404 Not Found? Quantitative and Qualitative Methods for Measuring Disciplinary Relevance

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404 Not Found? Quantitative and Qualitative
Methods for Measuring Disciplinary Relevance

• Douglas Eyman
• Michigan State University

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The initial research question

• Do articles in peer-reviewed, online journals
  significantly impact print scholarship?

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The revised research question

• How are electronic sourcesincluding online
  scholarshipused and cited in the primary sites
  of print publication in Composition/Rhetoric?

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Data Selection

• Journal Selection
• -CCC
• -College English
• -Computers and Composition
• -JAC

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Data Selection

• Time Frame 1996 2003
• -Computer Writing, Rhetoric and Literature
  (CWRL) 1.1 published in 1995
• -Kairos 1.1 published in 1996

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Quantitative Analysis Methods

• Bibliometric Analysis Citation Analysis
• Citation analysis uses citations in scholarly
  works to establish links between authors,
  scholarly works, journals, or fields. One very
  common use of citation analysis is to determine
  the impact of a single author on a given field by
  counting the number of times the author has been
  cited by others.

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Quantitative Analysis Methods
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Quantitative Analysis Methods

• Citation Measurements
• Overall use of online sources
• Change over time in use
• Citation style
• Count of genres of cited sources
• Current availability of cited sources

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Qualitative Analysis Methods

• Online scholarship as remediation (Bolter and
  Grusin, 1999) of traditional scholarship in new
  media
• New media scholarship is not simply a repurposing
  of traditional scholarly essays.

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Qualitative Analysis Methods

• Transparency vs. Hypermediacy
• Historical Frame of Reference

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Transparency (immediacy)

• A style of visual representation whose goal is
  to make the viewer forget the presence of the
  medium and believe that he or she is in the
  presence of the objects of representation
• (Remediation, 272-273)

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Hypermediacy

• a visual style that privileges fragmentation,
  indeterminacy, and heterogeneity and emphasizes
  process or performance rather than the finished
  art object
• (Mitchell, qtd. in Remediation, 31)

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Transparency - Hypermediacy

• The transparency-hypermediacy continuum
• Highly Transparent
• Moderately Transparent
• Moderately Hypermediated
• Highly Hypermediated

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Transparency - Hypermediacy

• Key elements for determining degree of
  hypermediacy
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• Relationship to print genre
• Document design and layout
• Use of links Use of color Use of images
• Use of animation, digital video, interactive
  programming, hypertext

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Highly Transparent

• PDF files works that directly replicate print
  formats

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Highly Transparent
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Moderately Transparent

• Obvious print precursors, but uses links, colors,
  and some images

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Moderately Transparent
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Moderately Transparent
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Moderately Hypermediated

• May be simple in form but not replicating a print
  genre. Uses links, colors, and images as visual
  representations that are unlikely to appear in
  print.

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Moderately Hypermediated
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Highly Hypermediated

• Extensive use of interactive features, hypertext,
  digital video, animation, unexpected and/or heavy
  use of links, colors, images.

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Highly Hypermediated
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Historical Frame of Reference

• Problems
• Sites may change over time
• Sites may move
• Sites may no longer be available
• Domain names may have changed ownership

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Historical Frame of Reference

• Solutions
• Internal site searches
• Google Searches/Google Cache
• Ghostsites
• The Wayback Machine

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Ghost Sites
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The Wayback Machine
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Collecting and Handling the Data

• Initial Citation Collection
• Database Development and Use

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Database Input
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Database Output
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Next Part II

• Preliminary Findings and Recommendations