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Editors' blog
Irregular thoughts on IEKO
Table of contents:
2024.06 24 BH: IEKO's contribution to the Journal Impact Factor of Knowledge Organization in 2023
2021.09.06 BH: IEKO's contribution to the Journal Impact Factor of Knowledge Organization in 2020
2021.06.07 BH: German chapter CfP and concepts needed in IEKO
2021.05.03 BH: IEKO's contribution to the JIF of KO in 2019
2018.08.30 BH: IEKO compared to ELIS
2018.08.28 BH: Concepts from the title and subtitle of the journal KO
2018.07.26 BH: Systems theory and KO
2018.07.11 BH: IEKO presentation for ISKO 2018
2024-06-24 BH
IEKO's contribution to the Journal Impact Factor of Knowledge Organization in 2023
The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for Knowledge Organization (KO) 2024 (for the year 2023).
Journal Impact Factor™ is calculated using the following metrics:
Citations in 2023 to items published in 2021 (24) + 2022 (12) 36
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- = 0.6
Number of citable items in 2021 (31) + 2022 (29) 60
That means that in 2023 36 papers were citing KO articles in either 2021 or 2022.
These 36 citations were citing the following 22 KO articles (of which 7 are ordinary articles and 15 are IEKO articles*):
6 *Science Mapping and Science Maps
3 Consensus and Scientific Classification
2 *Citation Indexing and Indexes
2 *Data Documents
2 *International Classification of Diseases (ICD)
2 *Korean Decimal Classification (KDC)
2 *Online Public Access Catalogues and Library Discovery Systems
2 *Science, Part I
1 A Co-Word Analysis of Global Research on Knowledge Organization: 1900-2019
1 A Large Scale, Knowledge Intensive Domain Development Methodology
1 Evaluating Utility and Automatic Classification from Research Data Australia
1 *James Duff Brown
1 *Journal of Economic Literature Codes Classification System (JEL)
1 *Keyword
1 *Ontologies as KOS
1 Reorganizing Educational Institutional Domain using Faceted Ontological Principles
1 Representation and Display of Digital Images of Cultural Heritage
1 *RILM Index
1 *Science, Part II: The Study of Science
1 *Table of Contents (ToC)
1 *The Systems Approach
1 Using Full-text Content of Academic Articles to Build a Methodology Taxonomy of Information Science in China
===============
35 Total (should be 36!)
Of these 35 citations, 26 were to IEKO articles and 9 to ordinary KO articles. (This means that 38 articles in KO in 2021 and 2022 received 0 citations in 2023.)
2021-09-06 BH
IEKO's contribution to the Journal Impact Factor of Knowledge Organization in 2020
Concerning the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and its calculation see
2021.05.03.
For 2020 JIF of Knowledge Organization is 1.000 (0.586 without self-citations). The 18 articles (IEKO articles marked with *), which most
contributed to this JIF were:
- *Interoperability, 8 citations
- *Knowledge Organization System (KOS): An Introductory Critical Account, 6 citations
- *Library and Information Science (LIS). Part 1, 5 citations
- *Literary Warrant, 5 citations
- *Document Theory, 3 citations
- The Domain of Knowledge Organization: A Bibliometric Analysis of Prolific Authors and Their Intellectual Space, 3 citations
- *Tagging, 3 citations
- Knowledge Domain and Emerging Trends in Vulnerability Assessment in the Context of Climate Change: A Bibliometric Analysis (1991-2017), 2 citations
- Facet Analysis of Anime Genres: The Challenges of Defining Genre Information for Popular Cultural Objects, 2 citations
- Classifying Phenomena. Part 4: Themes and Rhemes, 2
- *Indexing: Concepts and Theory, 2 citations
- *Library and Information Science (LIS). Part 2, 2 citations
- *IFLA Library Reference Model (IFLA LRM)-Harmonisation of the FRBR Family, 2 citations
- Subject Access in Swedish Discovery Services, 2 citations
- *The Knowledge Pyramid: the DIKW Hierarchy, 2 citations
- *Data (with Big Data and Database Semantics), 2 citations
- *Notation, 2 citations
- Creating a Taxonomy of Earthquake Disaster Response and Recovery for Online Earthquake Information Management 2 citations
2021-06-07 BH
German chapter CfP and concepts needed in IEKO
Deutsche ISKO e.V. (International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO), German Chapter)
issued 6/4/2021 a call for papers (CfP) for Wissensorganisation 2021: Digitization and knowledge
organization: between indexing and knowledge graphs? To be held 29. Oktober 2021.
"The aim of this year's conference is to discuss the relations between traditional Knowledge
Organization, digitalization of knowledge resources and knowledge graphs. Knowledge graphs aim
to make knowledge about and relations between publications explicit and thus follow similar goals
as traditional Knowledge Organization. Moreover, the construction of knowledge graphs can both
benefit from the detailed and carefully designed topic structures developed in knowledge
organizations systems like ontologies and thesauri as well as from the vast amount of resources
annotated with concepts from these systems. On the other hand, knowledge graphs use many
concepts and techniques that are not found in traditional knowledge organization but can
substantially inspire the development of Knowledge Organization Systems for use in the digital
era. [...]
Topics include but are not limited to:
- Knowledge graphs and linked data
- Scientific Knowledge Graphs
- Knowledge Organization Systems for Understanding, Sense-Making, and Learning
- Knowledge Representation
- Classification Schemes, Taxonomies, and Categorization Schemes
- Thesauri, Semantic Networks and Ontologies
- Engineering and Management Aspects of Knowledge Organization
- Knowledge Modeling and Engineering
- Organization of Unstructured Information
- Web Indexing and Social Tagging
- Automatic Categorization and Indexing
Many of the terms/concepts used in this CfP needs to be covered by the ISKO Encyclopedia (IEKO), including:
- Knowledge graph (with Scientific Knowledge Graph)
- Linked data
- Knowledge representation (and the relation between this term and the term knowledge organization)
- Semantic network
- Knowledge modeling
- The terms structured information vs unstructured information
IEKO is interested in hearing from potential authors about these - and many other - concepts. Please contact the editor-in-chief.
2021-05-03 BH
IEKO's contribution to the Journal Impact Factor of Knowledge Organization in 2019
Web of Science (WoS) / Clarivate publishes every year a list of journals ranked according to the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). Much has been written about JIF and this way of ranking journals (or persons, institutions, countries). Nonetheless JIF is influential, whether you like it or not. It has, for example, implications for how journals are considered (high JIF tends to be associated with high-status), and for researchers' choice of where to publish (it is less attractive to be published in a low-status journal). In other words, we may assume that JIF plays a role for attracting high-status researchers.
JIF was for 2019 (the latest available when this is written) 0.977 for Knowledge Organization (KO). It is calculated the following way: KO produced in 2018 and 2017 86 "citable items" (i.e., articles and other contributions that were citable, including book-reviews, omitting non-citable items such as news and lists of books recently published). KO received in 2019 84 citations from all journals in the WoS (including self-citations from KO). KO's JIF for 2019 are calculated as 84:86 = 0.977. (Of the 84 citations 43 were to 2017 articles and 41 to 2018 articles; of the 86 citable items 45 were from 2017 and 41 from 2018).
The seven articles receiving most citations (and thus contributing most to KO's JIF 2019) were:
- Hjørland, Birger. "Domain Analysis". KO 44, Page: 436-464. (Received 8 citations) (ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization, IEKO article)
- Mazzocchi, Fulvio. "Knowledge Organization System (KOS)". KO 45, Page: 54-78. (Received 6 citations) (IEKO article)
- Hjørland, Birger. "Library and Information Science (LIS), Part 1". KO 45, Page: 232-254. (Received 6 citations) (IEKO article)
- Gil-Leiva, Isidoro. "SISA-Automatic Indexing System for Scientific Articles: Experiments with Location Heuristics Rules Versus TF-IDF Rules" KO 44, Page: 139-162. (Received 4 citations) (not an IEKO article)
- Buckland, Michael. "Document Theory". KO 45, Page: 425-436. (Received 4 citations) (IEKO article)
- Zumer, Maja. "IFLA Library Reference Model (IFLA LRM): Harmonisation of the FRBR Family".
KO 45, Page: 310-318. (Received 4 citations) (IEKO article)
- Hjørland, Birger. "Subject (of Documents)". KO 44, Page: 55-64. (Received 4 citations) (IEKO article)
We see that 6 out of 7 of the contributing journals here listed were IEKO articles, confirming a well-known fact that review papers tend to be highly cited. (The full list of all KO articles from any period can be seen as a JIF ranked list by everybody with access to WoS.)
See also Statistics about the use of IEKO.
2018-08-30 BH
IEKO compared to ELIS
One may ask, given the existence of Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, ELIS (McDonald and
Levine-Clark 2018) is there still a need for the ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization (IEKO)?
Here are some of the important differences:
- ELIS covers, as the title implies, library and information sciences (LIS), whereas IEKO covers
knowledge organization (KO), which may be considered a subfield of LIS. The ambition of IEKO as a
more specialized source is to cover KO in both broader and deeper ways, e.g. more articles about
specific issues in KO and deeper treatment of each issue.
- At the present ELIS has by large the greatest number of articles (497 articles in ELIS compared to
about 30 in IEKO), but IEKO growths month by month. The alphabetic list of entries in IEKO is
here; the alphabetical list of entries in ELIS 4 is here.
- IEKO is a free, open encyclopedia, whereas ELIS is a subscription-based source. Given the
interdisciplinary and scattered nature of the field IEKO may be available to many students,
researchers and practitioners, who do not have access to ELIS (although ELIS is a valuable resource
that should be available in all educational institutions in library and information science).
- IEKO is a peer-reviewed source and all articles are automatically accepted in the journal Knowledge
Organization. They are hereby also indexed by many indexing services, including Web of Science.
- Because IEKO is primarily an online source, it allows easy updating (while at the same time having a
stable print version). IEKO encourages authors to update their articles. ELIS has an unclear update
policy. Some articles are termed ELIS Classic and are explicit reprints of earlier editions (but without
precise bibliographical references, so authors cannot cite the original version directly, but has to go
to the earlier editions and find the information). However, many articles are just reprints from
former editions without indication that the article has not been updated. This is a bad service.
- There a kinds of articles, that have different priorities in IEKO and ELIS.
- Biographical articles are not covered by ELIS but are planned to be an important part of
IEKO. This allows approaching issues from other angles. For example, much classification
theory refers to Aristotle, but his theoretical views are seldom presented in a proper
developed way. We hope a biographical article about Aristotle may help solving this
problem — and so with all other biographies.
- ELIS has traditionally had really many articles about libraries and related institutions in
specific countries, e.g. Denmark, Ethiopia, Hungary, India, Mexico, Moldova, New Zealand,
Poland etc. etc. This is not the case with EIKO, and it is not planned either.
- ELIS has also a real many articles about different societies and organizations such as ASLIB,
Association for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Systems
(AIS), Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, Association for Library
Service to Children (ALSC) and ISKO. IEKO plans an article about ISKO, but we have no
intention of the same broad coverage of associations and organizations.
- IEKO prioritizes theoretical concepts. Although some are also covered by ELIS, many are
not. Examples of concepts covered by IEKO, but missing in ELIS are "Domain analysis",
"Integrative levels", "Interoperability", "Literary warrant", "Logical division", "Notation",
"Subject (of documents)" and "Work" (and consider that we are still in an early phase of development).
- IEKO prioritizes knowledge organization in different domains (but realizes it can be hard
to find authors in many domains). ELIS has a number of old articles (ELIS Classic) about e.g.
"Chemistry Literature and Its Users", but seems to make no effort to provide updated
information about specific domains.
- Coverage of interdisciplinary fields and adjacent disciplines are important. ELIS have
many important articles, for example, "Epistemology", "Linguistics and the information
sciences", "Science and Technology Studies", "Semiotics" and "Social epistemology". IEKO has also
the ambition to cover such fields, and we recognizes an important dilemma: Should an
article about, for example, epistemology, be written from an external expert in
epistemology or from somebody who is able to relate epistemological problems to specific
issues of KO? This is about evaluating potential contributors’ competencies in relation to
two important goals. The main goal is to think of every contribution in the light of helping
the development of KO in fruitful directions. (Consider the former statements.)
Conclusion: Because IEKO is made in continuous process (while ELIS is edited in a one-shot process with fixed
deadlines), IEKO may to a larger degree be able to build on already published papers. For example, the
article "Knowledge organization" refers to the article "Knowledge organization systems (KOS)" which refer to
specific kinds of KOS such as "Thesaurus (for information retrieval)" which may again refer to specific
thesauri.
IEKO aims to be an important tool for developing KO for the future (Consider again the former
statements). We consider it a project involving the community of KO researchers and practitioners.
Reference
McDonald, John D. and Michael Levine-Clark (Eds.). 2018. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences,
Fourth Edition, Vol. I-VII. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. (Also available online to subscribing libraries).
2018-08-28 BH
Concepts from the title and subtitle of the journal KO
The title and subtitle of the journal: "Knowledge Organization: International Journal devoted to Concept
Theory, Classification, Indexing and Knowledge Representation" contains, of course, important concepts
which need to be considered in IEKO:
Classification (covered from 2017-02-09)
Concept Theory
Indexing (covered from 2018-05-09)
Knowledge
Knowledge Organization (covered from 2016-08-01)
Knowledge Representation
Organization
Theory
I will say a few words of the concepts which currently are not covered (and therefore in search for authors):
Concept Theory
In the recent biographical article on Ingetraut Dahlberg, Ohly (2018) also included a section about her
concept theory: http://www.isko.org/cyclo/dahlberg#3 , including, of course references to her most
important works on the subject. Of great interest is also Dahlberg's discussion with German social scientists
at http://www.isko.org/cyclo/dahlberg#7 , which is not available in English and seems in need for further consideration. Other ISKO members have treated this concept, including myself (Hjørland 2009) and Rick
Szostak (2011). It is a huge field, but there is a need for an IEKO article considering different theories and
their implications for KO.
Hjørland, Birger. 2009. "Concept Theory". Journal of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology, 60, no. 8: 1519-36.
Ohly, H. Peter. 2018. "Ingetraut Dahlberg". In ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization:
http://www.isko.org/cyclo/dahlberg
Szostak, Rick. 2011. "Complex Concepts Into Basic Concepts". Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology 62, no. 11: 2247–65.
Knowledge
Sometimes knowledge organization is called "information organization" (e.g., Svenonius 2000), and data
organization and document organization are among other important competing concepts to consider. IEKO
needs a scholarly examination of why KO is termed as it is, and what the implications are for different labels
of the field (see also Hjørland 2012). Also, other aspects of the term knowledge are important to consider.
This is also a huge field and knowledge is closely related to science and the theory of knowledge is called
epistemology. Each of these concepts are planned as independent articles in IEKO.
Hjørland, Birger. 2012. "Knowledge Organization = Information Organization?" Advances in
Knowledge Organization 13: 8-14.
Svenonius, Elaine. 2000. The intellectual foundation of information organization. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press.
Knowledge Representation
Many authors use the term knowledge representation as an (implicit) synonym for knowledge organization.
Svenonius (2000) uses information organization (cf. knowledge above) while Svenonius (2004) uses
knowledge representation. Stock and Stock (2013) prefer knowledge representation. In the glossary (p. 839)
the following definitions are given:
Knowledge Organization safeguards ("organizes") the accessibility and availability, respectively, of
knowledge contained within documents. It comprises all types of KOSs as well as further user- and
text-oriented procedures. A folksonomy represents knowledge organization without rules.
Knowledge Representation is the science, technology and application of the methods and tools
for representing knowledge in such a way that it can be optimally searched and retrieved in digital
databases. The knowledge that has been found in documents is represented in an information
system, namely via surrogates. Knowledge representation includes the subareas of information
condensation and information filters.
This definition of knowledge representation corresponds, however, to definitions of knowledge
organization provided by, for example Dahlberg, Hjørland and Smiraglia. The question is therefore open:
Should we consider the two terms synonyms? An argument against is that the term is often associated with
research in artificial intelligence and related areas (see for example in Wikipedia, where "knowledge
representation" is redirected to "Knowledge representation and reasoning". Sowa (1999) is a well-known book
in this computer-science tradition. Hjørland (2008) is a draft for an interdisciplinary review of knowledge
representation. A full account of the term needs to consider the term representation and consider for
example, what has been termed the representational paradigm in computer science.
Hjørland, Birger. 2008. "Knowledge representation". In The Epistemological Lifeboat. Saved copy
available in Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20180423092719/http://lifeboat.iva.ku.dk/info.asp?subjectid=92
Sowa, John F. 1999. Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational
Foundations. Boston, MA: Course Technology.
Stock, Wolfgang G. and Mechtild Stock. 2013. Handbook of Information Science. Berlin, de Gruyter.
Svenonius, Elaine. 2000. The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Svenonius, Elaine. 2004. "The Epistemological Foundations of Knowledge Representations". Library
Trends 52, no. 3: 571–87.
Organization
Glushko (2013) suggested organizing as the name of a discipline, that is in reality as a competing term for
knowledge organization. In my opinion we have to many competing terms for our field already, providing a
confusion, which we should be the first to avoid. However, the book is good and provide introductions to
many important concepts, that would fit very well in IEKO, including, of course the term organizing or
organization itself.
Glushko, Robert J. (Ed.). 2013. The Discipline of Organizing. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Theory
Theory is an important concept in KO. First of all, because our conceptual structures and classifications are
based on theories (which are often implicit). Leonelli (2016) is a very important contribution to this aspect,
which was also dealt with by Hjørland (2013). The last article in addition discussed the theories of KO itself.
Hjørland, Birger (2013). "Theories are Knowledge Organizing Systems (KOS)". Knowledge
Organization 42, no. 2: 113-28.
Leonelli, Sabina. 2016. Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press (Chapter 5: What Counts as Theory, 114-138).
2018-07-26 BH
Systems theory and knowledge organization (KO)
In the history of KO, there have been researchers interested in systems theory, cf. the selected references below. However, there is a need for broader and updated article on this issue. It is paradoxical that Arnold (2013) is a book about traditions in systems theory, which is published in a book series about library and information science (LIS), but which does not include anything about the relation between LIS or KO and systems theory. Not a single author (or editor from our field). In this way we have an unclear understanding of what systems theory may contribute to KO, what have its adherents found fruitful and which problems are connected to this theoretical frame? (This is the case with almost all theoretical frames, but here I'll start to call for somebody interested in doing the task to provide an scholarly, updated, critical review of the relation between KO and systems theory / systems science)
Arnold, Darrell (2013). Traditions of Systems Theory: Major Figures and Contemporary Developments. London: Routledge. (Routledge Studies in Library and Information Science)
Foskett, D. J. (1972). "Review: Information and general system theory. Journal of Librarianship. 4(3), 205-209.
Foskett, D. J. (1974). "General systems theory and the organisation of libraries". In: Studies in Library Management. London, Clive Bingley. (Vol. 2, side 10-24).
Foskett, D. J. (1980). "Systems theory and its relevance to documentary classification". International classification. 7(1), 2-5.
Fugmann, R. (1973). "On the role of subjectivity in establishing, using, operating and evaluating information retrieval systems. Treatise II on retrieval system theory". Information storage & retrieval, 9(7), 353-372.
Mansfield, U. (1982). "The systems movement: an overview for information scientists". Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 33(6), 375-382.
Marchant, M. P. (1980). "An open system theory approach to library effectiveness". In: Library effectiveness: A state of the art. New York, Library Administration and Management Association. (Side 151-159).
Mattessich, R. (1982). "The systems approach: its variety of aspects". Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 33(6), 383-394.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. "Systems theory". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems%5Ftheory
[top of blog]
2018-07-11 BH
IEKO presentation for 15th International ISKO Conference, Porto, July 11th, 2018
Three core dimensions of knowledge organization (KO) are knowledge organization
systems (KOS), knowledge organization processes (KOP) and core concepts. KOS are,
for example, subject heading systems, thesauri, folksonomies and ontologies. KOP
are for example, indexing (manual or algorithmic) or tagging. Core concepts are, for
example, classification, knowledge, subject and data.
The general terms KOS and KOP as well as specific kinds (e.g. subject headings
and thesauri) as well as core concepts are understood and defined differently in the
literature. Articles should be based on a solid knowledge of the relevant literature
(often belonging to different disciplines) supplemented with systematic literature
searches and hopefully also based on the authors own research. They should
present and discuss the most important different views and present arguments for
the authors preferred understanding/definition. They should, for example, clarify
whether Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is a kind of thesaurus or not (or
at the least present the arguments for and against that have been stated in the
literature).
Often authors are surprised by the complexity involved in doing such conceptual
analysis, they may underestimate the time and effort needed to answer such
questions (which are simple to ask but mostly difficult to answer). I would like to
emphasize that such theoretical review articles should be considered first rate
research (and review articles are often highly cited, and please remember that IEKO
articles are peer-reviewed, printed in Knowledge Organization, and indexed in Web
of Science). Thus, the frustration of the unexpected complexity writing the article
should be considered a research challenge, something to be examined carefully,
step-by-step, and hopefully rewarded by increased conceptual clarity not just by the
author herself, but in the field as a whole — and hopefully recognized in other fields
too. In this place I would like to quote the outstanding biologist Ernst Mayr (1997,
98): "It cannot be overemphasized that changes in concepts have far more
impact than new discoveries".
All articles should aim being contributions (not just articles, that are "good
enough"). The ideal is that IEKO articles are considered the best general sources on
their subjects, the sources that researchers, teachers and advanced students go to
(and that more popular textbooks educational materials draws on). They should be
concise, readable and focus on the important, but at the same time be broad and
comprehensive to provide a good overview of the field and its core issues. And their
reference lists should aim at being good, easily available sources for all researchers
and students in the field.
Four main perspectives seem to be of utmost importance for KO in general and for
almost any specific concept and article in IEKO:
- To consider it from the perspective of the history of knowledge organization
("classic" contributions to knowledge organization)
- To consider it in the perspective of front-edge information technology
- To consider relations to specific domains of knowledge
- To consider epistemological issue (and other philosophical issues like
metaphysical and ethical issues).
Concerning 1
To consider KO as a research discipline implies that we are concerned with its
progress and that means consider the development of concepts, theories,
methodologies, applications, among other things. It also means to evaluate what
must be considered obsolete knowledge, and which contributions should be
considered valuable. There is sometimes a tendency that valuable contributions are
forgotten. One important function of IEKO is to identify important contributions,
integrate them in the conceptual structure of the field and make them easily
available (although, of course, there may be different opinions on what to consider
valuable contributions).
Examples of valuable contributions, which have been relatively neglected or
unappreciated are, in my opinion, Bernier's (1980) differentiation between concept
indexing and subject indexing (cf., http://www.isko.org/cyclo/subject#3.1 ),
Cooper's (1969) observation that interindexer consistency as a measure of indexing
quality has the problem, that indexing may be consistently bad (cf.,
http://www.isko.org/cyclo/indexing#3.2). A related function of IEKO is to present a
scattered and badly researched idea in a well integrated article. Two fine examples
are Ideal language and Integrative
levels. Both are concepts, that
have played a role in the history of KO, but which be difficult to become aware of
and to overview were they not treated in comprehensive articles. (I am not saying
that these articles solve the problems, just that they make a better starting point for
further research). Therefore, almost all articles in IEKO should aim at relating their contents to former
contributions in the field of KO. The implication is that authors should ideally have
solid knowledge about research done in the field.
Concerning 2
The most modern advanced technologies such as search engines, the semantic Web
and bibliometrics are often considered as belonging to information retrieval (IR),
bibliometrics, and other fields which are external to KO, for example, computer
science. Although this is right, it is important to realize that fields such as IR and
bibliometrics are working with the same goal as KO: to help people navigate large
databases finding helpful documents and information. Although, without question,
they are separately established fields, we cannot ignore them, we must consider
them different approaches to the same goal, and if we ignore them, we may
develop a bubble, that is be increasingly considered irrelevant by the surrounding
society. This raises the research problem: What is the specific perspective of KO, and
how does it differ from, for example IR? To answer this, we must specify the
different approaches in both KO and IR and try to answer the question: Which
theoretical foundation for KO can make this field relevant in a time dominated by
IR? The answer is not given, but each author ideally contributes to answering it. The
most needed qualification here is probably honesty, as opposed to avoiding
considering the challenges, just falling back on convenient professional myths. Such
issues often come to the foreground when writing for IEKO, and they often pose a
dilemma for the editor, whether to choose authors more related to KO or more
related to other fields such as IR, the ideal being authors with knowledge in both
fields.
Concerning 3
All knowledge is knowledge about something and it is important that KO
acknowledges the progress made in specific domains. So far, we have a fine article
about DSM, the psychiatric classification of mental diseases. It was a goal of
Ingetraut Dahlberg to develop KO in subject areas, but we have not so far had much
activity or influence — actually the philosophers are much more influential today, in,
for example, biological classification, compared to us — and the same goes for
almost all domains. (One fine exception is Geoffrey C. Bowker on, among other
things the International Classification of Diseases and metadata standards in the U.S.
network for long-term ecological research, LTER). Specific domains are important in
more than one way, but first of all, important theory is developed by such research,
for example, is was Charles Darwin (1859, 420) that proposed "all true
classification is genealogical".
IEKO tries to find qualified authors for articles in all major subject fields. Here the
primary qualification is the classification of the specific domain (X). Qualified
researchers may be subject specialists (e.g. biologists), philosophers specializing in
classifying X, people from LIS specializing in classifying X or others. Here as in other
cases, a very important qualification is to have already published about X.
Concerning 4
The third overall ambition — closely related to the two former — is to consider
philosophical questions in general and epistemological ones in particular. We should
both have general articles on different epistemologies, but also have discussions of
different philosophical issues in almost all other articles (for example, in the article
about Colon Classification consider whether it is based on some philosophical
assumptions, which are challenged today, or in the article Literary warrant consider
how this may be interpreted more or less empiristic as a passive process or
pragmatic as an active process in relation to the information specialist, or the
important implications of different views in indexing (whether manual or
algorithmic). Another way to say this is that each specific topic can always be
considered from different perspectives, and it is extremely important that users of
IEKO get this knowledge when using or browsing it.
Today important issues relate to implications of classification (how does a given
classification system affect different groups of people), which is closely related to
ethical issues. Other issues concern the status of classifications, which involves
questions related to social constructivism, realism and social epistemology.
Research may uncover the hidden assumptions often underlying dominating
systems.
The above was about ideal demands for IEKO, but of course these cannot all be met.
There is a great need that more authors will work for IEKO, for example, with
biographical articles of important contributors, specific kinds of technologies and
systems, specific approaches to KO, historical articles, theoretical concepts etc. In
order for ISKO to thrive, its knowledge base need to be improved, that is more
people doing research are badly needed.
Some practical issues. All communication about writing for IEKO are sent to editor-in-chief, including all
drafts, suggestions and manuscripts. Editor-accepted manuscripts are sent to peer-
review by editor-in-chief, and may be rejected, needing major or minor revision or
accepted. Finally accepted papers are sent to the web-manager and published
online. Thereafter (not before) the final version of accepted papers should be
uploaded in ScholarOne for publication in Knowledge Organization, cf.: Guidelines
for contributors (these guidelines are constantly updated and contains now the following subsections:
Using endnotes and reference managers; Articles on concepts; Articles on KOSs; Biographical articles;
Updating after publication).
References
Bernier, Charles L. 1980. "Subject indexes". In: Kent, Allen; Lancour, Harold & Daily, Jay E. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 29. New York, NY: Marcel Dekker, Inc.: 191-205.
Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Susan Leigh Star. 1999. Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cooper, William S. 1969. "Is interindexer consistency a hobgoblin? " American Documentation, 20: 268-278.
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of
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Mayr, Ernst. (1997). This is biology: The science of the living world. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press.
Millerand, Florence and Geoffrey C. Bowker. 2009. "Metadata Standards: Trajectories and Enactment in the Life of an Ontology". In Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life, edited by Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 149?165.
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Published 2018-08-01, last edited 2024-06-24
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