusses the implications of the practice of time-looping for journals, publishers, and the scholarly community as a whole.

Background. Although individuals’ well-being has received considerable attention in academic research, the impact of knowledge management (KM) on workplace happiness has not yet been investigated.
Objective. This study contributes to job satisfaction, workplace happiness, and KM research. It aims to investigate the role of KM processes—knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, knowledge codification, and knowledge retention—in promoting workplace happiness and job satisfaction.
Methods. The study follows a quantitative approach. A Web-based questionnaire is the main data collection instrument. Five hundred and thirty-nine professionals participated in the study.
Results. The results reveal that there is a significant relationship between the five processes of KM and workplace happiness. All of the KM processes had a strong impact on workplace happiness. Workplace happiness was significantly related to job satisfaction.
Implications. It was concluded that promoting a culture based on KM processes can help individuals experience a greater sense of workplace happiness and improve their job satisfaction.