網際網路與領域知識對學者資訊搜尋能力造成的影響

Abstract

過去研究發現網際網路對學者的資訊搜尋行為會造成莫大改變。網際網路興起後，參考文獻的引用集中程度逐年下降；表示在網際網路的幫助下，學者們能夠找到更多先前較不容易被注意到的文章，而不會只注意那些少數高被引、較熱門的文章。此現象即支持長尾理論。然而，引用集中程度的下降可能只是網際網路後文章出版量大幅增加造成的結果。因此本研究欲探討網際網路是否會影響學者的資訊搜尋，幫助他們資訊搜尋的範圍變得更為廣泛，且找到更多先前較不易被注意到的文章。除了網際網路的影響外，領域知識也會對學者的資訊搜尋造成影響。因此，本研究另一目的即是探討領域知識造成的影響，且更進一步調查是否網際網路的效果對於領域知識高低不同的學者，會有不一樣的影響。本研究採用次集資料分析的方式，且結果顯示網際網路所造成的效果是顯著的。在網際網路之後，學者們會引用更多較不容易被注意到的文章。然而，領域知識的影響並不如預期中的明顯，領域知識僅會影響學者相關參考文獻的數量以及期刊的選擇。網際網路與領域知識的交互作用是顯著的，代表網際網路對領域知識高低不同的學者，會有不一樣的效果。對於領域知識高的學者而言，網際網路最大的影響在於幫助他們找到更多先前不易被注意到的文章。而對領域知識低的學者而言，網際網路最大的影響則是在於幫助他們找到更多主題相關的參考文獻。

The Internet has brought extreme changes to academic researchers’ information seeking behavior. After occurrence of the Internet, the concentration of citations declined year by year, which may indicate that with the help of the Internet, researchers can find more previously unnoticed documents, and they would not focus only on those highly-cited documents. This point of view supported the “long-tail” theory. However, the decline in concentration may be the result of increased publication volume after the Internet. So the present study aimed at investigating whether the Internet would affect information seeking of researchers so that they can search information more extensively, and find more previously unnoticed documents. Besides the impact of the Internet, this study also examined the impact of domain knowledge, and further determined whether the impact of the Internet would be different for researchers with different levels of domain knowledge. By applying secondary-data analysis, this study found that the impact of the Internet is significant. After occurrence of the Internet, researchers found documents from less-noticed sources. The impact of domain knowledge, however, is only reflected in the number of relevant references and the journals selected by researchers. The interaction effect between the Internet and domain knowledge was found to be significant, which indicated that the impact of the Internet would be different for researchers with different levels of domain knowledge. For high knowledge researchers, the greatest impact of the Internet is to help them find documents from less-noticed sources. For low knowledge researchers, the greatest impact of the Internet is to help them find more relevant documents.