Choose either the citation analysis EOR the email content analysis. This assignment is due in two weeks (February 25).

1. Citation analysis

Citations in a publication represent links between ideas, people, and documents. These links are the base units for several kinds of analyses. The simplest type of inference is to assess the impact of a document or author by counting citations. Other analyses explore relationships between two or more authors or documents (e.g., how they cite each other, how they are cited together), or aim to demarcate subfields or research trends. You may choose to conduct an impact assessment for a single author or article, or to investigate the relationship between two authors.

Choose the author(s) or journal article you wish to investigate. For this project you can choose to use paper indexes, Dialog service (if you have access) or use the SSI Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, or Arts & Humanities Citation Index (click on ISI citation indexes from UNC Library site http://library.unc.edu/eresources.html Note: you will have to do this from campus).

For an author impact study, determine the total number of citations in SCI, SSCI, and AHCI. Be sure to try name variants or truncate (e.g., Buckland M* will search for all variants of Michael).

1. Determine the total number of UNIQUE citations (e.g., some citations will show up in two or more of the indexes).

2. Determine how many of these citations are self-citations (i.e., are citations that appear in a work authored or co-authored by that author). Note: if you choose a highly cited author, only look at 15 citations, count how many are self-citations and then extrapolate to the total (e.g. if 2 of the 15 are self-cites and there are 150 unique citations, 13/15*150=130 citations without the self-cites).

3. Pick three citations (not self-cites) and locate the articles. Find the actual citation in the article and explain why you think the author cited that work.

4. Briefly discuss the pros and cons of judging impact of an author or article on citations (1-2 paragraphs).

For an article impact study, follow the same instructions as above, except step 2 will not apply.

For a study of two authors, find all citations to each other. Examine those papers and infer the relationship and respective influences between the authors. Briefly discuss the pros and cons of judging respective influence or collaboration based upon mutual citations.

2. Email Content Analysis

Content analysis aims to identify meaning by examining patterns and themes in documents or collections. For this project, you will identify patterns and themes in a collection of email. For an example of a content analysis of email see http://ils.unc.edu/~march/blsreport/mainbls.html and select section 2.2.4 for the methodology and section 4.2 for results of a content analysis of 948 email messages received at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Such analyses have been used to determine user needs (e.g., the BLS report), evaluate system effects (Perseus evaluation, see http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/FIPSE/report_final.html and pick Perseus Discussion List), and assess group dynamics. (See Allen, B. & Reser, D. (1990) Content analysis in library and information science research, Library and Information Science Research, 12, pp. 251-262 for an good introduction to textual content analysis.)

Pick a collection of at least 50 related email messages (could be an elist, a group project series, etc.).

1. Give counts and distributions for various parameters that may add to our understanding of the collaboration process (total number of messages, messages by person, number of initiations versus replies, messages by domain, messages by day of week, distribution by time, number of threads (topics), depth of threads, etc.
2. Identify and cluster the topics (begin with the subject headers, but eventually you must examine the messages since there may be multiple topics in a message). Briefly (1-2 paragraphs) summarize the main topics of the discussion and what the group accomplished or addressed.
3. Briefly (1-2 paragraphs) discuss the pros and cons of using a content analysis to understand a) group interaction and b) progress toward some goal(s).